Is An Online Personal Trainer Worth it?

May 20th, 2024 - 9 mins

More and more trainers are moving their business online, but is online personal training worth it? How does it compare to face to face training?

In this article we want to explore the pros and cons of an online personal trainer vs face to face personal training. A lot of this will boil down to personal preference, some women thrive when left to their own devices, others feel they need somebody by their side from start to finish.

There really is no right or wrong answer, the objective of this article is to help you decide if you want to go ahead with online personal training, face to face training, or work towards your own gym independence with Lipstick Lifters.

If you want a workout to get started with right away, check out these workouts for beginners and these workouts for experienced lifters.

Online Personal Training Contents

What Is Online Personal Training?

Why Are More Personal Trainers Moving To Online Training?

Online Personal Training vs Face To Face Personal Training

Can An Online Personal Trainer Provide Diet Plans

How To Find A Face To Face Personal Trainer

How To Find An Online Personal Trainer

How Much Does Personal Training Cost?

An Alternative to Online Personal Training

Online Personal Training FAQs

What Is Online Personal Training?

Online personal training is personal training provided remotely by a qualified and experienced personal trainer. Because you are working remotely with your personal trainer, you can only get your workouts from them online. Many online trainers provide 1:1 coaching calls and video training advice which is a nice touch to an otherwise impersonal experience.

Why Are More Personal Trainers Moving To Online Training?

Every online trainer will have their own personal reasons, but some of the benefits of online personal training from the trainers perspective is having more freedom to travel while they work and the ability to scale their business by managing more online clients than they could otherwise manage in a 1:1 gym environment.

Online Personal Training vs Face To Face Personal Training

There are pros and cons on both sides of this coin, and as mentioned above, your decision will largely depend on your personal preferences. But let’s put online personal training up against face to face personal training to see if we can stir up something you haven’t considered.

Advantages of face to face personal training

Direct supervision and form correction, leaving little chance for you to perform your exercises incorrectly and encouraging you to lift an appropriate amount of weight.

You have your own personal spotter and consistent assistant for the entirety of your workout.

Easily progress complex exercises with a skilled professional in your corner.

Advantages of online personal training

Flexible and convenient training schedules. You don’t need to find a date and time that suits both you and your trainer to workout, you train when you want to train with the workouts you have been provided with.

An online personal trainer can easily adjust your tailored plans and help you to track your progress.

Usually costs less than face to face personal training.

Excellent guide and accountability partner

Disadvantages of face to face personal training

You need to have a really good working relationship with your trainer, someone that you feel comfortable working with as you squeeze out heavy sets. This chemistry can sometimes be difficult to find locally.

Cost, face to face personal training can be expensive.

Inflexible, you need to find a time that is suitable for both you and your personal trainer to work out. If you have an unpredictable schedule that is subject to change at the last minute, this may not be appropriate for you.

Disadvantages of online personal training

No physical presence to monitor your form. Sure you can record your sets, but you’re unlikely to record your entire workout and there is no one there to pick up on any potential issues.

You need to be self motivated to work with an online personal trainer, nobody is going to be by your side cheering you on.

Limitations caused by the lack of physical presence. While you may get your form corrected for your next workout (if you recorded it), there is no one there to correct you immediately, this can be problematic, especially if you are doing something very wrong.

Can An Online Personal Trainer Provide Diet Plans

Sure they can, but the question you need to ask yourself is, how good are the diet plans being provided. Remember that personal trainers are not qualified dieticians or nutritionists and most have not applied anything more than their own personal diet experiences (be it on themselves or their clients).

So the question becomes, do you want someone who is not qualified and only marginally experienced in providing diet plans telling you what to eat? With respect, a large portion of personal trainers have a natural physique, so what works for someone with their genetics may not work for someone who isn’t naturally built this way. These are all things you need to consider.

At Lipstick Lifters we are asked regularly if we will provide a diet plan, and our answer is always - No. Can we provide a diet plan? Yes. Can we tell you what’s good to eat and what's not good to eat? Sure. Can you get results with this approach? Absolutely.

But what you need to consider is what you will do next. You cannot eat the same meal plan forever and you can’t go through your life relying on someone else to tell you what to eat and when. Diet plans work well for short bursts and during competition prep, but for everyday life, you really do need to take ownership of what you’re eating.

Just like with our workout plans, we can teach you how to make your own informed decisions when it comes to your diet.

How To Find A Face To Face Personal Trainer

Face to face trainers are limited in terms of who you have available to you, but they’re exceptionally easy to find. Just go see which personal trainers are available in your area, check online but more appropriately ask around your local gyms.

See how to find a personal trainer in London and New York City. We will update this article with guidance for finding a personal trainer in other cities in due course.

How To Find An Online Personal Trainer

Finding an online personal trainer can be somewhat of a minefield. There are A LOT of options out there these days and knowing who you can trust is going to be a challenge.

This isn’t just about their credentials, experience, before and after pics, testimonials, etc, you also need to consider if their training style is in sync with your personal goals and how you prefer to work.

Our pro tip for finding the right online personal trainer for you; interview them. Seriously, it doesn’t have to be a formal question and answer type interview, but get them on a video call and talk to them, see how you get along. Explain your goals, where you are now and where you want to get to, see how they respond and if that fits your needs.

It might seem like overkill, but if you are paying for 1:1 online personal training then you need to make sure you’re happy with what you’re signing up to. If the online personal trainer will not get on a call with you, this is a red flag. You cannot have personal training without any personal interaction with the trainer.

How Much Does Personal Training Cost?

Generally speaking, an online personal trainer can be more cost effective than a face to face trainer. However, it’s worth keeping in mind that the two services are not the same.

Face to face training will generally cost $60-$120 (£50-£95) per one hour session. If you are having 2 training sessions a week, that can set you back $480-$960 (£400-£760) a month.

Not everybody has that kind of money to spare.

For that reason, an online personal trainer becomes financially appealing. Based on some research, (conducted in April 2020); the average monthly cost of online training is $215 (£172). So that’s a considerable difference.

*Average cost is based on 10 different service providers between the UK and the US. We did not compare granular details of services offered, those in the higher price brackets appeared to offer additional services such as diet and nutrition plans.

*Note that the above is based on general personal training. Not specialist competition coaching – these advanced packages will generally cost more.

An Alternative to Online Personal Training

Our goal at Lipstick Lifters is to help women become gym independent, that’s why we built a portal of weightlifting workout plans that you can instantly access, and start working whichever plans fit your personal goals at your own pace.

But what we do goes beyond providing you with workout plans.

We encourage you to think for yourself in terms of building your workout plans, we help you to consider your personal circumstances against your personal goals and then we teach you about the fundamentals of various weightlifting methods so that you know which methods reap which rewards.

This is our learn as you lift approach, and everything you learn is yours to keep forever. We give you everything you need to become gym independent, but we can’t do the work for you.

We also provide our members with dedicated online support, but this is not online personal training. Our goal is not to tell you what to do, it is to provide you with the information you need to guide you towards making your own informed decisions by yourself. Again, this is part of steering you towards your gym independence.

The day you no longer need us for our workout plans, is the day our goal for you has been met.

Most members become completely gym independent within 6-12 months. This of course depends on your starting point, but whether you’re brand new to lifting, or you’ve been lifting for a while but just struggle to build your own workout plans, we can help.

Start by creating your free Members Zone account. Get access to a selection of weightlifting workout plans completely free and our free gym independence guide that will show you exactly how we support you in becoming gym independent.

Online Personal Training FAQs

Is online personal training effective for beginners?

Online personal training can work for beginners, provided you are willing to take ownership of your end of the deal. You will need to be self-sufficient for this to work.

Is Lipstick Lifters Members Zone the same as online personal training?

No, we do not provide online personal training. We provide something completely unique in that we teach you how to build your own weightlifting workout plans. Of course we provide you with workout plans and guidance, but it is all with the intention of supporting you in making your own informed decisions.

How much does Lipstick Lifters Members Zone cost?

If you want to go all in for your gym independence then your best option is to subscribe. Our annual subscription costs 79.99 and instantly unlocks absolutely everything:

What You Get

Over 130 workout plans

Featuring over 200 different exercises

Across 22 unique workout categories

Unlimited possibilities

Video demonstrations of each exercise

Personalised online support for as long as you need

10 Bonus guides

Your gym independence for life

Assistance with managing your diet

Bonus Guides

Start Lifting Now

The Busy Woman's Guide To Training In A Hurry

Training Splits

Reps And Sets

How To Get Physically Stronger Faster

How To Eat For Maximum Strength

7 Day Food Fact Find

Know How And When To Change Your Workout

How To Build Any Muscle Group Fast

You can learn more about what we offer here.

Can I cancel my Members Zone Subscription?

Of course, anytime you like, no questions asked. In fact we expect you to cancel your subscription. Remember we want to make you gym independent, the day you cancel because you no longer need our support is the day we achieved our goal for you.

Before you sign up, be sure to check out our terms and conditions here. Don’t worry, there isn’t a long list of terms, we just cover the fundamentals so you can read our full terms in just a couple of minutes without blindly signing your life away.