I’ve been coaching athletes for more than a decade, and most of that time I assumed meaningful progress only happened when I could stand next to someone and correct every rep. That belief started to crack once I began working as an online strength and conditioning coach and saw how much clearer training becomes when the plan has to stand on its own. Without the safety net of constant in-person correction, the quality of the program—and the thinking behind it—matters a lot more.
One of my first long-term online athletes was a former college lineman who’d transitioned into a desk job. He still trained hard, but his recovery didn’t match his effort anymore. Early on, he tried to treat online coaching like a PDF workout—check the box and move on. It didn’t work. Progress stalled, and small aches started creeping in. What fixed it wasn’t adding more exercises; it was paying attention to feedback he’d normally ignore. Notes about poor sleep, rushed warm-ups, and days where the bar felt heavier than it should told me more than his numbers ever did. Once we adjusted volume and stopped pretending every week needed to be aggressive, his training stabilized.
In my experience, the biggest misconception about online coaching is that it’s less personal. I often know more about how my remote athletes train than I ever did about people I saw three times a week in a busy facility. When someone uploads a short video of a lift taken late at night after a long workday, you learn a lot about their habits. You see how they rush setup, how fatigue changes their mechanics, and how their confidence fluctuates. Those patterns are harder to catch when everything looks polished during a scheduled gym session.
I’ve also had to undo plenty of damage from poorly thought-out online programs. A common mistake I see is programming that assumes unlimited equipment and perfect energy. Last year, I worked with a recreational lifter who’d been given advanced variations despite training in a small commercial gym that barely had space to deadlift. He spent more time waiting for equipment than training, and his motivation dropped fast. We rebuilt his sessions around movements he could always access and focused on progression instead of novelty. His consistency came back, and with it, steady strength gains.
Credentials come into play here, but not as a badge. I’ve earned mine over the years, and what they really gave me was a framework for making decisions when things don’t go as planned. Online coaching tests that constantly. You don’t get to adjust a session on instinct alone; you have to explain why you’re pulling intensity back or pushing it forward. Athletes notice when there’s no logic behind a change, and they disengage quickly.
Another lesson that stuck with me came from coaching a runner who lifted twice a week to stay durable. On paper, his program was simple. In practice, his travel schedule wrecked consistency. Instead of forcing missed sessions to be “made up,” we restructured training so each workout stood on its own. That shift reduced stress and actually improved his performance because training stopped feeling like debt he was always trying to repay.
What I appreciate most about coaching online now is how it forces honesty on both sides. Athletes can’t rely on being hyped up in the room, and coaches can’t rely on presence to mask weak programming. Communication becomes part of the training process, not an extra step.
After years of doing this, I don’t see online coaching as a shortcut or a compromise. Done well, it demands better planning, better listening, and better judgment. When those pieces are in place, progress tends to be quieter—but it also tends to last.