If you love running & helping others, you may be considering becoming a running coach. As a former accountant turned run coach, I want to share with you the exact steps to becoming a run coach & how to succeed.
How to Become a Running Coach
Becoming a certified running coach is fairly easy. Growing a thriving business as a run coach is completely different. We will cover both.
In this blog post, I am NOT referring to coaching college or high school or other organizations. I’m referring to an online or in person run coach who helps adults achieve their running & fitness goals.
Step 1: Do You Want to be a Run Coach?
The first step to becoming a run coach is to carefully consider if you WANT to be a coach.
Things you may want to consider when making the decision to become a run coach:
- Do you have the time to coach others? You can become a run coach even if you work full time, but you will need to have time to dedicate to creating training plans, responding to messages, having calls with athletes when needed, and marketing. When you become a run coach, you are taking someone’s training into your hands.
- Do you WANT to coach others? Run coaching extends far beyond creating training plans. As you will quickly learn, not everyone will follow your plan. They will ask you questions about fueling and pacing and they will come to you with their doubts and fears. Do you enjoy working with people?
- Are you willing to learn and treat each athlete as an individual? Although of course this isn’t REQUIRED to be a run coach, I truly believe the best run coaches are constant learners who will treat each and every person as an individual. Applying the same training plan to every person you coach will not work.
If you’re nodding your head and thinking yes, then it’s time to move on to the next step!
Step 2: Get a Run Coach Certification
The 2nd step to becoming a running coach is to get a Run Coach Certification. The act of becoming a certified run coach is fairly straight forward. You must complete one of the many certification programs. And in fact, you do NOT have to be certified to coach runners & collect money for your coaching, however, I highly recommend that you get certified
I am a RRCA Certified Run Coach and have taken the majority of the coursework for the RRCA Level 2 Certification. I have not taken the other courses mentioned below, but I will say that I have worked with & interviewed run coaches through my business coaching & podcast who have completed all of these certifications.
Pros and Cons of the Most Popular Running Coach Certification Programs
Road Runners Club of America Run Coaching Certification
Offers both online and in person coaching courses led by professional run coaches themselves. The course is an immersive 2 day experience either on zoom or in person. You MUST attend all sessions live (attendance is taken throughout the day & you must leave your camera on). I enjoyed the course because it was interactive and involved working on case studies. You got to meet other run coaches & work through real problems. After the course is over, you must complete CPR and First Aid Certifications & complete an online assessment to get your official certification. Once certified, you get access to a private RRCA coaches Facebook group which is helpful for ongoing support & questions. There is also an annual convention, which is where I took my Level 2 Certification course, which was in person and very interactive. As of January 2025, the RRCA certification costs $350.
UESCA Run Coach Certification
I’ve had several clients go through this course, which is self paced and much more technical than the RRCA course. The course content is created and presented by more than 1 run coach to give you multiple perspectives. Many of them struggled to get through the content quickly on their own, though everyone who has done it says its very comprehensive. According to the website, it takes approximately 25 hours to complete. As of 2025, the cost of the UESCA run coaching certification cost is $599.
Update- as of April 2025 UESCA is offering a hybrid virtual option as part of the ‘Advantage Format’ which includes 10 live zoom Q&A + learning sessions with Seth Funderburg and Jermaine Lamar.
UESCA also offers many variations of coach certifications. I personally am a UESCA Certified Endurance Nutrition Coach (highly recommend this if you are passionate about fueling like I am!).
VDOT Run Coach Certification
VDOT is a little lesser known of the run coach certifications. This certification is based on Jack Daniel’s Running Formula & once you watch a 1hr 45min video presentation of Dr. Daniels covering over 40 slides of exam material, you can take the exam. If you pass with 80% of above, you’re certified! My run coach partner Jen has been certified as a VDOT coach and she recommends this one as more of a supplement to your other certification, especially if you plan to the the VDOT software to coach like she and I do.
USATF Certification
This is required if you plan to coach at the school level. According to the website, “The course prepares an individual to coach at the junior age, high school, and club division level by emphasizing fundamentals, teaching progressions, rules, safety, and risk management.” It is a 22 hour self paced course .
Step 3: Start Your Run Coaching Business
Congrats, you’re a run coach!! And a business owner.
There CAN be a lot that goes into building your run coaching business – a name, logo, website, a place to take payment, etc but to start here’s what I recommend:
5 Steps to Establish a Run Coaching Business
- Spread the Word!!! Announce you’re a coach via social media and/or email, and reach out to people who may want your help training for a race. If it makes you both more comfortable to do this for free at first, make sure that you clarify how long you’ll coach them for free or at a major discount. (It gets awkward once you decide you do want to charge). I also recommend reaching out to people to let them know you’ve started a business and ask for referrals.
- Create an interest form. You do NOT need a website when you first start as a run coach. A simple google form will do. If you want to make it a little fancier, use Canva to create a graphic to put at the top. Put the form in your bio on your Instagram account and on your Facebook profile and share it when you do your announcement. But, don’t expect people to come running to you – likely you’ll have to do more than that to get clients.
- Figure out your pricing & how to you want to accept payment. Get the Runner Rising Pricing guide to work on your pricing for your run coaching business. I recommend using Stripe from the beginning – you can set up subscriptions easily so you aren’t hunting people down for payment. But if you can charge people via venmo or paypal. Whatever you do, keep track of it. And once you start getting the business going, open a business bank account.
- Decide how you’ll provide your coaching plans. You can explore various run coaching software, like VDOT, Training Peaks or Final Surge, or you can create google sheets or simply send people their training plans via email. Do what works for you and you can always change later.
- Legal stuff. Create a waiver & consider insurance. You can likely get away with being a sole prop for a while, but eventually it may be smart to become an LLC. Listen to this great episode of the Runner Rising podcast to hear all about setting up the backend of your business.
Be sure to subscribe to the Runner Rising Newsletter to get more business advice, updates and announcements. You can subscribe to get the Runner Rising Run Coaching Pricing guide here and automatically be added to my newsletter.
Step 4: Create a Marketing System to Get Run Coaching Clients Consistently
Marketing your business is a non negotiable and something that takes time and momentum. Think of it like running – you cannot run one time and expect to run a marathon. You need to train and you need structure.
Listen to this podcast with the 4 step system to get run coaching clients.
This is exactly why I created the Runner Rising Academy – to give run coaches an exact marketing system that they can implement to gain clients, month after month.
Step 5: Continually Grow, Adapt & Learn
Your journey as a run coach and business owner never ends – just like running, you’ll want to keep challenging yourself to improve. Here are some ways you can do that:
- Listen to running podcasts & read running books written by professionals.
- Attend run coach conferences & do continuing education.
- Get feedback from your clients
- Network and brainstorm with other run coaches. Another great way to learn from other run coaches is to listen to my Runner Rising Podcast interviews. Success leaves clues – you’ll learn a lot from hearing how a successful run coach grew & runs their business .
- Get a mentor (like me!) to help you fast track your progress!
Know that your coaching philosophy, approach, and services WILL change with time and that’s ok. Keep being open minded, willing to receive & implement feedback and constructive criticism, and keep learning.
You’ve got this!
