Our group coaching features are designed to make it quick and easy to create group coaching plans and manage them in a central location for a large number of clients.

Often coaches have multiple plans running during a group coaching cohort with groups of athletes doing different plans but while all being part of the same overall coaching group over a given period of time.

It's helpful to use a real world example when explaining these features so in this article we will use a fictitious coaching business called "Titans Run Coaching". Tim is the head coach and Titans and runs a group coaching program for a running event in Texas. Tim caters for both half and full marathon runners at various levels of ability and ambition.

Tim has running programs for three different levels for both half and full marathon distances. In total Tim has six 12-week running plans. Each person in his group based on Tim's advice will choose one of the running plans to prepare for their running race.

The plans are named below based on distance and level.

In the past Tim has created spreadsheets for each of these plans and shared those with his runners. This has worked for Tim but his runners have begun to expect something more interactive that they can access more easily with integration with their training devices and the ability to check their schedule and analyze their completed workouts in the same system.

Tim has decided to use Training Tilt to create his next group coaching cohort so his running group is easier to manage and his runners will get a more enriched experience during their training.

Tim has a few requirements based on how he runs his running groups.

The first thing Tim must do is create his six running plans in Training Tilt.

The Group Coaching part of the plan configuration is the most important thing to consider so we will focus on that in this article.

An example of a group coaching plan with simple details

Tim creates each of the six plans with the same "Group Coaching" configuration under the "Group Coaching" tab.

Start and End Dates

The start and end dates represent the first day of training and the last day of training or typically this will be the day of the race if it falls on a Sunday, or if the race is not on a Sunday the end date should be set to the following Sunday. In this example the Marathon and Half Marathons are on Sunday the 2nd of April and training starts on the 9th of January.

Cohort Start Date

The cohort start date is important as it's the value that links all of the 6 training plans together so that clients can move between each of the plans if they need to. Plans in the same coaching group cohort can actually have different start and end dates (for example if the half marathon runners start training later than the marathon runners) but the cohort start date across plans must be the same. Typically the cohort start date should be set to the date you will starting send the plans to clients or start applying them to their calendars.

Once this coaching group cohort has completed their plans and their race then the same plans can then be reused again for a new group cohort. At this point the start and end dates should be changed along with the cohort start date. Once you change the cohort start date on a plan it will break the link to the existing cohort and any changes to the plan will NOT be sent to the previous group cohort of runners.

Important: All plans within the same cohort must have the same cohort start date. This is what links them together so clients can move between groups.

Once the plans have been created you can start building the training. The plans are built in the same way as other template plans except because we have start and end dates on the plan each week and day shows the dates rather than just Week 1 - Week 12 Monday to Friday.

Later on in this article we discuss how to add clients to the groups plans but first we will cover how to modify and sync changes to clients that are already on the plans after training has started. Skip to how to add clients to the plans

Once training has started plans can still be modified by the coach centrally and those changes can then be synced to all clients who have the plan applied to their calendars with one click of the button.

Modify the plan as you would modify a normal plan by adding new sessions, removing sessions or editing existing sessions. When your changes are completed use the "Sync Group Plan" button. This will sync your changes with all clients that have this plan on their calendar with the save group cohort date.

The "Sync Group Plan" modal box will show you the last time the plan was synced and it will also remind you of the start and end dates of the plan.

Syncing changes will sync only sessions that are in the future. Any sessions that occurred already will not be synced since they will likely already be completed by the clients.

You'll also see the latest synced date in the header of the plan so you know the date and time the last changes were synced to athlete calendars.

Moving clients in the same coaching cohort from one plan to another is a simple process. All you need to do is reapply the plan or add the client to the new plan manually or by sending the client a new invitation and linking it to the new plan. Because the new plan has the same cohort start date as their existing plan the system will know to remove the previous plan and replace it with the new plan.

You do NOT need to select the "Replace existing sessions" in this situation because the system will replace the previous plan automatically.

Applying the plans works the same way as applying a normal plan to a client. You can send an invitation to a client and link the plan or you can create a membership plan and your clients can sign up to the membership and the plan can be applied during the signup process or afterward by the client or the coaching. You can also add the client to the plan using the "Group Coaching Tasks" dropdown inside the plan itself. The only difference is when the plans are applied there will be no option to adjust the dates the plans are applied to. The plans will always be applied to client calendars based on the start and end dates configured on the group plan.

Screenshots below are the showing the three ways to get clients into the group programs.

By Adding Clients to the Plan

Clients must already have an active account to use this method. If they don't have an account or their account has expired or will expire shortly then you should use one of the Invitation or Membership Plan options.

Open the group plan in build mode and use the "Group Coaching Tasks" drop down and select "Add Clients to Group Plan"

By Invitation

Sending an invitation will allow a client link the plan to an existing active account, re-activate and expired account or create a brand new account.

If you want the client account to expire make sure you set the expiration date during the invitation setup. If you want the plan to be applied automatically make sure you select the "Apply" option for applying the plan during signup. The dates will be populated automatically from the settings of the plan.

By Membership Plan

If you configure a membership plan to have access to a plan then when a client signs up to that membership then they will get access to the plan in their plans list. By default they can then apply the plan to their calendar. If you want to force the plan to be applied during the signup process or you want to give the client a choice of group plans within the same cohort then use the plan add on's option and default the apply plan option to "Apply". For group plans the dates configured in the plan will override any dates configured in the membership plan.

Plan access

or plan add on