2019 at Training Tilt - the good the bad and the ugly

Thank you for being part of Training Tilt in 2019.   Whether you are a Training Tilt coach, you've read our blog or taken our marketing course for endurance coaches, thank you.

I can't wait to get stuck into 2020 and make it another year of growth.  I look forward to the opportunity to meet and help more coaches.

I've always tried to keep it real at Training Tilt.  Although 2019 has been a great year for helping coaches all over the world we've had some ups and downs.  The key is to enjoy the ups and persevere through the downs.

Like any endurance race, the road for any business person (you and me) is full of peaks and troughs. Here are some of ours for 2019. 

Let's start with the good.

The Good - new features and improvements

Here are some highlights from our more than 40 releases in 2019. Some improvements were significant and ambitious and others were smaller but useful.
 

Interactive Training Plan Store

We added metrics and charts to the Training Plan Store so your customers can see more information on each of the Training Plans you are selling.

Attaching files to workouts

We added the ability to attach files to workouts so your athletes can download them directly from the web or mobile apps and upload them to platforms like Zwift.


 

Integration with ActiveCampaign for smarter marketing

We integrated our e-commerce tools with ActiveCampaign so those of you using this platform to market your businesses can easily track and monitor your campaigns and send customized email automations to your customers. This is in addition to our existing integrations with similar platforms like ConvertKit, Drip, and Intercom.

Maps for GPS workouts

Maps with GPS data have now been added for workouts .

Infinite scrolling calendar view

We updated the calendar view so you can scroll up and down, accessing past and future dates. I know, about time right.


 

Strava Training Scores and Garmin Training Effect

We started pulling through Training Scores from Garmin devices and Strava users.

More Good - Amelia Rose Watkinson

7th at the 70.3 Worlds

Our sponsored athlete Amelia Rose Watkinson had a great race and took 7th place at the Ironman World Championships in Nice France. Meals showed great courage on the hilly bike course and made a break that made a meaningful impression on the race and the final placings. Amelia often writes for us on our blog keeping us up to date on the training and racing life of a professional long-distance triathlete. Look out for more posts and great racing from Amelia in 2020.

The not so good

Performance issues

2019 was a year of growth but we also struggled with some big challenges due to this.

At the beginning of the year, we had a few weeks of growing pains where our platform suffered some unexpected performance issues. The issues were caused in part by increased load on the servers due to having almost twice as many athletes and coaches using the system as the 12 months previously. This highlighted some other issues with our architecture which was a bit of a blessing in disguise as we had the opportunity to address them sooner rather than later. Since February, the platform has been performing well even with further growth.

Suffice to say it was a very stressful time for me,  my team and my partner, Nicky. We had two weeks of high anxiety and little sleep, trying to get things back on track. Ultimately, the impact on our coaches and athletes was minimal but it didn't feel that way at the time.

I want to say thank you to all of you who were affected. As much as it must have been frustrating, everyone I spoke to was extremely understanding and supportive. Thank you for your trust and patience! It means a lot to me.

Compliance and integration

Last year we were required to undertake significant additional compliance that took up a lot of development time but unfortunately did not add much value to the platform for our coaches and athletes.

Both Strava and Garmin updated their platforms (in a good way) which required us to rewrite our integrations with them to incorporate those changes.

In September, new European credit card processing regulations meant that all e-commerce platforms needed to update their payments processing capability and integrations for increased security. This is a positive move long term as it will improve security for our customers using credit cards to make payments online. The downside is that we needed to rebuild our payments features. The changes apply primarily to European operators but will also apply for operators in the US and elsewhere in the world to enable acceptance of card payments from European cardholders.  We anticipate the same changes will be implemented in the US next year so it's great that we are one step ahead of these changes already.

What will 2020 bring for Training Tilt and our coaches?

A new year and a new decade. It's difficult to plan too far in advance in our modern world as things change rapidly.

We know we have an advantage over other service providers in our space because we offer a broad set of business features that no other platform offers. On the flip side, we know that we fall short on the analysis of training data and our ability to integrate with other training platforms like Zwift and Polar.

The new year will be the year where we match our competitors on this front.

Here are a few things that are at the front of our mind and that we are already working on for early 2020 releases;

• The rise of indoor training - The ability to build Structured Workouts and export to other platforms like Zwift and devices like Garmin;
• TSS scores and more advanced training data;
• Training Zones;
• Direct Sync with Polar devices.

As always, our overarching objective is to support coaches build and grow their businesses. Competition between coaches will be fiercer than ever in 2020 and that battle will be won by the coaches who have the broadest business skills that span the technical side of coaching but even more importantly that include an approach to sales and marketing that will ultimately provide better experiences for their customers.

We want to be part of your journey to building a better, more sustainable and more rewarding coaching business.

We would love to hear from you about your experiences in 2019 and your exciting plans for this coming decade. Please hit reply and let us know what you have planned.

Have an amazing start to 2020.
Cam from Training Tilt