The key question here is, how much money were you paying these chess coaches?
In general in life, you get what you pay for, the more expensive the coach, the higher the quality of coaching, with so much free resources online, you shouldn't really need a chess coach unless you planning on being a professional.
That's hilarious! If it's intentionally hilarious is hard to say
How's your formula working out in chess. Are you a master yet
Plan for training. Step 1. Do endgame training and work backwards (use the endgame practice and tutorials here). Plan Step 2, learn how to force trades of pieces and pawns you want off the board to get the endgame you want (use custom position and make the endgames you know slightly more complex by adding a piece or pawn on one or both sides). Step 3, learn how to develop your pieces so they are protected in the opening. Step 4, pawn structures identify which structures are in what openings and how they effect endings, play your custom positions in them. Step 5, select your opening repetoir based on your pawn structures and endgames. Learn the openings and the reason behind why the moves and good or bad. Step 6, you have a target, survive to the end game by not blundering, then reach a position you can convert. Step 7, midgame wins. As part of your study of the endgame you should learn the all the possible basic checkmates , as part of your study on the mid game maneauvers and trades you should look at how to construct mating nets. This is so you can recognise blunders on both sides. TLDR. Play for an endgame you can win, blunder check for both sides, punish blunders by mate or trade down and convert.
Some questions to ask a coach before hiring them:
What is your teaching style? What are some of the things we’d be doing when we have a session?
Will you review and analyze my games that I send you? If so, how many per week/month? Can we talk through these during our sessions?
Can you give me one or two examples of the kind of homework you assign?
What would you do differently when teaching a 1700 compared to teaching a 1200?
You are making total sense. I'm a coach as well, but I'm teaching my students exactly how to think during the game (I even made some algorithms for them). Then, even when I'm not there, they have a crystal clear plan on what to do during each stage of the game. My role is to help them be completely independent and teach them how to apply algorithms correctly.
I am a mid to low range player.. maybe 1200... on a good day . In an effort to improve I have hired at least four coaches. Two claimed to be able to speak English but I could not understand much of what they were saying and I have lived in the US all my life.
But the most serious problem i have had with coaches is that they play games with me and tell me what to watch out for as the game progresses and give a few hints here and there but no one has ever taught me how to develop a winning plan, or how to spot weaknesses in the other player's side, or how to do more than just push pieces around and look for a tactical move.
Yes they say to develop all my pieces and protect each piece but I feel they are just being paid to play a game with me and not really teaching me some underlying strategy or concepts
It's hard to explain but something is missing on a fundamental level in my games.
Any thoughts on this? Am I making sense? Any coaches reading this?
English is my first language.
Occasionally, I’ll play a game with a student, but that strikes me as an uncommon way of teaching and not particularly effective. Going over games you have played with others, on the other hand, would be one way we would use our time together. We would identify themes that reveal something you can improve. I would have you work on your tactics, too. Endgames would be a recurring focus.
Try Toufighi Hoomyani. Best chess coach I've ever had. He taught me how to calculate and properly visualize the board among other things. He's only $40/hr and he's a GM.
I never had a chess coach. I taught myself chess. Myself is the best chess coach in the world. Bwahahaha.
Had you tried to ask a lot of questions or talk to them the purpose of your moves?
I suggest studying with your own pace.
Try to play a game first.
After that look for the things that you don't understand.
In those scenario, try to play against a computer until you give up.
If you haven't learned anything, try to look lessons on other sources that describes those scenarios.
After that, try to play against the computer again to test if you learned something from those lessons.
If you succeeded, try next problem.
If not, try to seek out help from other players or a coach is better.
If you can't. Try to study GM games with the same opening of your game. (You can imitate their moves, if you want. I know for sure you can learn a lot from them.)
If you ran out of inspiration or feel that your game is going stale, try to Watch Computer Championship and try to predict all of one of the engines moves or watch Chess Recap from World Chess Championship.
You can also try to listen to music while playing if you are bored playing chess.
If you already have a coach to begin with... talk to them the purpose of each move you are doing and ask them why that move works or not... You can also ask them general tips while playing... If things became too serious, you can lighten up things by making small talk... The more interactive the learning, the better... You can also ask the diversity of the moves on the board, the pieces strength and weaknesses, the fundamentals, the things that are hard for you to digest... Your strength and weaknesses... The openings that you are comfortable at playing and also the ones that you are having a hard time... You can also offer snacks and such to make them comfortable in teaching you... The more they do, the more you see things clearly... You can also talk to your coach the best chess books to buy and also the books you are considering to buy... If you are having a hard time, you can play to other player with the same level while they accompany you by giving you tips along the way (But you must have your opponent's consent before doing it).
Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy
I learnt a lot about chess strategy by incorporating backgammon concept and understanding and applied it to chess way. Chess is too abstract to start so difficult to understand or form something if you don't understand what you are and just play intuitively.
One more thing..there seems to be a lot of good books recommended here and I would like to study them but none of them are on CD or DVD and so I have to set the board up manually 
and I prefer to do things on the computer...no chance of error in setting things up and easy to move backwards and forwards and see different line of play without accidently putting a piece on the wrong square..
I cant find any of these books in computer friendly form.. anyone know of where I might find such a thing?
One more thing..there seems to be a lot of good books recommended here and I would like to study them but none of them are on CD or DVD and so I have to set the board up manually and I prefer to do things on the computer...no chance of error in setting things up and easy to move backwards and forwards and see different line of play without accidently putting a piece on the wrong square..
I cant find any of these books in computer friendly form.. anyone know of where I might find such a thing?
Do you have chess software? I read books in ChessBase or using tChess Pro on my iPad. PGN files of many older books can be found at Bill Wall’s chess site. I use these for the moves of the game on my iPad, while reading the print edition of the book.
Even better are ebooks published by Everyman. I have Garry Kasparov’s My Great Predecssors in ChessBase format, and more than a dozen other books. I finally read Vukovic, The Art of Attack cover-to-cover a couple of years ago after getting the ebook version from Everyman. I have at least half a dozen of Cyrus Lakdawala’s books in this format and have many of them in paperback as well.
First of all, visualization is the most hardest skill in chess. It is the most important skill even to GM's. I am not an expert but I can share you 1 tips I am doing right now. These are the steps on visualization that I am currently doing right now.
Step 1: Imagine that all of pieces in the board have a special power like shadowcat in XMen. They can move wherever they want but they are only limited by their movements.
Step 2: Eliminate all of the possible places they can move because of certain limitations. There are two types of limitations, absolute and temporary.
Absolute limitations are checks, and absolute pin.
Regarding Checks you can do the following: Capture the Attacker, Block the Attacker or Move your King away from the Attacker
Absolute Pin makes the pinned piece can't move as long as the King is on the Attacking Piece View if the pinned piece will move. If the pinned piece becomes important to your play you can either add another blockage, Capture the Attacker or Move your King away from the Attacker's Control Squares if your piece move.
Temporary limitations are limitations other than Absolute Limitations.
Step 3: Make a Plan Based on Step 1 and Step 2. Try to navigate the board by means of eliminating limitations while making opponent's pieces movements limited. The more powerful your pieces than your opponent the better.
Step 4: If Your Opponent's Piece Becomes more powerful than your piece, do not hesitate to trade those pieces. It is better to eliminate threats as soon as possible if you know that your piece will not become more powerful than that piece in the whole game.
Step 5: If Your Piece is more powerful than your opponent, do not trade your piece for their weak piece.
Step 6: If you find a tactics or mating pattern, always make sure that your opponent cannot counter attack after you move. Mating pattern that includes sacrifice are very dangerous if you did not plan it exhaustively.
That's all.
I am a mid to low range player.. maybe 1200... on a good day . In an effort to improve I have hired at least four coaches. Two claimed to be able to speak English but I could not understand much of what they were saying and I have lived in the US all my life.
But the most serious problem i have had with coaches is that they play games with me and tell me what to watch out for as the game progresses and give a few hints here and there but no one has ever taught me how to develop a winning plan, or how to spot weaknesses in the other player's side, or how to do more than just push pieces around and look for a tactical move.
Yes they say to develop all my pieces and protect each piece but I feel they are just being paid to play a game with me and not really teaching me some underlying strategy or concepts
It's hard to explain but something is missing on a fundamental level in my games.
Any thoughts on this? Am I making sense? Any coaches reading this?