TrainHeroic vs TrainingPeaks vs Coachbox: Strength, Endurance, or Both?

TL;DR: We wrote this three-way comparison because coaches often ask us for one tool that does what TrainHeroic does for strength and what TrainingPeaks does for endurance. TrainHeroic is a strength and conditioning platform with percentage-based loading from each athlete’s working max (percentages), team leaderboards and a program marketplace (TrainHeroic pricing). TrainingPeaks is an endurance platform with the Performance Management Chart, structured workouts that sync to devices and a large plan marketplace (TrainingPeaks for coaches), and it now has a Strength Workout Builder too (Strength Workout Builder). In the documentation of either product we did not find a way to analyze blood lactate tests. Coachbox covers the endurance and physiological testing side in one platform: training planning, lactate analysis and device sync for structured workouts. It is not a strength platform, but for coaches whose work centers on endurance and lactate testing, it is in our view the closest fit.

Update, 22 July 2026: Garmin has acquired TrainHeroic and TrainingPeaks from Peaksware Holdings (Garmin press release). The announcement did not mention changes to device support, pricing or coach accounts, so everything below describes both platforms as we found them on their own websites. For what the deal does and does not change, read Garmin acquires TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic.

The Case for TrainHeroic

In our view, TrainHeroic has a strong reputation in the strength and conditioning world. For the problems it was designed to solve, it solves them well.

Strength Programming Built for Coaches

The TrainHeroic programming interface is built for strength coaches. You can prescribe weight as a percentage of each athlete’s working max, and TrainHeroic calculates the recommended weight per athlete. A working max can be a tested 1RM or an estimate from sets of 15 reps or fewer (percentages, testing maxes). Program a squat day at “3x5 at 80%,” and each athlete sees their own number. For a coach with a large roster, that saves a lot of per-athlete arithmetic.

Linear Weight Progression raises the prescribed weight from the last logged set (percentages). You can prescribe RPE, tempo and rest (RPE and tempo), and group exercises into supersets and circuits (supersets).

Team Sport and Group Management

TrainHeroic was built with teams in mind. Team leaderboards let athletes rank against teammates on a lift, a circuit or a timed run (leaderboards). Compliance analytics show who trained and who didn’t (compliance analytics), and a Parent Calendar pushes the same programming to several teams at once (parent calendars). Readiness surveys before each session ask athletes about sleep, mood, energy, stress and soreness (readiness surveys).

S&C coaches at high schools, universities and professional organizations deal with scale problems that, in our view, TrainHeroic handles better than platforms built for one-to-one coaching.

Marketplace Revenue

TrainHeroic’s marketplace lets coaches sell team subscriptions, billed monthly or yearly, and one-off programs to athletes outside their direct coaching practice (selling teams vs programs). A coach needs to request marketplace access from TrainHeroic’s support team first (becoming a seller). A strength coach with an audience among CrossFit athletes, rugby players or weightlifters can sell to that audience at scale.

For coaches with the right audience and the right program, marketplace revenue can offset part or all of the subscription cost.

Athlete-Facing App and Messaging

Athletes see their workout and their target weights, log their sets and move on. In our view the logging flow is quick, which matters for compliance. TH Chat lets you message athletes directly or post to a whole team or program, with GIFs and video (TH Chat).

The Case for TrainingPeaks

In our experience, TrainingPeaks is where a large share of endurance coaches deliver training, and that adoption has made it deeply embedded in the endurance sports ecosystem.

The Performance Management Chart

For cyclists, runners and triathletes, TrainingPeaks is often where training plans live. Its Performance Management Chart (PMC) tracks CTL (chronic training load, the fitness metric), ATL (acute training load, the fatigue metric) and TSB (training stress balance, the form metric) (PMC, the science of the Performance Manager).

When a coach and athlete both speak TSS, CTL and ATL, they share a framework for discussing load, recovery and readiness. In our experience, knowing that framework has become a professional expectation for endurance coaches.

Device and App Ecosystem

TrainingPeaks syncs structured workouts to Garmin, Apple, Wahoo, Polar, COROS, Suunto, Zwift, TrainerRoad, Rouvy and more (device and app compatibility). Garmin Connect AutoSync brings in completed activities and some daily health metrics without any manual action (Garmin Connect AutoSync).

In our view, this ecosystem creates gravitational pull. Once an athlete’s training data flows into TrainingPeaks, moving to another platform means migrating that history and changing their sync setup.

Federation Partnerships

TrainingPeaks lists national governing bodies among its partners, including Cycling Canada, Australian Cycling, AusTriathlon, Belgian Cycling and Belgian Triathlon (TrainingPeaks partners). For coaches working with athletes inside these institutions, TrainingPeaks compatibility is sometimes a requirement rather than a choice.

Training Plan Marketplace at Scale

TrainingPeaks reports more than 100,000 marketplace visits per month and more than 70,000 training plans sold in 2023 (TrainingPeaks for coaches). For coaches who want to sell plans, it’s a proven distribution channel with real reach.

Strength, Now Included

TrainingPeaks added a Strength Workout Builder with more than 1,000 exercises with videos and instructions, custom exercises with your own YouTube or Vimeo videos, supersets, circuits, and RPE and RIR parameters (Strength Workout Builder, Strength Builder FAQs). Athletes perform these workouts in the mobile app, and coaches see compliance per exercise (Strength from TrainingPeaks).

Pricing

TrainingPeaks lists its coach plans in USD, billed monthly (TrainingPeaks for coaches):

• Coach Edition: 21.99 USD/month with 4 Basic athlete accounts and 1 Premium athlete account, or 54.99 USD/month for 5 or more Basic athletes. A 99 USD start-up fee applies, which TrainingPeaks waives with a coupon code on the page (TrainingPeaks for coaches).
• Premium athletes: 9 USD per athlete per month when the coach pays, with volume discounts from 5% (10 to 19 athletes) up to 50% (1,000 or more). Athletes can also buy Premium themselves (TrainingPeaks for coaches).

TrainingPeaks notes that “additional taxes may apply” and collects sales tax in some US states and VAT or GST in other countries on top (sales tax). What you pay depends on how many athletes need Premium and who pays for it.

Where Both Leave Gaps

Here’s where the assessment gets uncomfortable for both platforms. In our view, TrainHeroic and TrainingPeaks are both good tools, and both leave gaps that push some coaches toward multi-tool setups.

We Did Not Find Lactate Testing in Either

This is the gap that affects testing coaches most directly. TrainingPeaks detects new heart rate, power and pace thresholds from workouts and can suggest or apply them (threshold notifications). Its own coach guide to lactate testing points to Thresholds Over Time for tracking the values you found (a coach’s guide to lactate testing). We did not find a way in TrainingPeaks’ documentation to record blood lactate values from a step test and derive thresholds from them.

TrainHeroic tests working maxes for lifts (testing maxes). We did not find lactate testing or zone calculation from physiological data in its help center (TrainHeroic integrations).

Coaches who want to test their athletes therefore add a separate tool, such as INSCYD (lactate testing) or mesics WinLactat (mesics software). INSCYD lists integrations with AZUM, which maps INSCYD training zones into that platform, and with Velocity (INSCYD integrations, AZUM integration). We did not find a TrainingPeaks or TrainHeroic integration on that page, and we did not find one for WinLactat on the mesics site, so with TrainingPeaks or TrainHeroic you carry the new zones over by hand after each test.

For coaches who test quarterly or more often, that manual step adds up. In our experience it also makes coaches test less often than they would like.

Strength in TrainingPeaks Works Differently

TrainingPeaks’ Strength Workout Builder covers sets, reps, weight, supersets and circuits, with RPE and RIR as parameters and rest, tempo and rep ranges in the coach notes (Strength Workout Builder, RPE and rest). After a session, its post-workout analysis shows compliance, volume and estimated 1RM trends per exercise (Strength Workout Builder). We did not find weight prescribed as a percentage of an athlete’s max in its documentation, and the builder runs on the desktop site only (Strength Builder FAQs).

For endurance coaches whose athletes do supplemental strength, that can be enough. For percentage-based team programming, TrainHeroic’s tools go further in our view.

We Did Not Find Endurance Delivery in TrainHeroic

In TrainHeroic’s help center we did not find structured interval sessions that sync to a Garmin or Wahoo, TSS/CTL/ATL metrics or a Performance Management Chart. The integrations it lists are Apple Health, for nutrition data in Athlete Pro, and Zapier (TrainHeroic integrations).

For team sport S&C coaches whose athletes do conditioning work, this might be fine: a timed run or an AMRAP fits in a TrainHeroic session and even on a leaderboard (leaderboards). For coaches whose athletes train for endurance events, the gap matters.

Two (or Three) Platforms

The practical setup for a coach with hybrid athletes who wants strength, endurance and testing:

• TrainHeroic for strength, priced by roster size, from 9.99 USD/month for 1 athlete to 399.99 USD/month for up to 1,000, plus 9.99 USD/month per assistant coach (TrainHeroic pricing)
• TrainingPeaks for endurance, a coach plan from 21.99 USD/month plus Premium athlete fees if you pay them (TrainingPeaks for coaches)
• A testing tool such as INSCYD or WinLactat, each with its own pricing

These tools bill different things: by roster size, by coach plan plus Premium athletes, and for INSCYD per active athlete, as a flat rate or as prepaid test packages (INSCYD service license agreement). So we don’t add them up into one monthly total. What the stack costs you depends on your roster and how many athletes need each tool. As far as we found, every test still means entering zones by hand in TrainingPeaks or TrainHeroic, and every hybrid athlete means coordinating across apps.

The time cost is harder to put a number on: several logins, athlete data in several places, and explaining to athletes why they use different apps for different parts of their training.

The Case for Coachbox

Coachbox sits in the gap between platforms like TrainHeroic and TrainingPeaks. It doesn’t match TrainHeroic’s strength programming depth, and it has no marketplace like TrainingPeaks’ yet (TrainingPeaks for coaches). What it does is put endurance coaching and lactate testing in the same place.

Endurance and Testing in One Platform

When you run a lactate test in Coachbox:

1. Type in the lactate values, or let Coachbox read in a photo of your paper protocol
2. Coachbox detects LT1 and LT2 automatically in under a minute
3. Zones are calculated from the test, with multiple threshold methods to choose from
4. The athlete’s profile gets new zones, dated from the day of the test
5. Future workouts use the new zones, while past workouts keep the zones that applied on their date
6. A branded PDF report is ready to share

There is no second platform and no manual zone entry. The test flows straight into the coaching workflow.

In our view, that changes how often coaches test. When the step from test result to training zones disappears, testing fits into the season more easily, and zones stay current.

Lactate Analysis

You can enter values directly, or print a protocol, fill it in during the test, and let Coachbox read your results back in. It detects thresholds with several established methods. You review the result and adjust it where your judgment differs.

Coachbox deliberately trades the metabolic modeling depth of tools like INSCYD, which builds a full metabolic profile with VO2max and VLamax (INSCYD lactate testing), for speed. It doesn’t build a full metabolic model. It analyzes the lactate curve, identifies thresholds, calculates zones and generates reports. A test can also include spirometry data.

Compared with zones from an FTP test or a threshold estimate, lactate-derived zones are, in our view, a closer match to what happens in the athlete’s body.

The Full Endurance Coaching Platform

Beyond testing, Coachbox includes the coaching workflow for endurance athletes:

• Training calendar with workout scheduling
• Structured workouts that go to Garmin, Wahoo and COROS, with completed sessions syncing in from Polar, Suunto, Apple Watch and Fitbit too (integrations); power from Stryd and power meters comes in with the workouts
• Zone-based workout prescription with targets from your test results
• Integrated annual plan for periodization across the season
• Strength and core workouts in the same calendar, from your own library with your videos and images
• Training load with the Coachbox Stress Score, plus fitness and fatigue trends
• In-app messaging and comments on individual workouts
• Recovery and health: HRV, sleep and resting heart rate sync from the device, and injuries logged as milestones
• Coachbox AI, which answers questions about your athletes and writes changes straight into the training plan
• Branded PDF reports of lactate tests, fully in your own brand; the app itself is not brandable

Planning, device sync, a load chart, messaging and an annual plan are common ground with TrainingPeaks. The lactate analysis is where Coachbox adds something we did not find in either TrainingPeaks or TrainHeroic.

Transparent Pricing

Coachbox publishes its prices. All amounts are excl. VAT.

An athlete counts as active when they have workouts planned in the future. Every plan includes the full platform, unlimited coaches and free lactate tests at the start of your license, 5 to 20 depending on the plan; after that a test costs 3 to 6 EUR excl. VAT depending on the plan. Athletes coached on your plan use the app for free.

For labs and occasional testers, there is a standalone Lactate Module at 49 EUR/month billed yearly, excl. VAT, with test packs of 50, 100 or 250 tests for 250, 400 or 750 EUR.

25,000+ Users, 12 Million+ Workouts

Coachbox has more than 25,000 users in more than 35 countries, who have logged more than 12 million workouts. The platform is available in seven languages (EN, NL, FR, DE, IT, ES, PT).

Three-Way Comparison Table

All prices in the table are what a coach pays, without sales tax or VAT. TrainingPeaks notes that additional taxes may apply and collects VAT outside the US (sales tax). TrainHeroic collects US sales tax on top where required (TrainHeroic sales tax); we did not find how it handles VAT outside the US, so we do not convert its prices. Coachbox lists its prices in EUR without VAT. We do not convert between currencies.

Real Coaching Scenarios

Different coaches face different problems. Here’s how each platform fits specific coaching realities, in our view.

Scenario 1: Pure S&C Coach at a Performance Facility

You manage 40 athletes across multiple sports. Programming is all strength-based. Athletes do conditioning, but you prescribe it in the weight room as AMRAPs, circuits or timed work without device sync.

Best choice: TrainHeroic. Percentage-based loading, team leaderboards, compliance analytics and parent calendars fit this exact scenario. Coachbox is not built for it, and TrainingPeaks’ strength tools are, in our view, aimed more at endurance athletes who add strength.

Scenario 2: Elite Endurance Coach

You coach 15 cyclists who train 15 to 20 hours per week. You test them quarterly with lactate step tests, prescribe zone-based work and monitor training load. Strength work is supplemental and minimal.

Best choice: Coachbox. Lactate testing, zones, device sync and an annual plan in one platform cover this workflow. Training delivery is common ground with TrainingPeaks; the lactate analysis is what we did not find there. TrainHeroic doesn’t add much to this work.

Scenario 3: Hybrid Coach with Diverse Athletes

You coach 25 athletes. Some are triathletes doing significant swim-bike-run training alongside strength work. Some are CrossFit athletes who occasionally compete in obstacle races. You want to program and track both strength and endurance in one place, and you want to test the triathletes regularly.

Best choice: Coachbox for the endurance athletes, TrainHeroic for the CrossFit athletes. Or Coachbox for everyone, accepting that its strength programming goes less deep than TrainHeroic’s but, in our view, covers supplemental strength for endurance athletes. We don’t know of a single platform that serves both modalities at full depth.

Scenario 4: Coach Embedded in the TrainingPeaks Ecosystem

Your athletes are all on TrainingPeaks. They’ve used it for years. Their training history lives there. They know how to read their PMC. Switching platforms would disrupt your entire athlete base.

Best choice: Stay with TrainingPeaks for delivery, add Coachbox’s Lactate Module for testing. You run tests in Coachbox and enter the zones in TrainingPeaks by hand. It’s an extra step, but in our view it is a practical way to add lactate testing without moving your athletes.

Who Should Choose What

Choose TrainHeroic if you are…

• A strength and conditioning coach whose primary work is programming lifting for teams or individual athletes
• Managing a team or performance facility where group management, compliance and leaderboards matter
• Planning to sell programs through the marketplace as part of your business model
• Working with athletes for whom endurance training is minimal or irrelevant

Your stack: TrainHeroic for everything. Add another tool if testing or endurance delivery becomes necessary.

Choose TrainingPeaks if you are…

• An endurance coach already deeply invested in the TSS/CTL/ATL framework
• Working with athletes who are already on TrainingPeaks and where migration would be disruptive
• Building a business around selling training plans through the TrainingPeaks marketplace
• In a setting where federation partnerships or institutional requirements specify TrainingPeaks
• Looking for endurance delivery plus supplemental strength from a large stock exercise library in one tool

Your stack: TrainingPeaks for endurance delivery and supplemental strength. Add a testing tool when you need lactate data.

Choose Coachbox if you are…

• An endurance coach who wants testing connected to training delivery in one platform
• Regularly running lactate tests and tired of entering zones by hand in another system
• Managing hybrid athletes who train for endurance events and need zone-based programming alongside strength and core work
• Building a practice where lactate testing is a core service
• Looking to consolidate planning and testing into one subscription

Your stack: Coachbox for testing and endurance coaching. Add TrainHeroic if you have strength coaching needs that require its depth.

The Bigger Picture

The question we hear from coaches, “I need something that combines TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic,” points to a real gap. In our experience, coaches whose athletes train across modalities often end up with one tool per modality.

TrainingPeaks has started to close part of that gap with its Strength Workout Builder (Strength Workout Builder). TrainHeroic stays focused on strength and conditioning. Neither, as far as we found in their documentation, analyzes lactate tests, so testing coaches still add a third tool.

Coachbox doesn’t close this gap for everyone. It doesn’t match TrainHeroic’s strength programming depth, and it has no marketplace like TrainingPeaks’ yet (TrainingPeaks for coaches). What it does is put endurance training delivery and lactate testing in the same workflow, which removes the manual step between a test and the zones your athletes train with.

For endurance and hybrid coaches whose athletes need zone-based training guided by lactate data, Coachbox comes closer, in our view, to the “one platform” ideal than a combination of TrainHeroic and TrainingPeaks.

The right choice depends on what 80% of your coaching work requires. That’s the most honest way to choose a tool.