Most cyclists training without a coach are not short of effort. They are short of signal. Sessions accumulate, fatigue builds, fitness stalls, and the reason is rarely laziness — it is usually the wrong work at the wrong intensity at the wrong time. A structured coaching relationship fixes that, but committing $195/month before you know whether the approach fits your life is a reasonable hesitation.
The Not Done Yet 7-day free trial exists to remove that hesitation. No card upfront, no obligation at day 7, and no watered-down access. For one week you are treated as a full programme member: personalised plan, coaching call, community, the lot. Here is exactly what that week looks like.
What the 7-day trial includes
The trial is not a taster. It is full programme access for seven days, structured around the five pillars of Not Done Yet coaching: training, nutrition, strength, recovery, and accountability.
From day 1 you receive a personalised TrainingPeaks plan. That means structured sessions with power targets based on your actual zones, not a generic template downloaded from somewhere else. If you do not have your zones to hand, the FTP zone calculator on this site takes your current FTP and maps it to the full zone structure used inside the programme.
You also get one live 1:1 coaching call, private community access where current members post data, ask questions, and share race reports, and direct messaging with your coach between sessions. The accountability pillar is live from day 1 — if you complete a session, it gets reviewed. If you miss one, you hear about it.
The trial is free and requires no card. You apply, complete the intake form, and the plan is in your TrainingPeaks account before you ride anything. Details of the full programme are on the coaching overview page if you want context before applying.
Day 1: your intake and first plan
Before anything appears in TrainingPeaks, you complete an intake form. It runs to about 20 questions and covers current FTP or most recent 20-minute test result, average weekly hours over the past eight weeks, target events and their dates, training history, known limiters (climbing, sustained power, sprint, pacing), and recovery capacity including sleep and work stress.
That information is used the same day to build the plan. The zone structure goes in first. Sessions are then assigned across your available days with load distributed relative to your current fitness, not some idealised version of it. If you are averaging eight hours a week and have two hard days and one long ride available, the plan reflects that. It does not assume you have a World Tour athlete's schedule.
By the afternoon of day 1 the plan is in your account. Each session has a title, a purpose note explaining why that session exists at that point in the week, power or HR targets, and duration. Nothing is left to interpretation. If a session says 3x12 minutes at 95-105% of FTP, it means exactly that.
The first week of any plan is calibration. The data that comes back from those early sessions is as important as the sessions themselves.
Day 3: the first coaching call
The call on day 3 is the most important 30 minutes of the trial. By that point you have done two or three sessions, and the data is already telling a story.
The call covers three things in order. First, a review of what has actually happened versus what was prescribed. Compliance, power output relative to targets, RPE versus power — these gaps, when they exist, are informative. An athlete who is consistently above target power on zone 2 rides is almost certainly not doing zone 2. That matters for the rest of the plan.
Second, a refinement of the intake information. Intake forms capture facts. A conversation captures nuance. A 45-year-old athlete who describes their goal as "getting faster" on the form might clarify on the call that they have a 100km sportive in eight weeks and have not ridden more than 60km in two months. The plan adjusts accordingly.
Third, a brief walkthrough of the nutrition and recovery pillars as they apply to this athlete's specific situation. Not generic advice — specific guidance on pre-session fuelling, target carbohydrate intake on key sessions, and sleep targets. Asker Jeukendrup's research on multiple transportable carbohydrates and gut training informs the nutrition framework used; athletes doing sessions over 90 minutes are introduced to that framework on this call.
The call is logged. Notes go into your athlete file and shape every session adjustment that follows.
Day 5-7: riding the plan and seeing the difference
By day 5, most athletes are past the novelty of having a structured plan and into the actual experience of riding it. That is when the signal starts to separate from the noise.
The difference most commonly reported is not fitness — seven days is not enough to build fitness. It is clarity. Knowing exactly what each session is for, knowing the intensity is correct for the adaptation being targeted, and knowing that someone is reviewing the data afterwards changes how you ride. Effort becomes purposeful rather than habitual.
Prof. Stephen Seiler's research on polarised training distribution — the work that has shaped how endurance coaches at the World Tour level think about intensity balance — shows that most self-coached athletes spend too much time in the moderate intensity zone, not hard enough to drive top-end adaptation, not easy enough to allow aerobic base development. The plan built during the trial corrects that distribution from day 1.
Days 5 through 7 typically include the week's key session: a threshold effort, a long aerobic ride, or a session targeting the specific limiter identified at intake. That session is the reference point going forward. The data from it informs what week 2 looks like, whether or not you continue after the trial.
You can read how that progression has played out for other athletes in the member results section of this site.
What happens after 7 days
At day 7 you receive one message. It asks a single question: do you want to continue?
If yes, billing starts at $195/month. The plan continues without interruption. The coaching relationship that started on day 3 continues. Nothing resets.
If no, you are not entered into a follow-up sequence. The plan remains visible in your TrainingPeaks account for 30 days so you can reference the structure. Your athlete file is archived. If you come back six months later, the intake process starts fresh to reflect where you are then, not where you were in the trial.
There is no pressure mechanism built into day 7. The trial is designed to be good enough that the decision is obvious — either the coaching is delivering value and continuing makes sense, or it is not and you should not pay for it.
What typically makes the difference at the decision point is not the plan itself. It is the coaching call. Athletes who connect with the coaching relationship on day 3 almost always continue. Athletes who treat the trial as a way to get a free training plan for a week sometimes do not. Both outcomes are fine.
The $195/month fee sits below most gym memberships and well below the cost of a single coaching session with a local coach. For context, the Not Done Yet programme includes unlimited session review, plan adjustments every week, and direct coach access, not a monthly check-in call and a static 12-week PDF.
Who the trial is designed for
The trial is not for everyone, and being direct about that saves time on both sides.
It is built for cyclists and triathletes who are already training regularly — typically six to twelve hours per week — and are not seeing results that match that investment. The athlete who has been riding consistently for two or more years, has done a few events, and has plateaued is the core profile.
It also suits athletes preparing for a specific target event — a Gran Fondo, a cyclosportive, a 70.3, an amateur road race — with a defined date. A seven-day trial that starts 16 weeks out from an event gives the coach enough runway to build a meaningful periodised plan and gives the athlete a concrete reason to stay structured.
Triathletes are a particular specialism here. The triathlon bike leg requires a different coaching lens than pure cycling — protecting the run means managing power output and pacing strategy on the bike in ways that a cycling-only approach does not address. If you are racing triathlon and your run is falling apart off the bike, the issue is almost certainly on the bike.
The trial is not designed for complete beginners who have never trained consistently. Not because beginners cannot benefit from coaching, but because the intake process, the zone-based plan, and the session language assume a baseline of training familiarity. An athlete who has never done a structured interval session will get more from a few months of uncoached base building before starting.
If the profile above fits, start your free trial and the plan is in your account within 24 hours of completing the intake form.