Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher dive deep into the science of supervised workouts, sharing research on the benefits of guided workouts. They explore the key differences between supervised and unsupervised training, why many people struggle to train effectively on their own, and how coaching impacts technique, effort, safety, and motivation.  

Tune in to hear why men and women respond differently to coaching, ways technology is changing the way we work out, and why a trainer might be the secret weapon you didn’t know you needed.

• Amy and Dr. Fisher start by explaining the difference between supervised and unsupervised training.  
• What is a supervised workout? Dr. Fisher defines it as training with real-time feedback from a qualified professional to enhance technique, effort, and safety.
• Dr. Fisher explains why most strength training studies don’t reflect real-world results. 
• He reveals that most studies are supervised, testing whether training works under ideal conditions, not whether people can sustain them in daily life.
• Amy highlights the overwhelming evidence supporting strength training. Unfortunately, many people avoid it due to its perceived complexity and difficulty.
• Amy reveals the key reason most people struggle to get started with strength training: uncertainty—people walk into the gym unsure of what to do, which leads to frustration or avoidance.
• Dr. Fisher covers supervised vs. unsupervised training–and why coaching makes a huge difference. 
• How supervised strength training consistently leads to better results in technique, effort, safety, and adherence.
• What makes personal training invaluable? 
  • Effort: Pushing beyond your comfort zone. Trainers help clients train at the right intensity, ensuring they work hard enough to see real results.
  • Motivation: Having a coach boosts engagement, making training feel less like a chore and more like a rewarding experience.
  • Safety: Dr. Fisher emphasizes that people who train alone are far more likely to get injured compared to those with professional supervision.
  • Accountability: Working with a trainer creates external accountability, making it far more likely that people show up and stay consistent.
  • Smart programming: Coaches tailor workout plans to evolve over time, adjusting intensity, resistance, and exercise selection for steady improvement.
  • Technique: A coach ensures correct form, preventing injuries and maximizing the effectiveness of each exercise.
• How technology is transforming strength training. Dr. Fisher and Amy discuss the role of exerbotic machines and augmented feedback in optimizing workouts and improving results.
• Learn why different clients need different coaching approaches. Amy explains that beginners need more focus on technique, while advanced clients benefit from coaching on effort, mindset, and fine-tuning their performance.
• Dr. Fisher explains that while positive feedback is key, research shows that well-timed negative feedback—urging someone to push harder—can drive significant progress.
• The trainer-client relationship is more than just fitness. Dr. Fisher reveals that many people compare their relationship with a trainer to that of a doctor or dentist, highlighting the trust and accountability involved.
• Men vs. women: How supervision affects training differently. Dr. Fisher discusses a study showing that men feel more confident maintaining high effort and safety, while women tend to benefit more from supervision.
• Why female clients push harder with a coach. Amy highlights that women often maximize their effort in strength training when working under professional guidance.
• If you struggle to give your best effort in workouts, Amy encourages you to check out The Exercise Coach and work with a trainer for faster, better results.

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Engaging in supervised workouts is definitely going to improve your accountability.

The reasons people don’t participate in exercise, they don’t like the big gym scene, they are afraid of getting hurt, they don’t enjoy exercise. Supervision actually addresses all of those concerns. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life.

On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and wellbeing. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co-hosts are Brian Saigon, co-founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence-based strength training. And now for today’s episode. Today’s episode is a research review type episode on the topic of supervision in exercise. You may remember back in season one of the Strength Changes Everything podcast, we did a an episode about the role that guidance plays in one’s ability to succeed in their exercise efforts and generate force and achieve their desired results. So that is back in season one and today’s episode is going to build upon and take a deeper dive into the topic of supervision when it comes to strength training. Of course, we know all of the benefits that strength training offers. We mentioned that almost every episode. But it’s important to note that what the research shows about people experiencing benefits from strength training is really supervised strength training that they participate in during those studies.

And it’s very important to mention, you know, and emphasize the role that supervision plays when it comes to people’s ability to enjoy a safe, effective, and efficient exercise experience. Dr. Fisher, welcome today to the podcast. I hope you’re doing well. How are you doing today?

I’m doing great, thank you, Amy. How are you?

I’m doing well. So you have a research paper that you’ve authored, taking a pretty deep dive into the topic of supervision and exercise. Can you talk us through this paper and how you’ve set this study up?

Yeah, absolutely.

And in fact, I’m going to take quite a deep dive into a number of papers here. But hopefully you’ll bring me back to sort of context for the listeners to sort of discuss supervision in terms of their own strength training. One of the great things that you said in the introduction there was that most studies that are done in a laboratory, and of course I come from an academic background, but most of the studies are supervised workouts. Most of the strength training studies include some degree of supervision.

So they’re really a test of efficacy, whether the workout works, but they’re not a test of effectiveness, whether the workout works in the real world or whether people do the workout. So there’s a bit of a gap there between efficacy and effectiveness. And probably around the time that you guys published that podcast on guidance and on supervision back in season one, around the same time it started to hit me that there was a real lack of research and some real confusion within the research around supervision within strength training. Now to put it in context, there’s an abundance of evidence to support the health benefits of strength training, but participation is still overwhelmingly low and conservative estimates, you know, optimistic estimates are around 18 to 35 percent for males and 14 to 26 percent females. And that data includes any kind of muscle building or strength training activity like yoga or heavy gardening or things like that.

So that’s not really a true data of strength training. And some of the listeners right now might not be clients of the exercise coach or might not be engaging in strength training. And we’ve of course talked about the health benefits in other podcasts, but if anybody’s in doubt, they’re extensive. But one of the reasons that people often cite as their reason not to engage in strength training is perceived complexity and difficulty. So they’re just not really sure what to do when they step in a gym. And of course, when we think of a typical commercial gym, mirrors and music and lycra, I can imagine very well that it would be overwhelming to many people. But in fact, when we think about supervision within strength training, we know that the benefits support greater acute responses. So people will select a heavier load or work with a heavier load, people will give more effort, people will do more repetitions and typically that leads to much greater adaptations. So greater increases in strength, greater increases in fitness, flexibility, reductions in fat mass and increases in muscle mass. So the data is unequivocal that supervised strength training will win out over unsupervised strength training any day of the week. And that’s true across all different population groups, whether it’s the lay population, whether it’s symptomatic or clinical groups, whether people are trained or untrained, whether they’re young or old, or even athletic populations. A lot of the studies have looked at soccer players and rugby players and things like that. So a number of years back, I set about and did a review with a couple of colleagues of mine where we just sort of said, actually, let’s get some numbers around this. What are the benefits of supervised compared to unsupervised workouts? And I mean in brief, the data was very clear that the supervised workouts were far more efficacious that people attain far greater results. But if we start to get into the weeds a little bit, one of the things that we found out was that many of the workouts that were unsupervised were still facilitated in some way. So perhaps a team manager was in the room or a personal trainer was on hand to answer questions but wasn’t directly guiding the workout. Or in some cases, some people actually had a period of training before being allowed to go away and train on their own. And that, if anything, that further enhances the benefits of supervised compared to unsupervised workouts because a truly unsupervised workout is walking into the gym with potentially no idea of what to do or nobody to speak to or nobody to support us or guide us or promote our safety and so forth. So one of the things that we did in that study is we started to sort of look at what characteristics might be beneficial from supervision. What might be the characteristics that we get from having a coach or a trainer by our side? We identified six main characteristics. The first of which is technique. We know that technique is improved. A coach will often say, okay, straighten your back, pull your shoulders back, lift your chest up, lead with your elbows, and kind of give us that guidance. They’ll give effort-based technique about how hard we’re working or how hard we can work. They’ll maybe enhance the enjoyment and the motivation of the workout itself.

They’ll almost certainly enhance the safety of the workout. Again, the data is unequivocal. People are far more likely to get injured training unsupervised compared to supervised. Supervised workouts also promote a degree of accountability. So, you know, when people are starting to engage in healthy habits, specifically in this case strength training, then when they book with a personal trainer, it creates that accountability.

They’ve made that promise to somebody that they’re going to be there as well as that promise to themselves. So now they’re far more likely to turn up. So if you’re somebody who’s kind of on the borderline of doing a workout, then engaging in supervised workouts is definitely going to make you, going to improve your accountability. And then finally, program design. So obviously, programs can progress over time, whether it’s by technique or whether it’s by load or resistance used, whether it’s by promoting different exercises or using more advanced exercises or so forth. So there’s kind of, there’s kind of a lot to unpack there. If you wanted to jump in at all, Amy, or are you happy for me to just.

You know what I think about when you mention what supervision delivers to, to the session, you mentioned technique, effort, enjoyment, safety, accountability, accountability, and program design. And what comes to mind are those are the things that actually address the barriers that most people have to participation in exercise in the first place. If you look at the reasons people don’t participate in exercise, which is 80 to 85% of people, adults, are not engaging in regular exercise.

Why is that?

They don’t like the big gym scene. They are afraid of getting hurt. They don’t enjoy exercise, right? Or they have a safety concern. And so what you’re saying, supervision actually addresses all of those concerns and it is the secret to overcoming those obstacles that many people have. So that’s just what I noticed about those characteristics that you just shared.

Absolutely, and one of the things about enjoyment is when you engage in supervised strength training, even in small groups, which I know you can do with the exercise coach, there’s kind of a shared experience. There’s this kind of, we’re all in this together. We’re all working hard.

I’m watching you. You’re working hard. You’re watching me. I’m working hard. And so it creates that enjoyment, but it also adds to that accountability as well. So there’s a lot of factors that kind of compound each other to really improve the overall outcomes and improve the specific characteristics like enjoyment and safety and so forth.

And it’s hard to achieve all of these things unless you’re very skilled in exercise on your own too.

Absolutely, I should be as skilled as most for 20 years in academia, teaching strength and conditioning and, and publishing the research around it. And many years before that, uh, engaging my own strength training. And I still know the benefits of a supervised workout. I still know that if I sit in front of a coach, um, they might pick up something in my technique or they might do something that will enhance my effort or enhance my enjoyment or my safety and so forth. Or they might come up with something novel in the program design, you know, from a program design perspective. I trained last week over in Tennessee at the exercise coach and we use some of the different protocols on the Exerbotics devices. And so there’s that opportunity to kind of develop the workout. It’s not just the same sets and repetitions and time under load each time. It’s maybe a lower time under load or a smaller range of motion or a higher eccentric load or so forth. So there’s those real opportunities when a coach is there to enhance the workout. Absolutely. So one of the things that we talked about in one of the papers was that we sort of defined supervision. I know that sounds silly because it sounds like it’s swole when there’s somebody there, but we kind of clarified that it’s exercise or physical activity, and in this case strength training undertaken with the presence and real-time feedback of a qualified fitness professional with a view to enhancing technique, performance, effort, enjoyment and or safety of a training environment. And I think that’s really important, the point about real-time feedback, because they’re not just there, coaches are not just there to be a cheerleader, they’re not just there to count repetitions or anything like that and if your current supervised workouts with your current personal trainer you find that they do count repetitions that’s potentially a problem because there’s so much more that they could be doing and if you’re a coach listening to this workout then hopefully this is a benefit as well because one of the things that we could talk about is feedback. Now, when anybody engages an exercise, there’s an internal feedback. There’s how the exercise feels itself. It might be feeling the muscle contract, or it might be a burning sensation or discomfort during the exercise. It might be our heart beating faster or our breath being deeper or heavier or faster or so forth. So there’s that internal feedback. There’s also external feedback. If we’re in front of a mirror, we might see ourselves, we might see the muscle. If we’re sat, we might be able to look at the muscle contracting and so forth.

Now we can also look at the movement arm moving as we do, for example, a leg press. I can look at my feet and I can see the movement arm moving as we do, for example, a leg press, I can look at my feet and I can see the movement arm moving away. So there’s that degree of external feedback as well. But then there’s also something called augmented feedback. An augmented feedback is something that comes from an external source. Now with exerbotics devices and with some other equipment as well that I’m familiar with in our labs, that augmented feedback can be sort of automated. It’s a number on a screen that provides real-time data about how my performance is. So whether I’m producing a high amount of force or a low amount of force, if I’ve just done a vertical jump, whether I jumped high or not as high in the last time as previous jumps and so forth.

So there’s that degree of augmented automated feedback as well. And we know that that can be really beneficial. So the exerbotics really kind of ticks that box by saying, hey, this is how hard you’re pushing and this is how hard we want you to push, you know, the concentric and the eccentric muscle actions. With the digital data that’s being collected about somebody’s strength training efforts, there are so many now devices out there that can track things about our health and people are pretty interested in learning about their progress and where they’re at and where they fall in different categories of health such as the Oura Ring for sleeping right or whatever it may be to track steps or continuous glucose monitors. All of these things are popular because they’re tracking where you fit and where you fall And it’s motivating to see that it will, it will, for many people change their behaviors because they want to have a different result that they can measure and quantify. So not only having the actual exercise experience where your coach is giving you feedback in the moment and in the session, but storing all of that data to track that over time, I can see how that can continue to motivate people to build upon where they are and to continue that progress as they track it.

100%. And in fact, it’s really important because we talked about internal feedback, but we’re actually not very good at gauging internal feedback, but we’re actually not very good at gauging internal feedback. So it’s very difficult for me to estimate any effort level below maximal effort. Having some sort of prompt to say to push harder or to not push so hard is absolutely key.

We’re not even very good at gauging how many repetitions left we might be able to perform in a set if we’re using a traditional weight stack exercise or free weights. So the feedback there is really important because we’re just not very good as human beings at gauging it. And of course, we’ve had this thing, technological evolution, we’ve got this equipment that we can use, you know, we should be using it.

We do, we love our data, our rings, our Garmin watches, our apps for nutrition and so forth. You know, we use this technology to really get the most out of our workouts and out of our life. So, one of the other things that we talked about, I think this is really important, is that supervision differs for different clients. And of course, the coaches listening to this will be saying, well, yeah, of course it does, but maybe the clients don’t realize that if they’re less experienced clients, then maybe they need a bit more encouragement or a bit more. Supervision on technique as a priority, whereas more advanced clients who maybe have great technique or think they have great technique, maybe they need more coaching on their effort level or just being able to afford to enjoy it a bit more. So there’s a big difference there between different experience levels.

And that also differs between males and females. We know that men will often work very, very hard, so maybe there’s a degree of coaching towards effort in females. But also, men will often work hard, but to the detriment of their technique. So maybe they need more technical coaching along the way to that high effort level that they can put in. There’s a couple of other things around this, and then we can, you know, we can talk about positive feedback. So we obviously talked about external feedback and augmented feedback, but the feedback that we get from the coach themselves, that real-time feedback is super important. That’s really the prompt for us over maybe how the workout is going or how the exercise went, our enjoyment, our safety, and so forth. And in the research, one of the things that we talk about is called EPAs or explicit positive assessment. Now we, we often think about feedback as being, you did this and you did a great job. Hey, you did a great job on the leg press just then you reached a new peak, uh, peak force. Um, but actually it can also be feed forward. I, on that repetition, you were starting to drop off.

I know you’ve got more in the tank. You can push harder and so forth. So there’s kind of this link into, into this positive, uh, positive assessment and positive feed forward or, or feedback, some people more comfortable with, and in that sense, we can also talk about the borderline between what’s positive and what’s negative. I’m sure at some point in my last workout, Kevin, my coach said to me, come on, you can push harder, you can do more or give it more than that. And that might be interpreted as negative feedback, although it’s meant in a very encouraging way. But actually, there’s some data around kind of negative feedback and telling somebody that they can do more. But it’s mostly linked to athletes where there’s a very low degree of autonomy. And actually, one of the things that’s pretty clear is that in a personal training and a coaching environment in that sense, clients definitely benefit more from, from positive feedback. Um, for the, for the most part.

Now we’ve, we’ve just started.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Did you have a solution to add that maybe?

Just keep going, James. That’s I’m getting, giving you some positive feedback on all this information. You’re doing great.

Sorry. So we talked then about autonomy and obviously the difference between athletes and clients and the importance of positive feedback in a personal training environment compared to in an athlete environment. One of the reasons why I think that the autonomy doesn’t need to be there so much in a personal training environment is that there’s a choice to engage in strength training. So the client that walks in the door is already making that choice. They’re already cognizant of what they’re or they’re looking to do. They’re maybe you know cued to the health benefits that they can achieve and they’re cued to the strength increases that they can make and bone mineral density and so on and so forth. So that’s their autonomy in the workouts, but it can also link to an interaction and an interdependence with the coach themselves over maybe a high load or a low or a high time under load or a low time under load or a larger or smaller range of motion or a higher concentric or higher eccentric efforts during the set so that they can have that kind of interdependence rather than an acquiescent relationship between trainer and trainee is, is really important. And in fact, that then links into some of the survey data that I’ve acquired over the years. And that shows that actually clients engaging in personal training in small group or one on one personal training actually make analogies to the relationship with their coach or their personalists. And I think that’s really important that we can highlight the benefits of a personal trainer or a coach on that healthcare alliance in their interdependence with that client. The client kind of sees them in that realm.

So I think that’s a really key point. Yeah, absolutely. As a coach, you do play a very, very important role for that client in the leadership that you provide and in the exercise design that you prescribe to the person they, they trust. We want to establish that credibility and that trust that we have a journey we’re taking you on. This is where we would like you to go.

We know you’re capable of it. We will modify as you need along the way, but have that vision for where we wanna take you, just like any other health professional. That’s really cool.

Yeah. And then the final point in all of this was more survey data that we acquired in the past that was published last year that talked about the difference between males and females. and one of the points in all of this was that females, I mean both groups were engaging in supervised strength training so they were both very pro supervision. However, they were asked questions like if you if you if your coach wasn’t available do you think you could sustain the same effort without the coach there or do you think you could sustain the same effort without the coach there? Or do you think you would work as hard or do you think you would have higher injury risk or have the same degree of safety and so forth?

And interestingly, and this lends itself to a previous thing that most people know about, the men in the study reported that they were more likely to be able to maintain that high degree of effort or that lower injury risk and that degree of safety compared to females who certainly seem to give themselves over more to supervision. And I think this is probably for certainly in the study we talked about how this is exemplified in numerous facets of society.

You know, the example I always give is that men don’t ask for directions, you know, men always think they know better. You know, whereas females are often, you know, the person that will say, you know, I shall stop and ask for directions or I’ll, I’ll defer to a professional or defer to an expert. Um, and I think that’s, um, that’s a really interesting, really interesting point. Now, of course, that’s not true of every male or female.

So there may be females out there who completely disagree or there may be males out there who disagree, but it’s also something interesting to think about. Um, as a male myself, um, I might proceed that i can maintain that high effort not that i’m high degree of safety my workouts but actually today to says that when i’m supervised. So both of those factors are enhanced something that’s really key point.

I know for our studios we have a mixture of both male and female clients. But I, I do believe that there are some, there are different things that motivate male, some of our male clients compared to our female clients. Perhaps it’s true that, you know, the female clients on average, um, rely a little bit more on their coaches in order to maximize their effort in a session because, you know, they, they may not give as much effort without that coach there. Maybe for the male coaches it’s more about the tracking and it’s more about the the motivation it’s more about the intensity that that they can deliver you know and and achieve. There’s many reasons why the coach as we already mentioned provides that value and everyone has a little bit different need based on how they’re coming in so I definitely can see that and kind of no matter who you are you’re going to get a benefit it’s just which benefit did you need that day yeah 100% 100% yeah so I think just just summarizes a bit of a take-, the data is really clear there that supervised workouts are far more efficacious than unsupervised workouts. But hopefully that podcast has given some insight into some of the data that’s out there and some of the maybe some of the reasons why the workouts are so much more beneficial when there’s a coach by your side. Absolutely. If you identified uh, identified with this episode and, and, um, recognize the fact as I do too, you know, that, um, when I try to exercise on my own, I am not achieving the outcomes that I know I probably could achieve. And by the way, we’ve mentioned in other episodes, the reason many people fail to achieve the outcomes that they desire most from exercise are because they are not exercising at the right level of intensity. Exercising at the right level of intensity is crucial to actually challenge your muscles to change and adapt to that session. When they change and adapt to that session, all of those wonderful benefits that we’ve mentioned before happen, but the key piece is exercising at the right level of intensity. And so if you find yourself in need of a little bit of a push to get to the place that you give that effort in your workout, please check out the exercise coach, get a trainer. That is what is a shortcut to your success is what at the end of the day it sounds like.

Thank you, Dr. Fisher for going through all this with us. Do you have any other final takeaways that you’d like to leave with our listeners on this? No, I think the enjoyment factor is something that’s really overlooked. So I think that that shared experience of working with a coach and working with a trainer kind of almost deferring to them saying okay I give myself over to you to let you guide the workout. I think that can be really beneficial. I personally really enjoy that that construct so hopefully others do too. Absolutely. Thank you so much we will see you next time. Remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much. We will see you next time. Remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything.com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts,

YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health. Here’s to you and your best health.