What you get for $200 isnt much coaching. You get a plan and basically the silly coachcat analysis and a 30 min phone call a month. Thats not really coaching. Dont get me wrong, there are some fine coaches there (isaiah and elliot are worth some $$$), but theres also hella inexperience in some, just choose wisely
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So that you can judge better whether the coach and you are on the same page and whether the two of you will mesh well. (Just to be clear, my list was obviously not exhaustive, it isn’t just about knowledge vs. accountability.)
In my initial post, I perhaps should have highlighted not just the word “why”, but also the word “coach”: why do you want a coach (as opposed to TR, a TP training plan or something similar)?
Mentoring typically doesn’t work that way. The mentor typically has everything on screen (or at least should), and then focus the mentee’s attention to what the mentor thinks should be worked on.
If I put my mentoring hat on for a moment, the way I read your post is that you don’t seem to know (and know enough) to realize what is holding back your training at the moment. And my first task in a take-in interview (and when reviewing your training history) would be to come up with and test a few hypotheses.
The other thing I’d try to figure out is what drives and motivates you.
The easier you make it for the coach to figure those things out, the better for the both of you.
Like I wrote, $200/month gives you an entry-level coach and entry-level service. Just convert your monthly fee by the hours the coach spends on you, and you’ll know what you can expect. A company like FasCat Coaching will also take a good portion of that (30 % perhaps?). So not all the money will go to the coach.
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I gave some tongue in cheek responses above, but to be more real, any good coach will be willing to adapt based on athlete feedback and observation. In my n=1 situation so far, we did a sweet spot block, pretty standard, and when I saw it wasn’t doing too much, I added in over-under work. My athlete nailed the workouts and got to 2hrs of sweet spot time, but I didn’t see the needle moving so we just did a vo2 block. We’re just at the end, but I’ve seen their power go up 15w on average over 4min intervals. But even in this block we adjusted based on feedback, we started with 3min interval repeats, but my athlete seemed to like 4min intervals a bit better when I introduced them, so we stuck with 6x4 as the workout variant. And since I don’t assign based on % of ftp, part of my role was helping determine a pacing target, which was 125-130%. So I guess my advice would be to find someone who isn’t just going to give a fairly canned plan, I’d be wary of anyone doing a lot of funky stuff with workouts (I’m a big fan of keeping it simple and not doing kitchen sink type workouts), and of course I’d be wary of anyone limiting contact in any way.
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Not to be rude, but this is a bad take. Maybe with some coaches and big coaching companies (I’ve heard a couple horror stories too), but 100% not true across the board and I’m speaking from personal experience (and quoted experience from personal friends.)
It can happen, but my personal experience disagrees. You don’t need to pay Kolie money to get a great coach.
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Ok this makes a little more sense. As far as why a coach and not just TR or another plan? Because I don’t hold myself accountable. Or at least, I know from playing team sports in the past or working with a personal trainer, having an external motivator or just somebody else that I have to tell, “I just didn’t feel like doing that workout today” keeps me on track way more than myself. Like, my wife doesn’t care if I hit a workout or sit on the couch instead. Future me will be angry when it’s race season and I’m on the struggle bus. But it’s really easy for present me to get home from work and blow off a workout because I feel lazy. Whereas I am nearly infinitely more inclined to complete the workout if I have a coach watching my workouts. I am motivated by shame. I don’t like letting people down. So even if this is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, I would still be like I’m letting my coach down. Which for me is a big motivator.
Pretty much. Which is why I would love somebody more experienced than me to take a look at my training history, my goals, and my life constraints and give me some advice on what they think I’m doing right or wrong. But I don’t see how wanting that would mean I can’t also get more accountability. Can I not get both with a coach?
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Here’s my take on this. The big coaching companies (Fascat, Boundless, etc, etc) I would say are all a little bit of a risk if you’re just relying on the name and for them to assign you someone. I think it all comes down to the individual you’ll be working with.
You can get someone really competent, that doesn’t necessarily charge you an arm and a leg. But, like everything, as they get busier, take on more clients, get more experienced, they’re all going to start charging more as it starts to come down to how they value their time and how busy they are.
If it were me - I’d Interview and talk with the person about what you’re looking for and their style. Then do a paid consultation and have them look at your data and come up with a plan. Then train for someone for a season and see if it works for you or if you’re looking for something else. The more due diligence you do, the better outcome you’ll get.
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When you are interviewing coaches (and vice versa), this is what I’d tell them straight-up. This is super valuable for them, because you are telling them what you expect from them and what you need.
Absolutely, that’s the best reason to hire a human coach. To be clear I wasn’t trying to argue with you, trying to tell you (don’t) need a coach, just trying to help you out. 
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I didn’t think you were. I think we were just not fully understanding each other. Which is easy with forums I feel like. Thanks for your input.
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And here I am coaching high schoolers, in person 5-6 days a week, for essentially nothing. 
There is the art of coaching (working with people) and there’s the science of coaching (training). A great coach is excellent in both.
But there’s another side though… sales. You gotta sell yourself and your program. And sometimes those who are good at being a salesman aren’t good at coaching.
When you find a good one most definitely worth it though!
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TL;DR: don’t judge coaching by their rates. You’re not going to get the same thing from one coach to the next just because you’re paying the same amount to one coach vs. another.
Coaching rates are a mixed bag. When I was setting mine, I largely looked at what area people were charging, and it’s all over the map. There’s a certain segment of this industry that is doing this to make their living, grow a business, etc; then there are people who are doing it because they enjoy it, like helping people. My take is that there are a lot more of the former (the businesses) than the latter. It is a tough, tough segment to really make a good living, especially starting out. Once you’ve coached some big names, yeah, you can enter the market segment that charges $600/month or whatever, take on 15-20 clients and you’re set.
I can’t speak for others, but I’ve gone through several iterations in terms of what I charge. I was very inexpensive at the start, when I largely coached 5-7 clubmates and offered them a club discount. I thought I would focus more on local people who knew me by my racing reputation both in triathlon and road racing.
That really lasted one season, and while I still have 3 of those athletes on my roster going into their fourth seasons with me, I’m much more remotely focused these days. I have some people here from the forum, and some others around the country from other sources (friends of friends, etc.).
When I started this, I thought I would hire some assistants and grow a business. Instead, I find I’m much happier solo, coaching 12-15 people. I’ve raised my baseline rate a few times, but am still definitely on the lower end of what most coaches charge. Locally, I charge less than all but one coach I know of. That’s my personal choice… when I fill up to my soft cap of athletes, I raise my rate for new people. I’ve never raised a rate on someone I’ve been coaching for multiple seasons.
I also don’t have “tiers”. I explain my approach to people, tell them what I charge for that service, and they can take that or leave it.
There’s really no rule for what coaches are going to charge. We charge what we think our service is worth and/or what we’re comfortable charging. I know I could charge more, but since I’m not in this to make the big bucks - really it just helps pay for my hobbies and keeps me busy in my side time while helping my wife run our main business - I’m comfortable with my approach.
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Yeah, many of the coaching services you know are excellent at marketing “their thing”. Most of us have an approach, but if you find someone is overly dogmatic and applying “one size fits all” methods, I’d look elsewhere, personally.
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I was specifically talking about what you get from Fascat at $200. And I’ll stand by that comment, Coachcat analysis is not coaching
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Just to chime in a little since I bought the coaching package from Fascat last year and got I think what was 7 months for $1k. After filling out my onboarding, choosing my coach based on my research, I had comprehensive onboarding call with my coach for about 90 minutes. From there he’d load up a plan for the current month on TP. I’d then put my notes in and at the end of every week he’d make comments, or he’d comment sooner if he saw that I wasn’t doing something right. I was also free to email him if needed for clarification and I’d get an answer back pretty quickly. At the end of the block, we’d have a monthly review and based on the convo, he’d then put up a new plan. Personally, I felt fine with the amount of communication - I didn’t want more or less. Should I ever go back with any coach, this is pretty much the setup that I would be looking for.
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You can browse and hire coaches on the major training analytics platforms (TrainingPeaks, Xert, Intervals). That’s part of their business.
USAC also has a coach finder. Not quite as good as USAT’s but it’s there.
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Glad you had a nice experience, who was your coach?
I went with Andrew Giniat. I read all of the bios of the coaches available, looked up people online and found some of his podcast with ignition coach co - I liked what he had to say and that pretty much sold me. What was cool was that he had me do some training that I would never have chosen on my own, or that even exist in the TR ecosystem to the same degree that he had it. I did a block of max effort type VO2 pretty early on, then a couple of months later I was doing an FRC Block that was so different than what I had ever done. It worked out well.
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I did a coach search on Training Peaks years ago. I can’t remember specifically what I looked for, but I’m pretty sure I wanted someone local. I only train outdoors and wanted someone who knew the area.
I lucked out. Found a good coach who was willing to work around me needs pretty well (I actually think he liked me needs). I used him to prepare for one tough training season, but couldn’t justify the costs long term.
It was worth it, the cost was appropriate. I got faster and more confident.
I run into him at races often.