Coaching Query

No experience but I follow him on Facebook and it seems like he gets a lot of success from his runners. Let us know how your race goes and maybe a little bit of context to the "hard running". I'm always interested in training methods.

Not many coaches go on Facebook displaying their failures!

Haha yeah I hear you. There's a few on here that have had some experience with Gary. As with any coach it's probably mixed results depending on the athlete.

It does seem like his training is more suited to people who can handle high volume , pretty intense stuff. For the general Joe Soaps like us it's lower risk to just keep chipping away and take the long term approach of small incremental gains and uninterrupted consistent training.

To the original question about coaching for Unknownability.

It's certainly not Facebook based. Sure Facebook is used as a form of advertising and promotion but I've never heard of a coach who works with athletes through Facebook. The approach, cost etc is all very coach dependent. I think the most common method these days is an email once a week with a plan.you probably pay a little extra if you want regular phone/WhatsApp contact during the week. Many coaches will never actually meet their clients. Cost is all relative so no point going there. You'd need to speak to various coaches on that.

Then separate there's the running club scene where there is a coach who might run weekly sessions and work with club members on plans. Are you a member of a club?

Usually around 50/month. Plans can vary from weekly to monthly. Touch points can be via phone/text/video.

My own experience was as follows. Got recommendation from someone being coached by the coach. Got in touch with the coach to discuss my goals. Discussed exercise/injury/race history. Laid out how much time I could commit. They laid out how they operate (weekly check in by me via WhatsApp) and what I can expect in terms of progression. Signed up for 12 months. Everything went as originally discussed. There will be video calls carried out coming up to races to discuss/plan race/fuel strategy etc. Occasionally, due to fatigue/injury, I may need to suggest a step back week but that is initiated by me. Signed up for another year recently.

Family/work commitments meant I didn't have the time to join a club.

Coaching is a very subjective term. Before you look for a coach you need to ask yourself what you want from the role. There are a host of dynamics you will find in coaching/athlete relationships. Some people are looking for a transactional relationship (Paying X to achieve Y goal) others are looking for process driven guidance or mentorship. I have seen plenty of father/son style relationships with coaches as well or even friends who are simply looking for external accountability/ sounding board. Once you know what type of relationship you are looking for then it can help find the right fit.

I have coached people in person, remotely, coached friends, people I have never met, all can work depending on what is needed you just need both parties to be open to exploring that. Sometimes coaching is not needed and simply a group setting is perfect (in which case club training can be ideal)

Cost and quality are not inherently linked either. I know Olympians who don't pay there coach or cover mileage to training etc while at the same time have seen coaches charge 200e for a generic marathon plan.

When looking at coaches though it is worth noting that someone with a high volume of athletes can usually highlight a number of big success stories simply through playing the numbers. Much more important to get feedback from people as to how a coach brought them on or whether it was simply attritional and only a small number make strides while the others fall away

The very reason I unfollowed him on Facebook. Instead of any useful running content his profile became a series of Covid related comments or posts. I didn't necessarily care about his views all that much but I dont expect to see more of that content than running content from a "Running page" profile.

I'm in the same boat as you regards a club. Between kids & work, I'd find it very hard to commit to club nights.

I do need to do something though as I lose motivation throughout the period of a plan.

Have you improved over the period of time to any great degree?

I am currently with a online Run Club that was born out of covid. I think i've reached the end of my journey with it though. It got me out of an original rut but the plan now looks generic, the coach has probably spread themself too thin so has now diluted any of the reasons i joined in the first instance, also doesn't seem to actually heed the feedback about plan intensity and is obsessed with ultras or mountain running.

I think i did better when training with a club but with work i cant make the sessions.

Edit for question. I was looking at Coopah Training App at one stage and wondered had anyone tried it out or had any feedback

Not specific to GOH.....no first hand experience of his coaching (he's certainly a fine athlete though), but as others have said - be mindful of judging any coach by their success stories. I've noticed plenty of coaches like to massage the figures when posting out success stories on social media.

An example I saw a couple of years back, I happen to know "X" very well and laughed when I saw this.

"X came to me with a 5k PB of 21 mins 3 months ago.....with the right plan we now have him on the verge of breaking 16 mins"

• PB was 3 years old
• In those 3 years, X had worked with several coaches and made huge gains over the half marathon and marathon distances, had no interest in running a 5k
• He ran 16.10 or so within 10 weeks of joining the new coach, 12 weeks after running a 2.4x marathon under the guidance of another coach.

Anyway, you get the picture - just be careful to judge by the success stories

I was under GOH for about 6 months after completing DCM in 2019. Must admit I did enjoy the intensity of his training for the first 4-5 months. If I remember correctly, it was 3 sessions plus a long run every week. Was making some great improvements, most of it due to natural improvement though. It was a monthly plan with weekly feedback (from me). Towards the end, I felt he wasn't listening to the feedback and was just dishing out generic workouts according to paces/times. I remember doing a really tough session, legs were in bits and the following day I was due to run a fast long run. I called it there as I knew I would get injured if I continued with him.

Moved over to Stazza in Sept 2020 and have been with him ever since (just renewed till 2023). As Py said above, there's a lot more interaction between you so you feel like you are in control of your training. He'll adjust the training if you're feeling tired or have a niggle, always on the side of caution which is great. Of course, the training is tough but manageable (2 big sessions a week, with the rest being easy running) which I like. I have been injured under his guidance, but that is more about me not listening to the body and it getting old. Good Strava group with runners across the globe - some very good information in there.

Keeps the motivation up anyway, feel accountable in your running - being in a club doesn't work for me as I would rarely get the chance to attend their arranged track sessions or weekend long runs

Can I ask how much stazza is per month?

This really is similar to my experience. Given that i was the 2nd poster re-opening this thread, I feel I should report back :-)

55 Euros per 4 weeks of training. We emailed only - fairly brief correspondences. It is not expensive coaching, so i did not expect more than that. He didn't ask much about my prior training, but I did tell him about the books i'd read and plans I'd tried. I told him my PBs and what I thought was a reasonable improvement. I enjoyed some of the sessions and there was some variety in what he prescribed, which I had not tried (e.g., 4 x 2 K @ 4:08 pace with .5 k rec in 2:30 (5 min pace; a lot of longer blocks of tempo e.g., 3 x 6km, half marathon 7 or 8 x 1 km at around 5km pace).

I found some of the sessions absolutely brutal. I wrote to tell him when I couldn't hit the paces at all or when I felt especially awful (1/3 of the time!), or couldn't finish a session at all (3 times maybe in the 12 weeks). I don't think my feedback changed much of the structure or paces provided.

I didn't hit my goal time. I think I was either too fried or not tapered enough.

I don't think he will be mentioning me on his Facebook page somehow :-)

Yep, Taxes. He know My previous pbs, my average km per week and a rough idea that I’d followed structured plans before (jack daniels, pftzinger). He didn’t ask anything further.

as for confidence, I am not sure that it affected mine too much. Because Gary would write back and say “fine just continue, it will come”. But I think I was over trained/not able to absorb some of those sessions. That’s just my guess looking back now