Who Controls Your Coaching Brand?

The Platforms That Take the Spotlight

Big endurance coaching platforms like TrainingPeaks have set the standard for training delivery and athlete management. They have fantastic features, but they come with a downside: your coaching brand is often relegated to the background (or to a basic header). TrainingPeaks, for example, builds an ecosystem that encourages athletes to think of the platform first, not their coach's brand.

This is not a criticism of the platforms in their entirety, as they offer a lot of value for coaches. However, it's important to understand that their business model does not primarily rely on coaches being successful. Their focus is often on growing the platforms base of athletes, which can sometimes overshadow the individual coach's role.

Many coaches do an excellent job of building their brand outside of the platform in the real world. They create meaningful interactions with their athletes, host events, and actively promote their personal brand on social media. However, once athletes interact with them through a coaching platform, this brand presence often becomes compromised, as the platform's branding takes over and dilutes the personalized experience that coaches have worked hard to create.

The athlete experience is often framed as "TrainingPeaks is delivering your training experience." As a result, athletes may overestimate the platform's contribution, when in reality it’s the coach who provides most of the value toward achieving their goals.

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Examples of Platform-Centric Athlete Interactions

Here are some key examples of how interactions reinforce the platform's brand over the coach's:

• Logging In: When athletes log in, they typically see the platform’s logo and branding, not the coach's. This immediately centers the platform in the athlete's experience.
• Notifications: Automated emails and app notifications often come from the platform itself, not from the coach, making it seem as though it’s the platform guiding their progress rather than the coach.
• Content Discovery: Athletes may be presented with training plans or content from other coaches or even from the platform itself, which makes it easy for them to see other options or bypass the coach they’re currently working with.
• App Interface: The entire app interface is usually branded around the platform, not the coach, making the platform's presence dominant in the athlete's daily training routine. Some platforms offer limited branding options, such as adding a coach's logo, but these cursory elements often look out of place and can clash with the platform's overall branding.

Competing in a Marketplace

For coaches, this structure functions much like a marketplace—everyone is in competition. If you're a coach on TrainingPeaks, your offering sits side-by-side with hundreds, if not thousands, of others in a coach directory, and often you're competing with TrainingPeaks itself. Athletes can hop from one coach to another, or they can just buy a premium subscription directly with TrainingPeaks, bypassing the coach altogether. The value you've worked so hard to create can be diluted by the platform's approach to promoting its own subscriptions and services, positioning itself as a central hub where athletes can coach themselves or easily switch allegiance.

This model makes it challenging to build loyalty. You end up putting in the hard work, getting athletes to a certain level, only for them to be wooed by a TrainingPeaks-promoted alternative, making it seem as if your role is interchangeable.

Branding in Other Industries

In almost every other professional industry, service providers have more opportunities to build their own brand. For accountants, lawyers, nutritionists, or consultants, the tools and platforms available typically work to support and enhance the service provider's brand, not compete with it. For example, scheduling platforms for therapists or booking tools for personal trainers are heavily brandable, allowing the professional to maintain a consistent brand presence throughout the client experience.

In these industries, clients know exactly who they’re working with, and every interaction reinforces the professional's brand. This helps build trust, loyalty, and personal recognition—something that is often more challenging in the endurance coaching space, where platforms like TrainingPeaks dominate the branding.

• Custom Branding: Many platforms allow professionals to fully customize the client interface, ensuring their brand takes center stage instead of the platform’s branding.
• Direct Communication: Communications such as emails and notifications are branded in the name of the service provider, reinforcing their identity at every client touchpoint.
• No Competing Marketplace: Unlike a marketplace model, these platforms don’t promote competing professionals or their own services, allowing the service provider to focus on building their own unique client relationships.

The Bottom Line

In almost every other industry, brand equity is critical. Whether an accountant, lawyer, or an endurance coach, the clients you attract and retain do so because of you. It’s your expertise, your personality, and your unique way of coaching that they buy into.

Endurance coaching, however, seems to be a glaring exception. When athletes think about their training, they often think of the platform—not the coach behind it. TrainingPeaks is everywhere—from the training calendar emails athletes receive to the mobile app they use. It’s "TrainingPeaks says do this today," instead of "Coach says." And that means, ultimately, it's TrainingPeaks that gets the branding power, not you.

The endurance coaching landscape doesn’t have to be dominated by the platform that hosts your business. If you’re tired of being just another coach in a marketplace, there are options to take control of your brand.

In Training Tilt, all our plans come with the ability to brand and customize, even our mobile app is branded with your coaching business when your athletes open it. You can use your own custom domain on the web app, and with our “Ultimate Plan” you can even have your own branded coaching app published to the app stores and fully managed by us.

Training Tilt can allow you to elevate your brand above the noise.

Your business deserves the spotlight. I’d love to show you how our all-in-one endurance coaching platform can help.

Book a demo, start a trial on any of our plans or flick me a message in the chat.

Cam,