Podcast Transcription: Personal Trainer vs Online Coach: The Smarter Choice for Real Body Transformation Results Over 40

Ted Ryce: Have you ever wondered what's better online coach versus personal trainer? Well, in today's episode, I'm going to get into that, answering that question. So if you're in the market for hiring someone to help you get to the next level with your health, you'll understand exactly what the pros and cons are, because both are good, but it really depends on the situation. 

So. Let's dive right in. So, so one thing I wanna talk about is people think, uh, face-to-face must be superior because, well, you're face to face. And look, I want to tell you this, I spent 19 years in Miami Beach as a personal trainer, and there's a lot of good things about personal training, a lot of good, um, benefits that come with in-person training. 

But now I've spent eight years as an online coach. I took my business a hundred percent online in 2018, and it wasn't a random shift. It was really an evolution. And so it's not that in-person is better or isn't better, it's better for certain stages. So let's talk about. The pros of personal training, and again, I was a personal trainer for 19 years. 

Now look, uh, also you're gonna think I'm biased and for sure I am. Uh, I pers getting into personal trainer, changed my life for the better. But after a while it became like, man, people just keep showing up and Right. I felt like. I had to entertain people with new exercises. It was all about getting people to renew their sessions with me. 

So it was more about the emotional side and helping people feel good and giving them a good workout or what they felt was a good workout. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. And, um, but I, I, I got burnt out because. I was like, I'm not doing anything for these people. Right? And, and I was, that's not true. 

They were, let's say they were, they were still showing up. But I had clients who they wouldn't show up. Well, obviously when they're traveling, they wouldn't show up. Or when things got busy, they would cancel last minute. Being a personal trainer is very stressful. By the way, I don't think a lot of people realize that you're constantly, um. 

You know, concerned with giving a good experience to your clients. And when I say good experience, I mean. Not about results and we'll talk about that later, but giving a good in-person experience to make the person feel like, oh wow, that was a good workout. Oh, this person's so fun. Oh, they showed me a new exercise today. 

So it was, it was a lot about entertainment and the emotional side of like being with someone a few times a week in the gym, whereas online coaching. I meet with clients once a week, or, uh, coach Jeff meets with clients once, once a week, and we have touch points in between, but it's like we're focused on something completely different. 

We're focused on like, Hey, are you following the program? Let's look at your numbers. It's really serious, and that's why if you see the great results that we get in the program. That's why you see what you see. Like some of the, like Trevor or Dan, um, you know, I've had clients completely transform their body doing less exercise, and I would've never been able to do that with personal training or at least the way I was doing my personal training business because. 

What most people need is health coaching when it gets to a certain point. So let's go back when is personal training absolutely better? Are you brand new to the gym and you're like, wow, gosh, I have so much intimidation going to the gym. I don't know what to do. I don't understand how to use the equipment properly. 

Uh, you, you don't have confidence in your exercise execution, so your technique, maybe you injured yourself and you need to be very careful about what you do. Although I handle a lot of injured people in, in online coaching, so that's not necessarily the case. But I would say this, if you do need rehab, you need, you should go in person and do it. 

That's where personal training really, uh, shines. Or I would add one more thing. If you're the type of person like I, and you know, I'm speaking for you here, I will not go to the gym unless someone meets me there and takes me through the workout. So if you absolutely will not go to the gym unless you have a personal trainer. 

Unless you have someone specifically who meets you through the gym, meets you at the gym, and takes you through the workout, personal training is better than online coaching. If you feel like you need that level of supervision and support, really kind of babysitting, then it is. Those are the two situations. 

So you're a complete beginner. You're completely intimidated by the gym. Or you're just a person, you have zero, uh, accountability to yourself and you need a babysitter, right? Let's call it what it is, folks. You need a babysitter, right? 

And let me tell you, there was a moment, 'cause I've been a health coach since I was 22, but there was a moment where I started realizing like. There was something big missing from personal training. Clients would show up, train three to five times a week for an hour with me. And even the ones who were training like four or five times a week, their bodies wouldn't magically change. 

Some of them did, some of them didn't. And what I realized is like, yeah, clients are training three to five hours per week, but there's. 165 other hours that are unmanaged. And that was really, those hours outside the gym are what makes or breaks people's health, people's body transformation looking the way you want. 

And on top of that, I had a lot of clients who would get outta Miami, take trips. Sometimes for a month, maybe more, go to Europe, lose muscle. 'cause they wouldn't stay on track with their workouts, although they would walk a lot. They would gain fat typically. Then they would come back and this, this cycle would start. 

And I was like, man, I'm at that for no, after 19 years, right? So for a few years wasn't a big deal, but after 19 years I'm like, man, these people are stuck in a, in a, in a rut, in a cycle. Like they're not getting better. They're not learning how to manage themselves when they're on vacation. They're completely reliant on me. 

And these hours that we spend working out 

to handle everything, but it's not sufficient. So I started realizing like the gym was not the bottleneck their life was. And that was like the big pivot for me, the big Phil philosophical shift. And now I want to get back, um. To the, what I would call the entertainment trap of personal training. 'cause what I do in, and I'm gonna contrast it with what I do with coaching. 

So here's what personal trainers do. How do I know? Because not only was I a personal trainer for 19 years, I had all, I was hanging out with a group of personal trainers, and I still see this to this day. So new exercises to keep the training Fun. Sweat. Oh man, I'm sweating a lot. Oh, I'm feeling crushed, right? 

Oh wow. That was a hard workout. But here's what I want to ask you. Are you leaner than a month ago? Are you stronger than a month ago? Oh yeah, I think so. Well, can you prove it with data? Because I, that's what I do now. I was like, people aren't getting leaner. People aren't getting stronger because effort is not progress. 

And let me tell you something, if your trainer isn't tracking your numbers, he or she is just entertaining you. It doesn't matter that you're sweating. It doesn't matter that you feel exhausted or crushed it. That's an emotional thing. Right. It's kind of like, oh, how was your work week? Oh man, it was such a hard week. 

You know? I just, it's like, yeah, but did you make more money than what you did last week? Let's talk about numbers. That's why I love business analogies and actually dealing with business people or number numbers oriented people. Accountants. It's like, this isn't numbers, this is about numbers. This isn't about feelings. 

Okay. I mean, it is important, by the way, and, and I, I don't want to say like I don't care about my client's feelings. I do, I try to make the process as enjoyable as possible, but at the end of the day, it's about progress. And that's what frustrated me in personal training and um, I. And why love coaching now. 

Um, and we're not, we haven't even gotten into the psychological slash mindset side of things, which is a, a whole nother conversation, but we track our client's progress and so we know like, oh, my client. Is losing fat and here's how much fat they've lost. Here's the progress. Here's the progress from what they were doing a month ago from what they're doing now on the bench press or on the squat or hip thrust or lunges. 

And there's another issue too where, um, people when I was personal training, they would cancel sessions. They would lose rhythm. They went, oh, I'll restart when I get back. And with coaching, we don't do that. We do calls from hotel rooms. If someone needs a shorter workout, for example, if you cancel, oh, you're like, oh, well, I, I only have 30 minutes today, so I'm gonna cancel my hour long personal training because I'm, I'm not gonna get my money's worth. 

Versus now with coaching, it's like, well. I'm, I'll write you a 20 minute workout that you'll do on your own. A 30 minute workout that you'll do on your own, a 10 minute workout that you'll do on your own. So it's more planning ahead versus reacting. And I'll say this, the more chaotic your life is, the more systems you need. 

You don't need sessions, you need systems, right? And that's what'll take you to the next level. Because here's what I, here's another realization. It's like the workout is the easiest part. And even when clients come to me and they're, um, they get so excited about the workout, oh, let's talk about the workout. 

And then I slow them down and say, look, we're gonna optimize your workout. It's gonna work better than what you were doing before and buy a lot. But it's still the easiest part here. The hardest part is gonna be the things that you are not excited about, right? Learning about nutrition in a way where you have complete mastery over what you're eating, your body fat, et cetera, it's not always, it, it, it, it doesn't give the reward that exercise does because exercise gives you an immediate reward. 

Like you can not be feeling great or maybe feeling a little stressed. You go work out. Go do some cardio and boom, you're done. You're, you're better. But if you eat in a calorie deficit for a day, you're not gonna feel a difference. Maybe you might, depending on the level of calorie deficit, you might step on the scale and see a difference the next day, maybe, but oftentimes not. 

It's a, it's like you gotta. Put in the work for a week to see a significant difference versus the feeling that you get from exercise. And so funny, when clients first come and, uh, start with me too. I had, take Dan for example. Dan lost, let me get his numbers right here. So Dan was. Uh, 52 when he stopped working, or started, sorry, working with me. 

And, uh, he's an attorney from Virginia. He dropped 36 pounds of fat in a, 

in a four month period. And we did it by starting with four 20 minute workouts, four 20 minute workouts. How did that happen, Ted? Well, first of all, you don't burn a lot of calories with exercise. So if you are exercising during a fat loss phase, it better be pri it better be prioritizing building muscle because if. 

For example, if, uh, 'cause a lot of people argue with me on like social media, oh, I got a lot leaner when, when I started doing cardio all the time. It's like, yeah, but up to 20 or even 30% of the weight that you lost was muscle. That's why lifting weight is so great for fat loss is, is not because it actually burns fat, but it maintains your muscle mass. 

It makes, it makes it so that when you are in a calorie deficit, you're losing fat and not muscle, not lean mass. And if you can even build muscle during that time, it's gonna be even better. And so the point is, which is four 20 minute workouts, then drop 36 pounds of fat. I mean, he looks completely different. 

I mean, he went on to lose more than that, but in a four month period, he just crushed it. And imagine all the people out there. It's like, well, you can't do that with personal training because the big issue is nutrition. In fact, let's get into nutrition because there's a big mindset issue with nutrition, right? 

People think they need to eat chicken, broccoli and, and a half a cup of brown rice and egg whites for breakfast to lose fat, but that's not true. Right. Um, I eat almond croissants, I eat pizza. I go to social events. I drink alcohol, although I don't drink that much, but that's not even that important. It's like it comes down to knowing how to manage your calorie budget. 

And so, so many people come to me. They have like, oh, um, they, they ask me like, Hey, what is the, what's the nutrition plan gonna look like? Like, what foods will I eating? It's like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I might adjust some of the foods that you're eating, but only the portions of it. I'm not going to adjust what you're eating. 

For example, I have clients, I'm, I'm a huge fan of Greek yogurt. I have clients who are like, I hate Greek yogurt. So you think I try to get 'em to eat it? Of course not. We find the, what I'm getting at here is nutrition is way more flexible than you've led to believe. You can lose fat eating pizza, pasta, almond croissants, cake, a. 

But the, there's a, a, and, and when I say that, I'm not talking about, well, I had half a slice of pizza, so I ate pizza. No. When I eat pizza, I'll eat a four slices, three or four slices. 

But what the. Issue or the cost is you've gotta put in the time and build the knowledge and skills to learn how to manage your money. For example, do you know anyone who like there, you probably know people like I've met people who I am better. Uh, I make more money than them, but they've traveled Europe a lot more than me because they're way more skilled at managing their money, quite frankly. 

Right. And, uh, and I'm not, uh, it's something that I've struggled with learning. So, um, do you know people like that? Or maybe you know, people who are, you know. Making a high six figure income, but they, they blow it all right? So like the problem is not almond croissants in, in my case, right? I'm projecting here pizza or whatever. 

It's the fact that people don't know how to manage their nutrition, like a budget to fit things in. Because once you learn how to do that, whew. In fact, uh, you know. We start our clients off with something called, uh, a metabolic reset. It's two weeks and our clients lose somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six pounds and, um, in, in that two week period. 

And it's just cravings go away. People feel better, their energy is better. So the key line is this. The key message is this. If you're killing yourself in the gym and not seeing results, the problem isn't your effort, it's your strategy. You cannot rely on exercise, right? Exercise just doesn't. Burn that many calories. 

Okay. It's unless you're running, uh, a marathon, okay? If you're high level endurance athlete, in which case you, you probably already checked out from this, uh, conversation. So let's talk about another thing that I think is really important, which I never did as a personal trainer because I was too busy to do it. 

I really wanted to start doing this as a, um. As a personal trainer, but I, I just was too busy trying to schedule clients and, you know, all the craziness, right? And so what I do now is I help what I do, I say that this is more like what preventative medicine should be. Now I wanna be very clear about that. 

I'm not a doctor, didn't go to medical school. I don't save lives, I don't prescribe medication or Right. Anything like that. But here's what I do with my clients. We, I, I spent two years learning how to read blood chemistry. And what we do is we have our clients do blood chemistry, blood, la uh, blood work. 

We look at things. Most doctors won't. Look for, don't want to get into it, but a lot of it has to do with doctors being overworked, doctors, uh, looking more for crises to treat. For example, um, I had a client, his fasting glucose was in the low one hundreds, right? Don't remember exactly. Maybe 1 10, 1 8. I was like, man, that's high. 

Right? For a guy in his forties. And then I said, we need to run some additional tests here. His doctor didn't do anything when he saw that. And the guy, um, his mom is diabetic and so I was like, we gotta run at least a hemoglobin A1C. Now I do things a little bit different 'cause this was three or four years back. 

We ran the hemoglobin A1C, which is a longer term marker of blood sugar elevation, and it was in the pre-diabetic range. Uh, the pre-diabetic range starts at 5.7%. It's done in percent. He was in this, I think it was 6.1, 6.2. I'm like, dude, your, the blood sugar that you have right now is so high. It's damaging you, you are on your way to diabetes if you don't change. 

Yeah, but for the doctor, it was normal. And this was a guy who was running a seven figure business, 

so, um, he did, wasn't diabetic. Now this is a bit more extreme. Typically I don't see stuff like that. Typically, it's more like, well, I, I have a client with a fasting glucose of 98 and a hemoglobin A1C of 5.5. It's like, yeah, okay, you're not pre-diabetic, but you're like, you're like a a d student here. You know, like, we're gonna grade you. 

And so it just gives me, and, and I sit down and I go over the blood work and educate them and, and I've seen massive shifts in motivation and behavior. Where when I was a personal trainer, I just, you know, I would look at blood work and I would talk about a couple things, but, um, I was never educated to the point where I am now because it took two years to, to get to this point. 

Right. Uh, 'cause you can't just, you can't just give your blood work to chat GPT, at least not yet. It is pretty bad. Um, but I know exactly what to look at, exactly what to focus on. I don't get lost in some weird values in someone's urinalysis. I stay focused on what the major needle movers are, which is your metabolic health, uh, your lipid profile. 

So that's something that we do now where when we start dealing with that, uh, and, and those are. Things that we can. Not just adjust workouts, but also nutrition and even supplementation. Targeted supplementation can help, but I would've never had the time to learn that as a personal trainer. And I guarantee your busy personal trainers, they're, you know, barely hanging on and, um, you know, that's, that's something that's a lot different. 

And now I want to talk about something where. This is, this is the part that I really feel like I've had to grow a lot and now I enjoy it, but it's about the dealing with stress. For example, I had a client, she was, uh, running a business and she was very stressed out and she was meditating every morning, and I meditate almost every day as well. 

In fact, I did it this morning for 20 minutes and. I was like, yeah, that's great, but why are you so stressed that you feel like you need to meditate every day? And she told me she's running this business and some of her employees were just causing a lot of problems. But when we started diving a bit deeper. 

It was clear that she either didn't know how to hire people properly or didn't know how to train people properly. Now, that's not something I know about, but I was able to diagnose, if you will, if you'll let me use that term, diagnose the stress and say, listen, you need to get help with this because you don't know what you're doing. 

You need to, you need someone to help you either hire better or train people better. Once she started, oh, she, it was an aha moment for her, and so it helped her diagnose the issue properly and find a solution for that issue. And I was the person who did it because I started realizing working with clients that there's all sorts of other things going on in people's lives that are affecting their ability to be in shape, either stress. 

From your relationship, stress from your business, stress from your career, it will affect your recovery ability in the gym. Your ability to push yourself in the gym. It'll affect your ability to, um, control your appetite. So many people stress eat, including myself by the way. And so that's something that I started realizing as a personal trainer, like these people need. 

I don't want to call it life coaching, but I don't know what else to call it because it's not therapy, right? I don't do therapy with clients, but I use a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy techniques in coaching and, uh, motivational interviewing techniques and really help getting clear like, okay, this is what the problem is. 

I even had a client yesterday, she was saying, whoa, maybe it's a a, like maybe it's the calm app, or maybe I should use Headspace to start meditating. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We need to go a bit deeper here, right? And figure out what's really going on. And it had to do with setting boundaries at work. 

And that's something like I've had to learn along the years, right? And so I always hesitate to talk about this stuff because. I feel like when people hear it, um, it's what they need, but it's not what they want to hear, right? People just want, no, I just need a diet, better workout. And then I, here's what I do. 

It's like I give you those things and when you can't follow through, we start to diagnose if you, you know, if you'll allow me to use that term, your life problems that are getting in the way of you being in shape. And typically it's, it's never a knowledge issue, although knowledge is always a part of it. 

But the big issues come from other areas of life, right? Or sometimes even personal, uh uh, like, uh, personal life, like hanging out with your friends and drinking too much, those types of things. And just. It's very hard to address that in between sets as a personal trainer during your two minute arrest in between barbell back squats or lunges, and that's what I used to do. 

I used to try to address nutrition and lifestyle stuff, but it made my clients feel better, but it didn't lead to measurable results. And so that's why I not only love I, man. I, I love what I do now, and I've been doing it for eight years, and I just still feel excited about it because it's never boring, uh, where personal training gets quite boring. 

You know, it's people showing up and you're having to entertainment, right? You have to entertain them with exercises. It's like people's lives change with coaching. But again, it's not it. If you're brand new, if you're injured and need, uh, you know, therapy for something specific, or if you need in-person correction, or if you're lacking confidence in the gym. 

You don't know how to do a binge press or a pushup or any of those things, hire a personal trainer. But if you've been training for years, if you travel, if you feel a bit stuck, if you're interested in longevity, if you feel like stress kind of gets the best of you and you end up drinking or eating more than you should, and you want to dive into your lab work. 

If you want to create strategies that work for your life and focus on longevity, that's where coaching is the next level, right. So that's, that's how I see it in 27 years. It's 27 years as of February 20, 26. I've been in the business. I started in 1999 and that's how I see things. And uh, that's how it goes. 

So look, there's nothing wrong with personal trainers if you need one because you're in that situation, it's great. But if you've been, if you're still, if you still got a belly and you're paying a hundred bucks or 150 bucks an hour, and you know it's not solving the problem and you really want to solve it, that last part is key. 

You really want to solve it. Coaching is the next level, so hopefully you learned a lot from this, and that's it.