Working with Coaches Online

I thought it would be a good idea if we had a place where we could all talk about our experiences working with different coaches online.

Here’s Mine…

Eric Cressey -

Overall experience- Good.
Would recommend - Most likely, depending on the situation.

I E-mailed Eric about working with him online and I could not afford his prices at the time but he worked something out with me and had me buy his Show and Go program and modified it for me based on a 30 min phone consultation and postural photos I sent through E-mail.

I really like how he had the 30 min phone consult so I could speak directly to him and let him know my concerns. I think that is a great idea. I think Show and Go is a really good program but it just doesn’t go into enough detail on how to properly perform the exercises.

Eric replied to my E-mails at a reasonable speed most of the time and overall I felt pretty good about working with him.

John Romaniello -

Overall experience - Horrible.
Would recommend - Definitely not.

Everything started out OK until he got my money. We exchanged a couple E-mails before the transaction took place and he said he had some discounted rate with only a few spots left that was only going on for 1 more week or something like that. He said he would take care of diet and training.

I spent my time filling out his questionare in as much detail as possible. Once I received the program I was already disappointed. The training part felt rushed and not really tailored to me and my concerns. He had me on a very low calorie diet (for me) with tons of cardio. Had me do intermittent fasting and the diet part was basically just a number to hit for the day for calories with an acceptable foods list that I had to use to make the diet myself.
It felt and looked totally generic. Definitely could have gotten all the info off the net for free.

Once I received his program, I had a few questions. This was the most annoying part. The first E-mail I think he took about a week to respond after I had sent two to make sure he got it. I think there was one more e-mail after that that he answered that took about another week. After that I could NOT get my e-mails answered. Once I was close to a month in the program I had sent him another E-mail asking for the next part of my program. I hadn’t gotten a reply for days (while all my other E-mail still went unanswered). “Luckily”, someone had gotten ahold of my Credit card info so the CC# I used to pay him through paypal wasn’t able to charge me for the next month. So I just E-mailed him and told him I was done with online “coaching” from him. He originally stated that there was a 6 month commitment. I can only imagine the frustration I would have went through if I was obligated to stick with him for another 5 months.

Overall, I was very close to feeling like I got scammed. I checked his facebook a couple times to see if I could maybe reach him on there and noticed that a lot of other clients were waiting for the next part of their overdue program as well. I used to be a big fan (for lack of a better word) of this guy. I am not anymore.

John Meadows -

Overall experience - Awesome!
Would recommend - Hell yeah!

First of all, John Meadows has helped me more for FREE through E-mails (by answering my questions)than anyone else either paid of not paid. This guy is just a really great human being and genuinely cares about people whether they are his clients or not. He was very polite and responded to EVERY ONE of my e-mails extremely fast. Sometimes it was like I was sending a text message (must have already been checking his mail at the time).

I hired John Meadows immediately after working with Romaniello. I sent him the program that Romaniello had me doing so he could get an idea of where I was currently at (but didn’t tell him who made it) and he said he had some concerns with how little I was eating and how much cardio I was doing. So he sort of had to fix some things with my metabolism right off the bat.

I only hired him for diet and his plan was extremely detailed and let me know exactly what to eat with every meal. No stress about trying to put together my own diet (which is one of the reasons I wanted to hire a coach in the first place). He asked what I liked and disliked before creating the diet and implemented that. He also worked with me when I felt like trying something different and actually promotes changing up the diet. I felt like he put a lot of thought into creating my diet. He actually let me be a guinea pig for one of his programs and I had very good results and loved his style of training. His descriptions for doing the exercises are some of the best and most detailed I’ve seen and if I had any questions he would quickly reply back to my e-mails.

Overall it was a pleasure working with John. I learned a lot and felt like he really cared about me. I would definitely encourage anyone thinking about working with a coach who want’s to increase muscle or loose fat or both to hire him. Also, I mentioned something about pretty detailed posture problems I was having and he said that it was not his area of expertise. It was very refreshing to have someone be that honest and definitely added to his already great integrity.

Phil Hernon - Excellent coach that’s been around forever and is still one of the best. 90% of the time he gets back to me within 20 minutes if I send him an email, it’s uncanny. I do believe the guy never sleeps. Has his own way of doing things but I can say that for recomping (as I am currently doing), his approach has worked very well for me so far. Frankly better than anything else I have tried before. Always provides 100% professional no bullshit advice.