Coach Education Courses

The coach-athlete relationship is one of the most crucial and rewarding in sports. And it hinges on great communication.

In this online course from USA Cycling and Fast Talk Labs, experts show coaches how to upgrade their communication skills for greater success.

This course dives deeper into effective communication, deep listening, thoughtful questioning, and empathy, including:

• the roles and responsibilities of the coach-athlete relationship

• ways to listen and respond to athletes

• approaches to common situations (like the post-race debrief)

• and the art of motivation

This Coach-Athlete Communication course draws from The Craft of Coaching with Joe Friel plus new material to create a helpful guide focused on communication basics and specific tactics that coaches can put into practice immediately.

While some may be born communicators, others struggle to build a rapport with their athletes. In either case, there is much to be gained from improving your skill at communication.

📍 Platform: USA Cycling Learning Management System (LMS)
📖 CEUs: 4 CEUs
✅ Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

CEUs will automatically apply to your account upon completion. If they do not appear, ensure all module settings are completed in the LMS.

Enroll today and enhance your ability to communicate effectively as a coach!

Effective goal setting is the foundation of athlete development and long-term success. The Goal Setting for Coaches and Athletes course provides practical strategies to help coaches guide their athletes in setting realistic, measurable, and achievable goals.

By understanding the psychology behind goal setting, you’ll be able to create a structured approach to motivation, progress tracking, and performance improvement.

In this course, you will learn:

• The fundamentals of short-term and long-term goal setting

• How to develop SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound)

• Techniques to help athletes stay motivated and accountable

• Strategies for adjusting goals based on progress and performance

• The role of mental skills and mindset in achieving success

This course is designed for coaches at all levels who want to help their athletes maximize their potential through structured and effective goal setting.

📍 Platform: USA Cycling Learning Management System (LMS)
📖 CEUs: 1
✅ Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

Start setting goals that lead to real results—enroll today!

In the CEU course from USA Cycling and Fast Talk Labs, “The Art and Science of Training Plan Creation,” coaches explore:

• The basics of building a training plan

• Best practices in onboarding new athletes

• Pre-season preparation

• Building the annual training plan and base season schedules

• Advanced methods to execute a training plan with an athlete

While any certified coach can write a solid training plan, this online course drawing from The Craft of Coaching with Joe Friel explores the time-tested approaches of master coaches who have decades of experience: Joe Friel, Dean Golich, Jim Miller, Houshang Amiri, Trevor Connor, Adam Pulford, Ryan Kohler, and Dave Schell.

Duration: Self-paced
CEUs: 4 CEUs
Access: Available under the "Courses in Progress" section of your account

Enroll today!

Endurance athletes are highly motivated and sometimes they push too hard. When athletes overdo it too often, they can harm their health or go so far that they prematurely end their endurance sports careers.

This course on Overreaching, Overtraining, and Burnout will explore these conditions, their differences, causes, prevention, symptoms, treatments, and recovery.

As a coach, the first step to managing your athletes’ workload and motivation is recognizing the symptoms of these conditions, which can easily by confused with everyday fatigue, underfueling, and other issues.

You will learn how to manage training loads, recognize the early signs of overtraining, and how to implement effective recovery strategies to help bring athletes back from the brink.

Covered in this course:

• Functional overreaching

• Nonfunctional overreaching

• Overtraining Syndrome (OTS)

• Burnout

This is a dark side of endurance sports. See how to help your athletes stay on a healthy path.

📍 Platform:USA Cycling Learning Management System (LMS)
📖 CEUs: 2 CEUs
✅ Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

Enroll today!

This course from Fast Talk Laboratories and USA Cycling will take your coaching business to a new level of professionalism. Take this course to discover ways to become a more financially successful, efficient, and savvy business owner.

One of the most under-appreciated aspects of a coaching career is the business skill it takes to earn a living and, if desired, grow that business successfully and sustainably. 

This course provides a thorough introduction to the business of coaching and features numerous master coaches who have successfully grown coaching businesses with staying power. Featured coaches and successful business owners include Joe Friel, Philip Hatzis, Gordo Byrn, Frank Overton, and Mike Ricci.

This course explores different methods for navigating the challenges of establishing a business, becoming profitable, marketing for growth, negotiating contracts, setting fair prices, and building up a team of coaches.

📍 Platform: USA Cycling LMS
📖 CEUs: 4 CEUs
✅ Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

Enroll today!

Learn how to effectively market your coaching business, attract new clients, and grow your brand recognition—with clear steps and practical tools.

Our course, “A Coach’s Promotional Toolkit,” teaches you how to build a smart, structured marketing strategy (just like a well-planned training program) and focus your efforts where they matter most. You’ll learn how to:

• Use Google Business Profile and Google Sites to improve your visibility and create a simple, effective website.

• Build partnerships with local clubs, shops, and events to expand your reach and grow your client base.

• Leverage insights from Dave Trendler, who has helped over 150 endurance sports coaches promote their businesses, including renowned experts like Joe Friel, Matt Fitzgerald, Matt Dixon, and Gale Bernhardt.

• Apply short-term, actionable strategies—the “workouts” of marketing—that help you make progress now and avoid common marketing pitfalls.

Whether you’re a social coach who thrives on events or a data-driven strategist who prefers behind-the-scenes tools, this course will show you to leverage the promotional approach that best fits your style – and avoid those that are least likely to pay off for your business. You’ll learn to treat marketing like a workout: stay consistent, focus on what works, and watch your coaching business grow.

Enroll today!

As coaches, we are focused on the performance of our athletes. Yet how can we be sure we are improving our performance as coaches? In Mastering Coaching Skills 201, you will take your coaching expertise to the next level by developing your core coaching skills: communication, decision-making, emotional IQ.  

Successful coaches know that athlete performance is more than the sum of the workouts. Coaching is an art as well as a craft, and your intuition and intention can draw the highest performance from your athletes.

Expert coaches Joe Friel, Jim Rutberg, and Melissa Mantak will help you better support your athletes.

In this course, you will learn:

• Advanced communication and athlete engagement strategies

• Decision-making models for high-pressure coaching scenarios

• Techniques for fostering motivation, accountability, and resilience

• How to create adaptable training plans tailored to individual athletes

• Best practices for long-term athlete development and retention

Sometimes, we focus too much on workouts, physiology, and training approaches. By investing in the coach-athlete relationship, you can get more enjoyment from this rewarding career.

Platform: USA Cycling Learning Management System (LMS)
CEUs: 3 CEUs
Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

Upon completion, your 3 CEUs will automatically apply to your account. If they do not appear, ensure all module settings are completed in the LMS.

Enroll today and elevate your coaching impact!

The Fundamentals of Physiology 101 will provide you with a strong foundational understanding of how the human body responds to training. This course covers exercise physiology, energy systems, and training adaptations. By understanding how the body works and how its key movement systems work together, you can make better decisions to help manage your athletes’ training and development.

The Fundamentals of Physiology 101 explores:

• the relationship between performance level and training stress

• the adaptive process

• the importance of recovery

• the complimentary relationship between high and low-intensity training

• the cross-training effect

• basic fueling principles

This course provides a thorough introduction to these concepts, and details why they are important for every coach to know.

📍 Platform: USA Cycling Learning Management System (LMS)
📖 CEUs: 4 CEUs
✅ Completion Requirement: All course modules must be completed

Upon completion, your 4 CEUs will automatically apply to your account. If they do not appear, ensure all module settings are completed in the LMS.

Take the next step in your Physiology of Training Specialization—enroll today!

See how to structure or restructure your coaching business to avoid common problems with laws, taxation, insurance, and hiring.

In this course, “Navigating Business Structure,” you’ll be equipped with tools to create a sustainable, scalable foundation for your growth so you can focus on coaching without the stress of business administration.

In this course, you’ll learn to:

• Build a business plan tailored to where you are now and where you want to grow.

• Get clear on tax and legal requirements—with a list of essential questions to ask your legal and tax team to avoid costly mistakes.

• Understand the difference between full-time employees and contractors, and which is best for your needs.

• Use a SWOT analysis to identify your unique strengths and determine your revenue streams.

• Learn from Maria Simone, owner and head coach of No Limits Endurance Coaching, as she shares her strategies for building and structuring an award-winning coaching business.

No complicated jargon, no overwhelming legal talk—just the tools, skills, and insights you need to run a smooth and successful coaching business. You’ll walk away with an actionable plan, enabling you to take on more clients and grow your brand without facing unexpected roadblocks.

Take the next step in your Business Skills Specialization—enroll today!

Note: This course is part of the Business Skills Specialization within the USA Cycling Coaching Education Program and is ideal for coaches interested in professionalizing and scaling their coaching services.

Course Title: Anti-Doping & Doping Control
CEUs: 1
Specialization Track: Athlete Management & Development

Course Description:
Learn how to navigate anti-doping rules, and to protect your athlete’s integrity.

Our course, “Anti-Doping and Doping Control,” provides a clear roadmap for you to understand prohibited substances, manage in and out-of-competition testing, and ensure your athletes make compliant choices. You’ll learn how to:

• Master the selection process for athlete testing, including USADA’s RTP and CAP procedures to help your athletes stay compliant with whereabouts requirements.

• Effectively guide athletes through the TUE application and submission process and determine when they are needed.

• Use tools like the USADA Drug Reference and Global DRO to verify that your athletes’ supplements, medications, and treatments are legal.

• Recognize risks like hidden dangers in supplements and unlisted ingredients, so you can take proactive steps to avoid violations.

This course equips you with actionable steps to safeguard your athletes’ careers, ensure compliance, and avoid unwanted doping violations. Become a trusted resource and uphold the integrity of competition, whether you’re guiding a junior racer through their first TUE application or supporting seasoned athletes with RTP compliance.

Data can reveal powerful truths about your athletes—but only if you know how to read it. Our new online course, “Interpreting Athlete Data,” teaches you how to translate heart rate, power files, and subjective feedback into smarter, more personalized coaching decisions. You’ll gain the skills to analyze performance trends, identify weaknesses, and know when to trust the numbers—or set them aside. Whether you're coaching data-driven road racers or time-crunched beginners, this course helps you determine what matters and make better calls, every time. You’ll master how to:  

• Interpret fitness and fatigue trends using metrics like TSS, CTL, and heart rate-to-power ratios. 
• Pinpoint weaknesses through 5-second to 20-minute power tests—and tailor training to improve them. 
• Monitor training with what Dr. Stephen Seiler calls the “Holy Trinity”—external load, internal load, and perception—to track progress while keeping your athlete’s unique physiology and feedback front and center.
• Avoid what Neal Henderson considers common data traps, like overestimating FTP, relying too much on peak numbers, or mistaking fatigue for fitness—and know when to toss a bad test.  

Not sure if your athlete is underperforming or just fatigued? Lost in charts, graphs, and data? This course shows you what matters to make smarter coaching decisions. Don’t just crunch the numbers—coach the athlete. 

Take the next step in your Programming and Training Design Specialization —enroll today!

Coaching juniors isn’t just about podiums—it’s about preparing athletes for long-term success in sport and life. Our new course, “Coaching Junior Athletes,” teaches you how to develop strong parent partnerships, apply Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) principles, and coach with a long view in mind. Featuring insights from Boulder Junior Cycling’s Pete Webber and WorldTour physiologist Dr. Iñigo San Millán, this course combines science and real-world strategies to help you shape motivated, resilient young athletes. You’ll master how to:  

• Set clear boundaries and build trust with parents by leading pre-season meetings, explaining the coach-parent-athlete roles, and teaching parents how to support (not coach) from the sidelines
• Apply LTAD frameworks to guide age-appropriate training and long-term performance.
• Recognize the physical, emotional, and motivational factors that truly shape elite-level potential.
• Use practical tools—like baseline aerobic testing, developmental benchmarks, and day-to-day behavior cues—to guide progression. 

This course teaches you the tools needed to coach junior athletes with clarity and confidence so you can foster long-term development, prevent burnout, and help young athletes thrive. Create confident, capable juniors, on and off the bike. Coach for the long game. Develop athletes who love the ride. 

Take the next step in your Athlete Management & Development Specialization —enroll today!

Many coaches seeking to grow a profitable and effective coaching business are now offering a broad range of athlete services as a key way to differentiate their business. Our online course, “Scaling Your Coaching Business,” gives you practical strategies to retain athletes longer, improve performance outcomes, and help your business stand out in a crowded market. You’ll learn how to:

• Build and leverage a referral network of experts to expand your offerings like metabolic testing, strength training, and nutrition planning.

• Follow Coach Julie Young’s system for creating bundled offerings—like preseason athlete consults, monthly check-ins, and performance testing—that increase value and retention.

• Collaborate with nutritionists using screening templates, fueling plan tools, and messaging tips that align with your coaching values and support athlete health, performance, and habit change.

Whether you’re a coach with 5 or 50 athletes, this course gives you the tools to turn your coaching into a full-service, athlete-centered experience. Walk away with proven systems, expert-backed strategies, and service models that not only elevate your athletes—but drive long-term growth, retention, and revenue for your business.

Take the next step in your Business Skills Specialization—enroll today!

Helping athletes stay competitive and fulfilled as they age requires more than adapting workouts—it demands a deeper understanding of physiology, motivation, and mindset.  

Our new course, “Coaching Masters Athletes,” shows even veteran coaches the best ways to adjust training for masters athletes. This course details how to adjust training plans, workout intensity and recovery timing, how to help aging athletes stay healthy, and other considerations of their athletic journey.  

Featuring science-backed insights and real-world stories from legends like Joe Friel and Cathy Utzschneider, this course will show how to coach masters athletes with clarity and confidence. You’ll master how to:  

• Adapt training to age-related changes in VO2max, muscle mass, and recovery needs while maintaining high performance.
• Implement smart, sustainable strategies—including strength training, intensity, and recovery blocks—that prevent decline and support long-term athletic goals.
• Recognize and respond to shifts in motivation, helping athletes redefine performance, stay consistent, and find personal meaning in their goals.
• Use practical coaching tactics—from setting meaningful, value-based goals to navigating setbacks and reinvention—to keep masters athletes engaged and progressing. 

This course teaches you the tools and strategies to help athletes in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond stay competitive, healthy, and inspired. Coach for longevity. Support reinvention. Help athletes love the ride—at every age. 

Take the next step in your Athlete Management & Development Specialization —enroll today!

Coaching athletes with disabilities not only requires the same skill, strategy, and support as coaching any cyclist, but also calls for a deeper understanding of adaptive needs and inclusive practices. In our new online course, “Coaching Para-Cycling Athletes,” you’ll master modifying bikes for different impairments, guiding athletes through classification, and integrating para-athletes into group rides and races with confidence. You’ll learn how to:

• Understand how equipment adaptations—like handcycles, prosthetics, and modified brake/shifter setups—support performance and safety.

• Navigate the para-cycling classification system, adapt equipment, and promote skill development, safety, and inclusion both in training and at races.

• Guide athletes through domestic and international classification processes to ensure fair and appropriate competition.

• Evaluate support systems and recommend resources, training pathways, and development opportunities for athletes with disabilities.

• Integrate para-athletes into local clubs, group rides, and race events—promoting inclusion and growing your impact as a coach.

If you’ve ever hesitated to coach an athlete with a disability, or felt unsure how to advocate for their opportunities, this course will give you the clarity, tools, and confidence to coach inclusively. Become a trusted leader in guiding para-cyclists to achieving their goals. Expand your coaching to empower every athlete.

As a coach, your athletes trust you to protect both their performance — and their long-term health. Our new course, “Concussion Awareness for Cycling Coaches,” equips you to recognize concussion symptoms, respond after crashes, and guide athletes safely back to sport. Featuring insights from experts like Dr. Steven Broglio and Dr. Anna Abramson, you’ll get the latest in concussion science and practical tools tailored to cycling. Walk away with clear strategies to assess symptoms, build a team-wide protocol, and support recovery—without rushing the process. You’ll master how to:

• Recognize concussion symptoms, risks, and red flags unique to cycling crashes and high-speed impacts.

• Build a concussion management plan using tools like baseline testing (e.g., SCAT2, ImPACT) and digital platforms such as HEADCHECK Health.

• Respond appropriately to post-crash scenarios—conducting on-the-spot assessments and knowing when emergency care is warranted.

• Support athletes through a structured return-to-sport protocol, while understanding risks like Second Impact Syndrome and post-concussion syndrome.

Concussions are one of the most critical and complex health concerns in cycling. If you’ve ever felt uncertain about how to respond after a crash, or how long to hold an athlete out of training, this course will give you the clarity and confidence to make the right call. Keep your athletes safe. Keep their season on track. Be the coach who knows when to push—and when to pause.

Your role as a coach extends far beyond designing workouts and providing technical guidance. The course Creating a Performance Enhancement Team shows how to build a network of trusted experts—from sports scientists to medical staff and pharmacists—to help your athletes train smarter, recover faster, and perform at their best. You’ll master how to:

• Identify and collaborate with key service providers including healthcare professionals, nutritionists, sports scientists, and legal or medical specialists.

• Understand the unique role each expert plays in contributing to holistic athlete development and performance.

• Develop strong partnerships with team members while maintaining your leadership role as the coach.

• Integrate expert input into training plans in a way that aligns with your coaching philosophy and the athlete’s goals.

This course teaches you how to build and lead a team of specialists with confidence—so your athletes receive the comprehensive support they need to reach their full potential. Build the right team. Make better decisions. Help your athletes go farther.

Our course “Fundamentals of Sports Nutrition” will show coaches exactly how to guide athletes through every stage of fueling—from daily training to race day—with confidence, clarity, and purpose.

Helping your athletes fuel smarter isn’t just about meal plans—it’s about unlocking performance, supporting health, and ensuring they’re ready to train, race, and recover at their best. Whether you’re guiding juniors balancing school schedules, elite racers chasing peak performance, or athletes returning from the offseason, or masters athletes seeking to maintain muscle mass and endurance, knowing how to make nutrition simple, sustainable, and effective is essential.

Backed by expert insights from Dr. Louise Burke and cutting-edge research from the Australian Institute of Sport, this course gives you the science-backed strategies to fuel every phase of your athletes’ journey. Coaches will learn how to:

• Understand macronutrients and calculate daily carbohydrate, fat, and protein needs based on training load, intensity, and body size.

• Build SMART race-day fueling plans and carbohydrate-loading strategies that help athletes stay energized and avoid bonking.

• Apply nutrition periodization—so your athletes know exactly when to eat more, when to scale back, and how to adapt their fueling with each phase of training.

• Navigate tricky conversations around body composition and weight management.

• Address low energy availability or RED-S before it derails performance.

Give your athletes the advantage that comes from smarter, more individualized fueling strategies—and become the coach who not only understands the science, but also knows exactly how to put it into practice. You’ll learn to see nutrition as part of the training puzzle, integrate it seamlessly, and help your athletes show up fueled and ready—every single day.

Take the next step in your Physiology of Training Specialization—enroll today!

For too long, many have coached women by making educated guesses. This online course, “Coaching Female Athletes,” will help you coach women more effectively by applying findings from research and tapping experts with years of experience coaching female athletes.  

You’ll discover how to: 

• Understand how menstrual cycles, perimenopause, and menopause impact strength, recovery, and adaptation—and how to adjust training for each.
• Use simple nutrition strategies to support female physiology—including when to increase carbohydrates, boost protein, and manage GI issues.
• Build resilience and trust, using clear communication to help athletes navigate comparison, negative self-talk, and life challenges like balancing training and parenting.
• Identify and address red flags like low energy availability (LEA) and relative energy deficiency (RED-S) to protect your athletes' health and avoid setbacks.
• Decode wearable data through a female-specific lens and avoid common mistakes from male-derived metrics. 

From understanding hormonal impacts to optimizing fueling and mindset, this course gives coaches everything they need to help female athletes thrive—and to coach with confidence, clarity, and care. 

Whether you're coaching juniors, elites, or mom-athletes balancing it all, this course shows you exactly how to meet them where they are—and help them reach their potential. 

Take the next step in your Athlete Management & Development Specialization —enroll today!

Talent isn’t built in a season; it’s shaped over years. Whether you're coaching juniors or national team hopefuls, knowing how to match training to each athlete’s physical, mental, and emotional development is the difference between burnout and breakthrough.  

"Long-Term Athlete Development Movement" gives you a proven framework for guiding athletes through every stage of growth—from early discovery to high performance to lifelong participation—without pushing too hard, too fast. You’ll learn how to: 

• Use the ADM’s five-stage development model to align training, recovery, and competition with an athlete’s actual growth stage—not just their age or category
• Spot the “golden windows” of speed, strength, and skill development, and apply them using the LTAD stage-specific focus areas for cyclists ages 6 to 25+.
• Design age-appropriate sessions that build motor skills, resilience, and tactical thinking—with competition guidelines that avoid over-racing.
• Build training programs that scale across disciplines and development levels, from games-based learning for youth to discipline-specific progression for national-level riders. 

This course gives you the tools to build better cyclists, better people, and a stronger culture. Whether you're developing youth riders, shaping collegiate programs, or refining national-level talent, this course helps you coach with clarity, confidence, and purpose— from day one to decades in the sport. 

Take the next step in your Athlete Management & Development Specialization —enroll today!

Learn how to guide your athletes through a smart, sustainable base season—and lay the aerobic foundation for stronger performance, season after season.  

This course, “Base Training,” shows you how to pinpoint an athlete’s aerobic threshold using heart rate and power data, structure effective long, slow distance (LSD) rides, and build weekly base training plans that balance endurance, strength, and recovery.  

Whether your athletes have all day to train or just a few hours a week, you’ll learn how to optimize every ride, plan smarter base weeks, and get them to race season strong—not overcooked.  

You’ll master how to: 

• How to optimize structural and biochemical adaptations by dialing in the right intensity at the right times.
• Analyze, with the help of Dr. Stephen Seiler, advanced metrics like cardiovascular drift, intensity distribution, and durability markers to monitor athlete progress and avoid “junk miles.”
• Design base training weeks that work best—with the right blend of low-intensity volume, strategic strength work, and just enough threshold training to maximize gains without triggering early-season burnout.
• Convince skeptical athletes that going slower now will make them faster later—using data, science, and simple analogies that click.  

If you’ve ever struggled to plan base season for athletes with limited time, confused goals, or a tendency to push too hard too soon, this course will show you a better way—backed by science and experience from coaches who’ve been there. Let base training be your secret weapon. Help your athletes go slow now to get faster later. 

Programming and Training Design Specialization —enroll today!