Fernando Cabada Charging $400/month for Personal Coaching

I know there are plenty of ladies who would pay $400 for his "coaching".

He may have not have improved that much over the past 8 years but nothing changes the fact that he got to a level that most runners will never get to. He knows what it takes to get there and perhaps he just hit his limit.Every one will hit there peak performance at some point, some just hit it later in life. If I had the money to pay some one with is ability lebel and experience I would do so.

Working Stiff wrote:

Guy with no coaching experience and results that have stagnated or gotten fractions of a percentage better over the last 10 years is charging a hilariously high price for his services.

http://www.cabadatrainingsystems.com/new-page

Hey! An hour phone consultation will only run you $100!!! That's a great deal!

Cabada PR Improvements:

Marathon: 2006 - 2:12:27, 2014 - 2:11:36 (51 second improvement in 8 years)

Half: 2006 - 1:02:45, 2014 - 1:02:00 (45 second improvement in 8 years)

10K: 2005 - 29:01, 2015 - 28:32 (29 second improvement in 10 years)

5K: 2006 - 13:34, 2014 - 13:55 (a bit slower)

So you're saying I can get 30-50 seconds faster in every event and all I have to do is pay $400 a month and work my ass off for 10 years? Definitely signing up!

Runningart2004 wrote:

I've seen fat personal trainers charge $100 per training session and people pay it.

Clients pay for nobody trainers that cost $50 per session x 2 per week x 4 weeks...$400/month.

Alan

I 100% agree. It amazes me that runners are so cheap.

$100 an hour is 200k per year if you work full time. He ain't working full time. He's one of the best in the country at running. All the more power to him if the marketplace accepts it.

Would it be outrageous to spend $1200 for a 3 month training plan? No.

Think about how much it costs to run a majo. $250 entry fee. $750 hotel (3 nights). $350 airfare. The race itself cost 1350. How dare the airlines and hotels and races!!!!

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Brad Hudson - $75/month

He is who I would go with in a heartbeat.

Damn! I would oh-so pay $75 for Hudson! I really admire his training program. If you haven't read his book, get it! His "toppled" or sideways pyramid is pretty damn cool.

There's a guy in my area who coaches a lot of the good high schoolers for $400 per month. They mostly live in the wealthy area of town.

Is it that runners are so cheap? Or do many runners realize that coaching is just paying for someone else's opinion? The drive, the desire, the *future* talent is not going to come from a coach, it is not going to come from a coach regardless of the rate. Most of the tangible stuff of coaching - for any discipline (even outside of sport) - can be improved and developed just as well without a coach. And the motivational/intangible stuff that a coach purportedly does, could just as easily be the result of an infinite number of un-related coaches. Can first-rate coaching make the difference between an amateur and a professional? From attending a national championship or racing for your country? Yes. In that it could make just as much a negative difference as positive. Is paid coaching worth it? Who knows.

rojo wrote:

Runningart2004 wrote:

Clients pay for nobody trainers that cost $50 per session x 2 per week x 4 weeks...$400/month.

Alan

I 100% agree. It amazes me that runners are so cheap.

$100 an hour is 200k per year if you work full time. He ain't working full time. He's one of the best in the country at running. All the more power to him if the marketplace accepts it.

sloinnorcal wrote:

Is paid coaching worth it? Who knows.

I think you're asking the wrong question. Research has shown that paying for training makes it worth it.

If it is too cheap, it is easy to give up. Studies with New Years gym resolutions, or pay-as-you-go or first-month-free nutrition have less commitment than a more expensive or pay up-front plan.

I'm sure he doesn't want to deal with the couch-to-5k crowd. The "I've qualified for Boston and now need a new goal" crowd could do it. 25-35 year old guys who have run 2:25+, women 2:55, who have been running and training consistently, but have now worked long to want to put more running into their work/life balance are a perfect crowd. The 29:55 10k collegiate guy who isn't fast enough for running money, works a real job so has money but can't do the planning part, is a good coach away from a solid post-college running career.

Good Luck to him, and his athletes.

No one ever said $400 is too much for a solid coach or that performing coaching duties isn't worth more than your calculation of $20 per hour. There are certainly personal trainers who charge as much or more. There are certainly running coaches who charge as much or more. But in these instances, we are talking about coaches who will be there physically. In the world of online running coaches, serious runners have the following options...

Fernando Cabada: Fast guy with zero coaching experience ($400/month)

Brad Hudson: Cabada's own personal coach with years of coaching experience ($75/month)

Both offering personal coaching online, one is 5 times more expensive

Fernando Cabada: Fast guy with zero coaching experience ($400/month)

Jeff Eggleston: Faster guy with some coaching experience ($110/month)

Both offering personal coaching online, one is 4 times more expensive

Fernando Cabada: Fast guy with zero coaching experience ($400/month)

Daniels/McMillan/Hansons: Vastly experienced coaches with loads of experience and testimonials ($200-300/month)

All offering personal coaching online, one is $100+ more expensive

Sure, $400 might not be a terribly high price for a great coach that could make all the difference in your next race. But since he has zero coaching experience, it is quite impossible to judge whether he can coach. Much less do so 5 times better than his personal coach, or 4 times better than a faster marathoner, or $100 better than the combined coaching wisdom of the 3 most popular coaches in running.

Do I want personal coaching from a super experienced coach with a proven track record? Why would anyone choose Cabada (A fast runner who could generously be described as extremely inconsistent) over his personal coach who charges less than one fifth the price for the same services?

Do I want the insight of a professional marathoner who's really fast? Why would I choose Cabada over faster runners (Eggleston or Vail) or marathoners who have much more experience coaching (Lemoncello or Llano) for a quarter the price offering the same services?

But hey, if this business of his works out for him and there really are people out there silly enough to spend $400/month on him, and completely ignore the fact that they could hire his personal coach for $75/month, a faster marathoner with coaching experience for $110/month, or one of the big 3 coaching services for $250/month all for equally personalized coaching, I really don't know what more to say.

It would be like if I opened a gas station across the street from a Chevron station.

I'll call my gas station "Gas Station."

At Gas Station we also sell gas, but for our gas, it'll be $12/gallon instead of the $3-4/gallon your paying over there at Chevron.

Do you suppose my gas station will do a lot of business with this model?

Sure, $12/gallon may be a reasonable price for gas if you consider all the good it does you, helping your car take you from place to place... what if you had to walk 30 miles to work every morning??? But when you consider that you could get gas from someone else for a quarter the price who has experience selling gas, who I know won't sell me gas that will destroy my car, $12/gallon starts to sound ridiculous and you sort of want to yell at the owner of the gas station for being such a moron.

He has to charge high until he gets a big enough number of trainees that he can afford to lower the per person rate...

I charge $50 an hour for face-to-face training and I'm ripping them off at that.

rojo wrote:

$100 an hour is 200k per year if you work full time. He ain't working full time. He's one of the best in the country at running. All the more power to him if the marketplace accepts it.

Would it be outrageous to spend $1200 for a 3 month training plan? No.

Think about how much it costs to run a majo. $250 entry fee. $750 hotel (3 nights). $350 airfare. The race itself cost 1350. How dare the airlines and hotels and races!!!!

He'll be lucky to gross $100k per year. He has zero benefits. No paid vacation. No paid sick time. No medical premium assistance. No company 401k, although be can set up his own.

Working stiff. How much time can you waste on something that has nothing to do you, or your life, or anyone elses. You're trying way too hard. We get it. Give it a rest. No one cares what you think.

I don't care if the coach was fast or not. Joe Vigil, Gags, Wetmore were never fast but they are among the top coaches. I want results, do people get faster over a wide spectrum?

get results wrote:

I don't care if the coach was fast or not. Joe Vigil, Gags, Wetmore were never fast but they are among the top coaches. I want results, do people get faster over a wide spectrum?

Too much emphasis on "I WANT RESULTS". I wouldn't coach you for any amount of money. Your attitude means your failure.

UR not worth the time wrote:

get results wrote:

I don't care if the coach was fast or not. Joe Vigil, Gags, Wetmore were never fast but they are among the top coaches. I want results, do people get faster over a wide spectrum?

Too much emphasis on "I WANT RESULTS". I wouldn't coach you for any amount of money. Your attitude means your failure.

I am not so sure that I read his posts the same way. Generally speaking a runner trains hard with the aim of improving his results (times over certain distances, finishing positions in cross country etc..). If a runner trains hard with a coach there will be a certain amount of expectation of improvement by the runner and hopefully by the coach as well.

I have encountered some absolutely shocking coaches online and ended up running almost 2 mins slower over 10k over 12 wasted months. The so called coaches turned out to be complete charlatans.

With this experience in mind, to me it is logical for any runner to ask questions about online coaches and their results. In defense of Cabada he has run at an elite level for a long time so he must know a thing or two about what takes to get there and to keep going at that level. More power to him if he also has some coaching success.

For the level of involvement he's offering, his price is entirely reasonable REGARDLESS of whether he's a semi-famous marathoner or coach. As others have noted, personal attention is expensive, particularly in the fitness industry.

Of course, it's an entirely different question whether his price is worth it to you as a consumer. For most people it isn't. And it's not because they aren't serious about running. It's probably because either (1) you don't have the kind of disposable income that makes personal coaching costs largely irrelevant, and/or (2) you already have a ton of knowledge and experience, and you need an extremely compelling case that a private coach would add any value to what you already know and do.

Personally, I was self-coached and I liked it that way. If I were to work with someone, I'd want them to be my "assistant coach." Someone to give me an outsider's perspective, to bounce ideas off of, to help me shrug off a bad workout now and then. Not someone to write out a plan and tell me to do it.

p.s. Another data point is that Alan Culpepper charges $200/month for personal coaching with "unlimited" communication. (http://culpeppercoaching.com/) If I were going to go with an athlete as a coach, it would be him hands down. He was extraordinarily successful, self-coached, and a big time student of the sport. I think the real risk with using a successful athlete as a coach is that they may just have you do a version of what their own coach had them do, without necessarily understanding it. (Of course, that still probably would be better than a lot of the personal coaches out there.)

No Benefits wrote:

rojo wrote:

$100 an hour is 200k per year if you work full time. He ain't working full time. He's one of the best in the country at running. All the more power to him if the marketplace accepts it.

Would it be outrageous to spend $1200 for a 3 month training plan? No.

Think about how much it costs to run a majo. $250 entry fee. $750 hotel (3 nights). $350 airfare. The race itself cost 1350. How dare the airlines and hotels and races!!!!

He'll be lucky to gross $100k per year. He has zero benefits. No paid vacation. No paid sick time. No medical premium assistance. No company 401k, although be can set up his own.

This is the reason why working as a private personal trainer, or in this example a private coach, is fool's gold. The best trainers are rarely the most knowledgeable. They are the most business savvy.

As a running coach he's going to have two types of clients just like a personal trainer would: 1) old people with $$$$ 2) young competitive folks (the regional elite or with the trainer the bodybuilders).

Your income in very seasonal, you have no paid vacation, you will always be trying to find the next big thing.

He'll be lucky to gross $50k a year much less $100k.

Alan

Runningart2004 wrote:

No Benefits wrote:

He'll be lucky to gross $100k per year. He has zero benefits. No paid vacation. No paid sick time. No medical premium assistance. No company 401k, although be can set up his own.

This is the reason why working as a private personal trainer, or in this example a private coach, is fool's gold. The best trainers are rarely the most knowledgeable. They are the most business savvy.

As a running coach he's going to have two types of clients just like a personal trainer would: 1) old people with $$$$ 2) young competitive folks (the regional elite or with the trainer the bodybuilders).

Your income in very seasonal, you have no paid vacation, you will always be trying to find the next big thing.

He'll be lucky to gross $50k a year much less $100k.

Alan

It seems like this is just a side job to get some extra cash and also to give back to the running community. I doubt he's making this is his main focus or trying to bring in six figures off of it.