Does any of this sound familiar?

  • You've thought about getting a personal trainer, but the cost and the commute both put you off.
  • You've tried training on your own before, but it fizzled out after a few weeks with nobody checking in.
  • You're not sure where to even start, and the idea of walking into a gym without a clue is enough to keep you googling instead of doing.

If any of that's true, keep reading this is exactly what online coaching is built to solve.

I get some version of this question almost every week. Someone finds me online, likes the idea of not having to drag themselves to a gym at 6am, but they're not fully sold. "How does this even work if you're not standing next to me?"

Fair question. So let's actually answer it properly none of the vague marketing waffle.

Online coaching:

Online coaching means I build you a training and nutrition plan, you follow it wherever you train home, gym, hotel room, doesn't matter and I check in on you regularly to see how it's going and adjust things as needed. No fixed time slot to be somewhere. No waiting for a treadmill. No trainer hovering over you making you feel awkward doing your warm-up.

Everything runs through an app on your phone. Your workouts are there, with videos so you know exactly what a movement should look like. Your nutrition plan is there. And so am I. You can message me directly if something's not clicking or an exercise is aggravating your knee.

It's not a PDF I send you once and never speak to you again. That's the bit people get wrong about online coaching and honestly, it's the bit that gives it a bad name. Done properly, it's more personal than most in-person gym sessions, not less because I'm not splitting my attention across five other clients on the gym floor at the same time.

So what does a typical week look like?

Say you sign up on a Monday. Here's roughly how it plays out:

  • Day one: You fill out a proper questionnaire your schedule, your equipment, your injury history, what you've tried before and why it didn't stick, what you actually enjoy doing.
  • Within a couple of days: You get your first training block, built around the days and equipment you actually have. Not a generic template with your name pasted on top.
  • Through the week: You train, log how it went, and message me if something feels off too easy, too hard, a niggly shoulder, whatever it is.
  • Every week: A proper check-in. Not just "how's it going," but a look at your training numbers, your eating, your energy, your sleep if it's relevant, and a plan for what changes next.
  • Every few weeks: Your programme gets reviewed and progressed. If you're not adapting, you're not growing the plan has to move with you.

That's the whole thing. There's no smoke and mirrors to it.

Why people in Dublin (and everywhere else) are choosing this over a gym PT

Three reasons come up again and again when I ask new clients why they went looking for an online fitness coach instead of booking sessions at their local gym:

Time. Dublin traffic and commutes eat enough of the day already. Nobody wants to add "drive across the city for a 6pm slot" on top of that. Training from home or your own gym, on your own schedule, removes that entirely.

Cost. In-person one-to-one sessions in Dublin typically run somewhere between €50 and €90 an hour. A full month of online coaching, with programming, check-ins, and nutrition support included, often costs less than four of those single sessions.

Consistency. This is the real one. A great one-hour session a week doesn't do much if the other 167 hours are a mess. Online coaching is built around what you're doing every day your food, your steps, your sleep not just the hour you're being watched.

Does it actually get results, though?

Yes but only under one condition, and I'll be straight with you about it: it works if you actually do it. Online coaching removes a lot of the friction that stops people training (cost, time, commuting, gym anxiety), but it doesn't remove the work. You still have to lift the weights and eat like an adult most of the time.

What it does give you, that trying to figure it out alone never does, is structure and accountability. You're not guessing whether you should add weight this week. You're not googling "best exercises for X" at 11pm. You've got a plan, and someone checking whether you followed it.

Is it right for you?

If you've got a bit of gym experience already, or you're a total beginner and just want someone to remove the guesswork, online coaching works for both. What it's not great for is someone who wants to be told what to do once and never think about it again. You still have to show up for yourself. I just make sure you know exactly what "showing up" looks like every single day.