3 FAQs About the Coach Match Service

BY Kelly Steuven

The TrainingPeaks Coach Matching Service is a free program that helps connect athletes with TrainingPeaks Certified coaches. Here are three FAQs about this service.

The TrainingPeaks Coach Match Service is a free program that helps connect athletes with TrainingPeaks Accredited coaches. The pairings are personalized, as we base our matches on a detailed questionnaire submitted by the athlete and information that we have gathered from each coach.

Here are answers to three frequently asked questions about the Coach Match Service.

1. Is the Coach Matching Service really free? If so, what is everyone getting out of it?

Yes, the program is completely free to both athletes and coaches. As a provider of Coach Edition software, providing qualified client leads to our coach customers enables our coaches to be successful, and is a valuable marketing service we can provide to potential coach customers.

On the athlete side, we believe that there is no other training program that is as effective as personalized attention from a qualified professional, so matching athletes with coaches is one of the best ways TrainingPeaks can help athletes achieve their goals. From our perspective, it is also a powerful reason for a new athlete customer to use TrainingPeaks.

In short, when our athletes and coach customers succeed, we succeed. Loyal customers and word of mouth are always a great thing to have in your corner. So as you can see, it’s a win-win situation for everyone!

2. How do I know the coach is a good coach?

Every coach in the Coach Match Service is TrainingPeaks Accredited. In order to qualify to become TrainingPeaks Accredited, a coach must hold a current certification through a national governing body in the sport they coach (examples: USAC, USAT, British Cycling, etc). They must be using TrainingPeaks as a coach for a minimum of six months and pass an interview with one of our Coach Match Specialists. The interview serves as a “checks and balances” regarding the coach’s business and knowledge of TrainingPeaks. Accreditation status of a coach can change based on feedback from athletes or other circumstances.

In addition to the accreditation process, TrainingPeaks monitors athlete satisfaction with the Coach Match Service through an anonymous survey sent after each match is made. Survey results and feedback are taken into account for future matches with the coaches involved. We have found that asking for feedback from the athletes has helped the success rate of coach matches.

3. How does the coach actually get matched to the athlete?

Every day a member of our Coach Match Team matches athletes with TrainingPeaks Accredited coaches. That’s right! It’s not an automated system – there is actually someone “behind the scenes” who is personally matching you with the right coach for YOU.

We look at one athlete at a time and read the questionnaire you filled out. Then we compare your information with the information we have on all of the TrainingPeaks Accredited coaches, as well as what we know about the coaches by virtue of having worked with many of them for years. Things we consider include your budget, your experience level, the coaching style you’re looking for (for example whether you’re interested in a data-driven coach), any special qualifications or skills you want to work on, whether you want a local coach or not, and more. By process of elimination, we’ll aim to match you with two to four coaches. Once we have made the matches, we’ll send you each coach profile and contact information. We also send each coach your contact information and the information from the questionnaire that the athlete submitted.

Interested? What are you waiting for?! Submit your athlete information today and become one step closer to reaching your athletic goals!

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About Kelly Steuven

Kelly Steuven is an Education Specialist at TrainingPeaks, and our primary athlete coach ‘matchmaker’.’Kelly has been with TrainingPeaks for over four years and has helped thousands of our athletes and coach customers in the role of customer support, sales, account management and customer education. Being an avid snowboarder is what brought Kelly to Colorado, but in the summers she spends her time hiking, biking and running with her husband and their Shih Tzu, Miss Ruby Sue (the unofficial TrainingPeaks mascot).