Sharing Workouts...Unethical?

I'm not a coach.  I don't see a problem with sharing a workout.  I could go online or off my head a put together a few swims.  But it would be nothing like what you or the other coaches here are putting together.  You guys and gals are doing the background work on the athletes and tailoring it to them  So if they share it with someone else it becomes a bit generic to that next person. 

In fact I would probably post/blog or whatever, a few as a coach.  Kind of like giving free samples of candy out.

Ben, I think you sum it up really well, and as I said in the other thread, individual training sessions are such a small part of the value we provide.  I love it when my athletes share information about their training with others.

You can see from Suzanne's post above, that she's fully supportive of this philosophy by those of us who coach for her too.

I'd be curious to hear from a coach or from an athlete who's worked with a coach who disagrees with this philosophy, and why they feel the way they do.

There is quite a bit of sharing that goes on between the coaches that we have used over the years.  Swim, run, and bike coaches share their workouts with a triathlon coach who oversees the program. None of the workouts have ever come with the idea that we can't share with others. The only exception is proprietary run protocols for the overspeed treadmill work.  We had to agree not to share those workouts.....so we don't.   They are passed on to the tri coach using RPE instead of exact speed/incline/duration.  I think it's kind of silly, but the establishment where the training takes place is serious about it.

I didn't think it was a big deal, until on 2 separate occasions I had coaches that I worked with, shared with and educated, jump ship, start their own gig and used my library/know how to do it. So when I see athletes who I fed to these coaches post my workouts on social media it rubs me the wrong way. Part of this is my fault as I'm a pretty trusting individual, and I should have had legal contracts/non-competes in place from the get go.

In the purest sense, I don't care if an athlete posts a big day on strava or fb with all the details. The rub is the coach who doesn't know what they are doing so they take the workouts for their own financial gain.

Even though I may have appeared to be taking a contrarian view in the other thread, I was only suggesting that you ask your coach before posting workouts online as matter of professional courtesy if nothing else.  I would consider it unethical if a coach asked you not to post something and you did anyway.

The swim coaches I currently work with have no problem with any of us logging our workouts online, but ask that we not photograph the workout boards and post them online.  I think that is a reasonable request.

Coming at it from the other direction, we've had a well-known coach work with our masters team for the past year.  We've had visitors from other masters teams  show up, pay the $7 drop in fee and then expect the equivalent of a 1-1/2 private lesson.  That is certainly not fair to the coach. 

Mark

It strikes me that any time you have entered into a contractual situation, it would probably be best to ask the providor for consent to share content. That said, one workout isn't the full training plan, no more than having a friend over to watch a movie is giving away your Netflix service. However, like I believe Mark was getting at, it is probably best to ask the coach how they would feel, since this is their income stream you are talking about.