Online Life Coach Courses

Coach U is an IFC accredited school so right of the bat you know we are dealing with a quality life coaching training program. This is one of the primary coaching schools, it was founded in 1988. This establishment has trained a lot of coaches.

Coach U was founded by long time coach Thomas Leonard. Honestly I’m not familiar with Thomas Leonard but he is apparently known as the father of life coaching. In 1996 Thomas sold Coach U to Sandy Vilas and proceeded to found and develop another school. Now even his second school is we respected and a well known in the community. If this guy founded two successful schools, he must be doing something right when it comes to developing a life coach.

Coach U will provide comprehensive training. Completing their program should take about two years. Expect to put in about two hundred hours into the program. If you are the kind of person that appreciates an indepth, complete program this may be for you. This is a lot of time to put into life coach training. Some people may not be ready for this kind of commitment. Make sure you know what you are getting into. If you have some experience as a coach, this may be overkill. If you are looking for quick accreditation go elsewhere.

The type of training Coach U offers is teleclasses. Again this is not for everyone. You are also expected to work independently on workbooks, online material, CDROM etc. The telephone classes are usually provided on a weekly basis and consist of one 4 hour class session with 20-26 participants. (No it is not one on one.) A separate life coach mentor is suggested at an extra cost. The course cost is just over $5700 and around $220 for books. If a long term, comprehensive program is what you are looking for, Coach U may be the life coaching school for you.

The Coach Training Alliance life coaching program is available worldwide and is accredited by the IRC. Accreditation is a big plus of course, something you always want to look for. They offer self study as well as teleclasses. I’m not sure if they have an extended one on one mentoring program. Their life coach training program last 55 hours. The school was founded in 2001.

The program at Coach Training Alliance is a short one lasting only 22 weeks. That could be seen as an advantage or disadvantage depending on the type of person you are. A big plus is that they divide their focus between coaching skills, business skills, and marketing skills. Unfortunaately they do not offer refunds.

Their Certified Coach Program includes an instructor lead seminar of 60 to ninety minutes in duration each week. Also included is 1 – 2 hours a week of self study with their special software package called Coach Training Accelerator™. When you complete the program you will be certified as a CTA coach but you will not be a certified ICF coach.

You will work with a coaching group throughout your training and you will also have a mentor coach that will be there to observe and critique the group. Thirty of your 55 hours will be instructor lead sessions with direct observation and something called telegroup monitoring. Honestly I’m not exactly sure what that is. 25 hours will be online sessions and assignments, self study and action challenges (I assume this is some sort of group training exercise. After classes start there are no refunds offered, this is certainly a significant disadvantage. Not only that, there are only partial refunds give before classes even begin. The Coach Training Alliance life coaching course is a relatively fast and inexpensive path through life coaching training. However if you are expecting a more in depth training experience, look elsewhere.