Physiological Testing: USA Cycling Course

Our online course, “Physiological Testing,” gives you the skills to interpret lab and field test results, explain them to your athletes, and use them to guide smarter, more personalized training decisions.

You’ll learn how to:

• Read and apply lactate profiles, VO₂max results, and power-duration curves to better understand how your athletes perform, and how to help them improve.
• Differentiate between testing protocols (like FTP tests, ramp tests, and INSCYD reports) and know when each tool is most effective for your athlete’s goals.
• Spot inefficiencies in energy system usage and learn how to shift an athlete’s training to improve fat utilization, raise threshold, or lower VLamax.
• Leverage real-world testing insights from performance physiologist Jared Berg and INSCYD founder Sebastian Weber to turn confusing lab data into simple coaching decisions.

This course helps you go beyond “just numbers” to truly understand how your athletes’ engines work, and how to fine-tune them for better performance. You’ll start seeing testing as a clear window into your athletes’ physiology—not just a data dump. If you’ve ever struggled to know what to do with a test report or wondered if testing was even worth it, this course will change the way you coach.

How to Enroll

All USA Cycling courses are offered exclusively through USA Cycling’s online learning management system at learn.usacycling.org.

Questions? Contact Suzy Sanchez, Director of DEI and Membership Programs, at ssanchez@usacycling.org.