UCI Level 3 Cycling Coach & Sports Nutritionist

If you’ve ever wondered what actually separates a good cycling coach from a great one, it usually isn’t a huge Instagram presence or longer list of Strava followers. It’s the depth of knowledge behind the training plan and coaching you’re provided — and that’s exactly why I want to tell you about the certification I received that few coaches in the world can claim: the UCI Level 3 Coaching Diploma.

What the UCI Diploma Actually Is

The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) — cycling’s global governing body — runs its coach education pathway out of the UCI World Cycling Centre (WCC) in Aigle, Switzerland. The Level 3 Diploma sits at the top of that pathway.

Becoming a UCI Certified Cycling Coach is not an online certificate you can knock out over a weekend. It’s an intensive, in-person program built for coaches already working with national teams or elite, national-caliber athletes, and it’s only awarded to a small number of coaches from around the world each year.

I completed the program on-site at the WCC — roughly 3.5 weeks and 170 hours of training, split between the classroom and the bike. That’s not a typo. Most weekend coach certification courses wrap up before a WCC training day even finishes lunch.

Why This Level of Training Matters for You

A Level 3 Diploma isn’t really about badge-collecting. It’s about being trusted with the full picture of what it takes to develop a rider — from someone just discovering their talent, all the way through to an athlete chasing a world-level result. The program is built around four pillars:

Advanced elite training methodologies and conditioning
Multi-discipline tactical and technical analysis (road, track, MTB, and BMX)
High-performance management and talent identification
Direct coordination with international athletic standards

That breadth is the point. A coach who’s only ever trained road racers will miss things a track or MTB background would catch — and vice versa. My training deliberately crossed all four disciplines, so when I build your plan, I’m not working from a single narrow playbook.

Learning Directly From the People Who Wrote the Research

This is the part that I think genuinely sets a UCI-certified coach apart: several of the most important sessions weren’t taught by career coaches at all — they were taught by the researchers whose work defines modern endurance science.

Two names stand out from my time at the WCC:

Grégoire Millet, Professor of Exercise and Environmental Physiology at the University of Lausanne, is widely regarded as one of the foremost researchers in altitude training and hypoxic training anywhere in the world. He personally led our sessions on altitude training and hypoxic training methodology — the science of how the body adapts (or fails to adapt) to reduced oxygen environments, and how to effectively structure training and racing in these conditions.

Bent Rønnestad, Professor at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, is one of the most cited names in cycling-specific strength and conditioning research. He personally taught multiple sessions covering concurrent strength and aerobic training, the role of strength training in cycling performance, how to optimize high-intensity aerobic interval sessions based on what the current research actually shows, as well as heat training and acclimatization protocols.

That’s the level of expertise woven into this program — external researchers and academics brought in alongside UCI staff — which means the training I received wasn’t secondhand information filtered through a textbook. It came straight from the people generating the research in real time, in a small classroom setting where questions and pushback were part of the process.

A Curriculum That Covers Everything a Serious Coach Needs

Beyond the headline sessions, the WCC Diploma curriculum was genuinely comprehensive. A partial look at what was covered:

WADA anti-doping CoachTrue certification and integrity training
Principles of conditioning, athlete assessment, and building an annual training plan
Individual training session design
Bike fit
Sports nutrition
Mental health in sport
First Aid and CPR, plus concussion identification
Benchmarking and event/race analysis
HRV guided training
Coaching groups and talent identification
On-the-bike practicals across BMX, road, track, and MTB — including live coaching during an in-person cyclocross race and, most memorably, the Afghanistan Women’s National Championships Road Race, described below

To earn the Diploma, I had to pass a practical, on-the-bike coaching assessment across multiple disciplines, sit a full written exam, and build a complete periodized annual training plan for an ultra-endurance cyclist — evaluated by the same standards used to certify coaches now working with national federations around the world.

Coaching the Afghan Women’s National Championship Road Race

While I was at the WCC, the 2022 Afghanistan Women’s National Championships Road Race was held in Aigle. Women and girls in Afghanistan face a ban on participating in sports along with severe restrictions on their freedom of movement in their own country. The UCI hosted the national championship in exile, giving Afghan women cyclists living abroad a chance to compete for their national title and race under their own flag.

As part of our course, our group of coaches spent two full days working hands-on with the Afghan riders in the lead-up to the event — running pre-race training sessions and helping them prepare tactically and technically for race day. Watching that race unfold, and knowing I’d played a small part in getting those riders ready for it, is something I’ll carry with me.

What This Means When You Work With Me

When you hire a coach, you’re trusting them with your time, your training load, your recovery, and often your health. A UCI Level 3 Diploma means the coaching you receive is grounded in the same physiology, periodization science, and safety protocols used to develop national and Olympic-level athletes — not a generic template pulled off the internet. The skill of navigating the intersection of performance and the person, is something I’ve refined both through formal education and years of experience.

Whether you’re training for your first century ride or chasing a podium at a national championship, you deserve a coach whose knowledge has actually been tested against the highest standard in the sport. That’s what my methodology is built on.