Our Professional Coaching Pathway

As a professional triathlon coaching business, our aim is to deliver the best possible coaching experience to all the athletes we work with. For that, we need high-quality coaches who operate to a professional standard. This is something that has been highlighted as missing within the UK coaching pathways in all sports.

Since 2015 we have been developing Tri Training Harder coaches informally through powerpoints, lecturettes and shadowing but in 2021 we launched the Professional Coaching Pathway to ensure a consistently high-standard of coaching for our clients and friends. The pathway is an online learning course that blends knowledge, reflective practice and deliberate demonstrations of coaching practice and leadership designed collaboratively by our head coaches.

We take anyone with the right mindset of self-development and challenge and help nurture their coaching to allow them to make their passion a sustainable source of income. In turn, this provides a higher standard of coaching for our athletes.

Now, every coach working for Tri Training Harder has been through our pathway which ensures a consistent coaching approach to a professional standard that we are all proud of.

The Pathway Vision

The vision is to establish a clear benchmark that we believe defines professional coaching. From this position, we are then able to create a career pathway for a sustainable career in coaching which is accessible to any and all coaches willing to participate and complete the pathway.

The Pathway Mission

The Professional Triathlon and Endurance Coaching Pathway’s mission is to upskill coaches with the knowledge, experience, practice and skills to enable a consistently high-quality of coaching to a professional standard through a dynamic and evolving process that ensures coaches are always ‘current’.

In an unregulated profession, we are trying to create a standard to which our athletes know what to expect and we hope that other organisations and coaches will join us in creating an ever-increasing standard of professional coaching that recognises that professional coaching is a lot more than just a qualification or a course.

Scientific reviews on how to succeed as an athlete and the coaching education within the UK has demonstrated consistently that a mainstream coaching lacks a professional standard and this impacts the athletes and therefore overall performance. We intend to change the landscape of coaching in endurance sports.

The pathway is designed to complement and sit alongside other national governing body qualifications and online courses in order to enhance a coach’s ability to work as a professional triathlon and endurance coach. It uses a mixture of theories, models, demonstrations and examples to give a rounded approach to coaching that removes the idea that there is one singular way to coach. This is not a model or data vs. dogma approach, this is a process and as such it will develop itself as coaches give their feedback into the loop. That acceptance that coaching will always develop is at the heart of our pathway. Coaches are continually looking to improve their skills and knowledge.


The programme aims to add depth and breadth to a coach’s skill set and ability through an evolving pathway that is based upon peer, athlete and external expert challenge and contribution to the system. The pathway will not teach coaches to coach in a certain way, rather think and evolve through any coaching problem to become truly athlete-centred. 


We develop a complete triathlon and endurance coach who can coach all athletes from beginner through to elite using the most appropriate coaching technique for that individual. Our coaches have a passion for coaching, a desire to learn and develop, to personally challenge themselves and their coaching practice. Fundamentally our coaches join Tri Training Harder in order to accelerate their experience through the pathway and ultimately to do a professional job. 


There is no substitute for coaching and experience, but our intention is to help coaches start that experience at a higher level of understanding and purposefully learn from it in a structured and supported environment. The pathway is in conjunction with NGB awards and not a stand-alone course but accelerates a coach through their journey to become a professional coach. As our coaches work collaboratively, they are able to call upon an extraordinary range of experience and expertise.

By choosing a Tri Training Harder coach, you know that our expectations are of a very high standard both in the material you are given and the way you are treated. The business’ mission is to enable you to achieve your extraordinary dream. We believe that if we are handling your dreams, they deserve the respect and professionalism that they deserve and we know that our pathway goes a long way towards achieving that.

Becoming a Tri Training Harder Coach is rewarding and challenging and as a result, all our coaches are proud to be able to call themselves one.

The Three Characteristics of Professional Coaching

We identified that there are three critical areas that should be addressed after a coach has completed a national governing body coaching qualification before they can coach to the standard of a professional coach. It is these standards that we use to accept our coaches through the pathway and continually hold them to these criteria. This ensures that there are no gaps in a coach’s knowledge, experience, understanding or development. We believe that professionalism is a standard to continually work towards and not a badge once earned, it is a way of living. It is this high standard of discipline and coaching that gives us confidence when we onboard new coaches and athletes who work with them. Our coaches work tirelessly together to ensure we are all staying ahead of the industry as it continues to evolve.

  • We believe that professional coaches must be highly knowledgeable in all areas of endurance but they must recognise that they still have more to learn. Coaching is both a science and an art. Professional coaches must base decisions in objective and scientific ways.

    Coaches will arrive with expertise in certain areas but rarely can have a complete understanding. In fact, by the nature of our approach, coaches will need to continue learning all the time. Equally, new coaches bring different perspectives and ideas which can add to the pool of coaching knowledge meaning all coaches are continually challenged on their own point of view.

    Nevertheless, professional coaches must have a very high level of knowledge and understanding. Without it, they will struggle to create their own philosophy and struggle to apply new concepts or ideas to current knowledge.

  • We believe that coaching experience is a huge part of their development. There is no shortcut to learning from experience.

    Knowledge is only one half of a coach’s toolbox. What they know is one thing, the experience of knowing how and when to apply this knowledge is fundamental to the art of coaching.

    However, by learning from their peers, professional coaches can expedite some of their mistakes and deepen their opportunities for learning.

    With the collaborative approach of our community of coaches, new coaches have a vast amount of experience to tap into and learn from yet older, more experienced coaches are forced to be open-minded about their philosophies and not get stuck in their ways.

  • We believe that a professional coach is always learning. The minute they stop learning is the peak of their coaching career.

    This humble, approach to self-development and learning ensures that a coach keeps up to date with current trends/thinking/developments within the industry. Though a coach’s philosophy may stay consistent, their understanding should always be evolving.

    A professional coach will never shy away from something that challenges their belief’s or ability as it will only add to their coaching ability and result in a better experience for their athletes.