Barry Austin Training Systems

Join the BATS Network

The Engaged Athlete Method, a coach dashboard that reads a whole roster at a glance, and twenty-two tools that ask where your athlete engaged rather than how much work they did. Run your own business, under your own name, with this behind it.

€49/ month
Network membership. The method, the teaching, the blog, my advice, the listing — and the dashboard and every tool if you want them.

Monthly. No annual fee, no lock-in, thirty days' notice either way. The dashboard is optional — a coach who wants the method and the conversation and nothing else pays €49 and adds no athletes.

Register your interest →
What this actually is

A good teacher can only reach the people in the room.

If what is being taught has value beyond that room, the next step is not to replace the teacher. It is to give other teachers something they can teach from.

That is how I see this app and network.

In schools and universities, much of what eventually becomes a handbook, textbook or teaching material started somewhere as one person’s way of understanding and teaching something. Writing it down allows that thinking to move beyond the original classroom, while the teacher in each new classroom still brings it to life.

The Engaged Athlete Method has grown in much the same way.

For years, the language, tools and ideas have developed through coaching athletes in real training and racing environments: Self, Elemental and Relational Engagement, the Self Movie, Mind Moments, RAR and the different ways we learn to read what is happening inside performance rather than only measuring the workload around it.

This app and methodology is a way of putting that body of work into the hands of other coaches and athletes.

Not so that the app can coach.

So that a coach has the method, language and tools available when they are teaching it. And so that the athlete can return to the same material, work with it, and gradually build their own understanding of what is happening inside their performance.

There is another reason I want the coach to remain central to this.

Good institutions matter. The best schools and universities have carried ideas, knowledge and standards across generations. They have produced people who go on to think better, contribute more and add something to the world around them.

But institutions have never done that through information alone.
There were teachers inside them.

Most people who look back on a meaningful education do not only remember the name of the school or the material they studied. They remember a teacher, lecturer, professor or coach who saw something in them, challenged them, gave an idea meaning, or changed the direction of their thinking.

That human touch matters.
It is one of the things I do not want technology to remove.

So the design of this app, and eventually the network around it, is deliberately built to keep the coach in the room. The method can travel further. The tools can become more accessible. Athletes can learn more independently. But the coach still brings context, judgement, experience and relationship to the work.

The coach still teaches.
The athlete still learns through experience.
The app gives them a shared place to work from.

So I don’t really think of it as an app.

I think of it as the teaching material for the Engaged Athlete Method, carried in a form that can travel into any classroom while keeping the value of the teacher alive.

Barry Austin
What you see

Every athlete on one line

Balance and conditioning, form and readiness, and the last seven days planned against actual. Press an athlete and open any tool with their data already loaded.

The BATS coach dashboard showing four athletes, each with critical power, a system balance chart, a readiness grid and their last seven days

The coach dashboard. Example athletes — no real athlete's data is shown.

What your athlete sees

Their own dashboard, in your name

It answers the question they actually ask — what am I good for today — and then hands the conversation back to you. It never prescribes the week.

  • Readiness — a percentage held back today, read from training load against how the last seven days actually landed.
  • System balance — where engine and reserve sit against their own best, both windows measured, nothing projected.
  • The seven-day window — each ride, in power zones or reserve draining and refilling, with a tap through to the tool that reads it properly.
  • One button to you. Each card shares straight to their coach. They choose the chat; nothing is broadcast.
Athlete readiness card showing a percentage held back today
Athlete system balance card

An example athlete.

The library

Twenty-two tools

All of them are engagement tools before they are anything else. They do not ask how much work was done — they ask where the athlete engaged, how deep they went, what it cost, and whether it came back.

athlete runs from the connected account  ·  upload works from a file, so it covers races and athletes outside the system too.

Cross-country · XCO and short track

XCO Engagement Extensiveathlete

The full race read — where the reserve above CP went, how deep each commitment ran, and whether it came back before the next one.

XCO Hotlapathlete

One lap at a time: where the reserve empties and refills inside a single lap, and what that cost the laps after it.

XCO Compareupload

Two rides folded lap by lap. Where time was won and lost, and what the rider was doing at each point.

Mind Momentsupload

The composure map. Red, yellow and green moments across a ride — where decisions held and where they slipped.

Short Track Plan Builderupload

Builds a pacing plan from the course: what the start can cost, and what has to still be there at the end.

Short Track Pacing Toolupload

The short-track pacing reference, worked from threshold and altitude.

Road

Race Engagement Expandedathlete

Road race engagement in full — responsibility taken, where the reserve went, what was left for the finish.

Road Race Playerupload

Plays the course from the GPX before the race: where the work sits, where position decides the outcome.

The Draft Labupload

Where shelter sits in a group or a crosswind — and what every wheel in the line is worth in watts.

Marathon and gravel

XCM Engagementathlete

The full marathon read: the foundation held, the moments taken, what each one drew from the reserve.

Gravel Engagementathlete

The same read for gravel, over terrain where the chance to pedal is itself a variable.

XCM Race Plannerathlete

Plans a marathon from the course profile — the foundation to hold and where the decisive moments fall.

Gravel Race Plannerathlete

The gravel planner, with speed and pacing solved from the profile rather than an assumed average.

Assessment and physiology

General Workout Assessmentathlete

One workout, four reads: the power curve, the reserve used, durability late on, and how it was paced.

VO2 Durability Toolathlete

What the VO2 hold looks like once fatigue is in the legs, against the season's best.

Anaerobic Intervals Assessmentathlete

The best six 45- or 60-second efforts, read as three phases of reserve depth.

Energy Systems Balance Reviewathlete

Anaerobic against aerobic — the level, the signature, and whether the system is primed.

Climbing & Time Trial Labathlete

The power band to hold for a climb, an individual time trial or a team time trial.

Heat Labathlete

What has been banked in the heat over six weeks, and how many exposures the next fortnight needs.

Stack Up Labathlete

Two rides over identical ground: channels, time gap, ARC budget, and an engagement report.

Data Checkathlete

The 90-day curve against the year, how well the model fits, the trend in CP and reserve — and the broken files underneath.

Engagement Questionnaireathlete

The self side. How the athlete read their own race, set beside what the data says happened.

New tools are released regularly and are included in membership as they arrive. Nothing in the library is charged for separately.

Where it sits

Alongside your platform, not instead of it

This is not an athlete management platform and it is not trying to become one. Keep the one you have.

What stays where it is

Intervals.icu, TrainingPeaks, or whatever you already run. That is where the training is planned and prescribed, where the calendar lives, where the workouts are written and the files land. None of that moves. Your athletes carry on exactly as they are, and so do you.

What this adds

The reading of what happened inside the work — where the athlete engaged, how deep they went, what it cost and whether it came back. It is the layer your platform was never built to give you, sitting on top of the same data you already collect.

Nothing is migrated and nothing is duplicated. An athlete connects the account they already use, and the reading appears here. If you ever stop, your training platform is untouched — you were never keeping anything in ours.

Beyond the software

You are not buying a tool. You are joining how I coach.

The dashboard is the visible part. What sits behind it is the reason the numbers mean anything — the thinking they came out of, the teaching that goes with them, the library you teach from, and me.

The Blog

Where the thinking is worked out

The method did not arrive finished. It is still being reasoned through in the open — how I read the sport, what I believe about athletes, and why the system is shaped the way it is. If you want to know how I think before you take on how I work, start here.

  • The Three Currents: the 3×8 rule for staying in the work without losing yourselfAug · 4 min
  • Your training zone isn’t the goalAug · 2 min
  • The magic in the loose endsJun · 2 min
  • The wrong mirrorMay · 7 min
Members only. Not published publicly.
The Curiosity Cube

The method, taught properly

An evolving library of lessons built for coaches, not athletes. Tutorials, case studies and reflections, all tied back to real riding and racing.

  • ●Coaching philosophy — the training system, effective and efficient coaching, applied principles, authentic intention, and the “100 of You” lesson
  • ●The four training phases — Accumulation, Aerobic Transformation, Shape and Realisation, each taught in full
  • ●Advanced learning — methodologies, and Flagpole Engagement
Added to continuously. Everything new is included.
The General Library

The athlete-facing reference, in your hands

The working library behind the training itself, written in an athlete’s language rather than a coach’s — so you can lift a piece of it straight into a conversation mid‑season. It opens for you, not for them. What you pass on, and how, is yours to decide.

  • ●Discipline playbooks — XCO with mind moments and race strategies, short course and criterium, XCM and stage racing, gravel, time trials, and post‑race assessments
  • ●Heat and altitude — acclimatisation, the time‑to‑disruption rule, session management, fuelling when hot, two altitude models and the complete adaption guides
  • ●Fuelling, health and mind — race fuelling, low‑CHO work, stage‑race fuelling, immune health, illness, concussion, co‑dependencies
  • ●Training craft — annual calendar structure, strength work, breath training, adaptation, recovery, fitness loss, travel and time zones, and why zones are not reset when the environment changes
Plus the Leading Edge shelf: methodology metrics, race engagement, chart explanations.
Access

Me, and the coaches around you

The part no software replaces. You are not left to interpret a chart alone — if a read does not make sense, you ask, and you get a coach’s answer rather than a manual.

  • ●A network call every month — one hour, every coach in the network, working through real cases, charts and races together. Bring the athlete who is not behaving and we look at them properly.
  • ●Questions between calls — when something will not wait a month, ask. You get an answer from a coach, not a help page.
  • ●A listing in the network — you are findable as a coach working this method
Every level includes this — including the coach who takes no dashboard at all.

All three are yours alone. The blog, the Curiosity Cube and the library are member pages on barryaustincycling.com, closed to the public, and your access begins the day you are approved. Your athletes do not receive a login. They get the app and their own dashboard; the teaching material comes to them through you, which is the whole point of a handbook.

What it costs

€49 a month to be part of the network

€49/ month
To be a BATS Network Coach. This is what that covers.
  • The Engaged Athlete Method and the teaching library
  • The blog — the thinking behind the method, as it develops
  • Coaching advice from me, and the monthly network call
  • Your listing in the network
  • Your coach dashboard and the full tool library — yours to use, or not use

No athletes required, and no set-up.

Adding athletesCost to youWhat it opens
Adding athletes is optional, and it costs more.

Putting an athlete on your dashboard gives them their own dashboard and tools, and is charged per athlete per month. An athlete upgraded to Leading Edge is charged at a higher rate instead. Both figures are set out in full in the agreement, and I will go through them with you before anything is charged.

First step

Tell me you are interested

There is no sign-up button, and that is deliberate. Every coach in this network was spoken to first. Send me this and I will come back to you — if it looks like a fit I will send you the agreement to read and sign, and if I need to know more before that, I will simply ask.

No agreement, no commitment, nothing to sign at this stage. I read every one of these myself.

Thank you — that is with me

I read these myself rather than handing them to a form, so give me a few days. If it looks like a fit I will send you the agreement; if I want to know more first, I will just ask.