Coaches not living up to claims

So I’ve had three different coaches on here and all of them claimed they would create a training program tailored specifically for me. Well the truth is I don’t think one of them spent a minute outside our one hour $50 lesson thinking about helping me get any better. They all had generic training methods that I could find on YouTube for free. I absolutely appreciate that getting help from a titled player comes with a premium price tag, but I have to get something for my money. I gave all of them a minimum of ten lessons and I did everything I was told.

Anyone on here have a better experience? BTW, I’m rated around 1600 if that matters.

Nope.

I tried a real life coach (face to face meetings) for a while and it was the same thing.

Basically if you're under a certain rating you still need to collect your basics, so I think a coach isn't useful. (Different people will give different numbers for that "certain rating")

But for example, I define the 5 basic categories as: openings, endgames, tactics, strategy, and annotated game collection.

Have you done serious study of each? By which I mean, did you purchase a well regarded book and play over every line of analysis on a board while taking notes?

If not, then I just saved you ____$ of coaching fees. Collect your basics and play a lot. After you've collected your basics, and after that if your rating gets stuck, only then should you consider paying for a coach.

My $0.02

I am not experienced, but I train myself. I call my personal method as "consistency method". I won't improve simply by listening to lectures or watching videos and/or solving tactics every day. Another generic advice is study the endgame first. 

I personally went with a coach to help keep me motivated to train properly, but I’m not paying $50/hr for that. When your coach doesn’t really care if you improve it kind of sucks the motivation out of it.

How to instill motivation and creating a training program is the most difficult part. I did a lot of trial an error. Consume a lot of time. Invested some money for books. Lucky enough, I figured it out from online 1400 to 2000, and still improving. 

I agree. I have tried 3 coaches(doing what was asked)and didn't get any real improvement. Most of their lessons didn't come with any kind of study guide. I have determined that unless you are a complete newbie or close to expert they aren't really willing to give real results. I may be jaded but it is so frustrating to be at a strong level(1700) and can't improve by yourself.

I obviously feel your pain. I have to believe that someone out there actually takes the coach/student relationship seriously and is not out to score a quick buck.

That's alright, part of trial an error process. You guys can always look for another coach. Through mistakes I learned to create my own personal style of training. My own of methods and my own chess book choices. Professional advice from a coach should be good, but not all of them are good. Got to choose carefully next time.

I agree.

Yes  My coach is super awesome and has helped me improve A LOT.

What are you rated?

100

Two points:

1. There is indeed no way you can become a strong player without learning some basics. You can´t blame a coach for teaching exactly those.

2. coaching is most effective, if the student is also practicing outside the coaching lessons and can come up with concrete questions. The main advantage of a personal coach (compared to youtube) is the possibility to compare your own thoughts with his. Use it!

A good way to test how much time a coach spends on his students is by analysing your own games with him. (You should send the game to your coach a few days before the session.) Has he an annotated version of the game? Can he tell you, what he thinks might be the critical moments? Has he thought about what you can do not to make the same kind of mistake twice?

Yes! I completely agree with this post  There is a direct correlation between the amount of time you put into chess outside the lesson and your improvement.

I actually agree with both you, and never once complained about having to do the work necessary to improve. My main point was that I recognize at my level that I probably have some very bad tendencies that I don’t even recognize as the crux of my rating stagnation. I don’t know enough to find these issues on my own and that is why I’m willing to pay for help.

My complaint is with any coach that takes my money, but expects me to define the curriculum.

Well yes, isn't that the point? The coach covers what you need help with, based on your games. 

And if you want, i can "coach" you for free (objectively not a good idea, since our ratings aren't too far apart, but it should be fun nonetheless. And even if I can't teach you anything, we can still just play and analyze some games together )

If I am entitled to coach I would tailor a 3 year training program. Continuous homework for a student to do. The hard part is there is a big tendency a student won't listen and get distracted to other training information.  Chess is very complicated, there are many ways to improve. For example, if I tell you to memorize openings as part of your regimen, however, there are too many generic advice not to memorize openings. So most probably you would think I am a very bad coach.

It seems like you already are playing regularly but that alone isn't resulting in a rating increase all that much so maybe doing chess puzzles would help.

I would set a goal of reaching 1700 blitz rating on chess.com playing 10 minute chess like you already enjoy playing.

I would try 3 puzzle rushes of 5 minutes a day for 30 days.

At the end of 30 days hopefully you will have reached 1700 blitz at least once.

A good coach should do four things:

1) Give you an opening repertoire;

2) Teach you to play positional chess;

3) Analyze classics with you - this is really important;

4) Create a study plan for you: books and games suggestions.

Analyzing your own games doesn't really help, because you don't learn anything new from them. If you want to improve you need to gain a new knowledge, otherwise you won't improve and will stay at your rating level for a long time.

Lazy and bad coaches just analyze your games and give you tactical exercises. You can do it by your own really.

If you are still interested in coaching, then I can try to be your coach, but I can only guarantee you to get 2000 chess.com elo and 1800 OTB.

You can't predict one's progress for such a long period. Someone can become a NM or FM (or even IM) from 1600 elo after 3 years of training, but someone will only become a 1700-1800 elo rated player. It's really personal. But general principles are the same.