Email Transformers

Today's WSJ has a nice piece on personal training via email. This approach to delivering TVO's appears to be promising:

The biggest benefit of online training and e-coaching is the price. A typical session with a personal trainer can cost from $50 to $75 an hour, but many online training programs cost as little as $5 to $10 a week. E-training also eliminates the hassle of scheduling an appointment with a trainer, many of whom are already booked during the most convenient training times.

Questions remain about whether the benefits of e-training can make up for the loss of face-to-face interaction with an exercise expert. Face-to-face exercise trainers not only monitor your form and progress, but they also force you to stay committed to an exercise program and prevent you from slacking off.

But a study this spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association has boosted hopes among the exercise community that online training can produce results. Researchers at Brown University studied dieters who used Internet weight-loss programs, comparing those who simply read information from Web sites with those who received weekly email advice from behavioral therapists. In the study, 45% of dieters who took part in structured programs with continual contact and email feedback lost at least 5% of their body weight, compared with 22% of those in the education-only group. Logging on more frequently was associated with better weight loss in both groups.