Here’s something worth thinking about, whoever you end up training with.

Almost every coach in this sport coaches from what they learned from their own coach. What they lived as an athlete becomes what they pass on to the people they train. That’s not a flaw—it’s how coaching knowledge has always been handed down. It’s a lineage.

So when you’re choosing a coach, the real questions are simple: Who was their coach? Where does their approach come from? And if it didn’t come from a coach, what did it come from—their education, their experience, their knowledge base?

You’ll find coaches at every point on that spectrum. Some hold certifications in standard endurance principles. Those principles are real, they work, and they can be learned. Others have degrees, years in the field, and a philosophy they built themselves. The question that separates them isn’t the paperwork. It’s this: Can they show you their methodology? Ask a coach to walk you through it, in writing, from start to finish. You’ll learn something from that conversation alone.

I can show you ours at Angela Naeth Coaching, and I can tell you exactly where it came from. QT2 Systems and I developed it together into what we now call ECHO Devo. It’s the system our entire Angela Naeth Coaching staff uses today. No matter who on our team coaches you, the work is grounded in the same methodology.

Here’s some background.

I’ve been a QT2 Systems athlete for fourteen years, and I still am. My coach writes my training to this day. That matters, because what we built wasn’t developed in a back room. It grew from a working coach-athlete relationship that has lasted nearly a decade and a half.

Here’s how it happened.

QT2 was built on formulas and years of refinement—season after season, athlete after athlete, keeping what held up and adjusting what didn’t. I built ANC the same way, developing and testing ideas with my own athletes. Two systems grew through the same process, and I stood in the middle of both: a QT2 athlete on one side, and a coach and founder on the other.

A couple of years ago, we sat down to build one system from everything we both knew. QT2 brought the formulas and analytical framework. I questioned the assumptions, dug into the reasoning, pushed back, and added what I had learned from racing and from coaching my own athletes. We went back and forth on concepts, tested different processes, kept what held up, and dropped what didn’t. We also brought in an exercise physiologist to pressure-test the science. Together, we shaped the work into something an entire coaching team could use—not just math that works, but coaching that works.

After two years, the result was ECHO Devo—ECHO Development: one written methodology and one shared philosophy. You may have seen some of the athletes we coach together on the ECHO Devo team. That collaboration uses this same system at the sharp end of the sport, and what we learn there feeds directly back into how we coach everyone.

We’re still refining it together, because that’s the point of the name. Coaching should never be stale. It should always be developing.

So what’s actually in it? Let me walk you through it.

It starts with physiology, because everything else depends on it. Your zones aren’t five equal, color-coded chunks, and they aren’t pulled from a generic formula. They come from four real physiological transition points identified through testing and refinement. On the bike, we use Critical Power; on the run, Critical Speed. We measure those from efforts you actually complete, and every zone we prescribe is anchored to them.

A word on heart rate, because it comes up constantly: We use it a lot. What we don’t do is set it from a couple of races or a single 5K test. Power and pace tell us what you produced. Heart rate tells us what producing it cost you on that day, in that heat, on that sleep. Anchor first, verify second, then prescribe. We use every useful metric an athlete has—RPE, heart rate, power, and pace—and we meet athletes through the measures that help them engage with the work.

The methodology covers how we select training blocks, determine how much load you can carry in a week, prepare your taper and race week, execute race day, review the result, and develop the mental side of racing. Week after week, we use everything available to us, from HRV to workout data, to make the next decision.

Here’s how that gets applied to you, the athlete.

We identify what’s actually holding you back, and we think about it like a house. The foundation is durability: Can you hold your form deep into a long effort and do it again tomorrow? Above that is the main structure—threshold, aerobic expansion, hybrid work, and event specificity. Can you execute your actual event, not just become generally fit? Above that is the intensity you can sustain in balance. At the top is your ceiling.

Every floor rests on the one below it. But you don’t simply march through levels one, two, three, and four. The sequence depends on your physiology and how you respond to training.

We don’t try to improve everything at once. We find the floor that’s failing, and we build that one. Getting that decision right is where much of the result comes from.

Any coach can build an athlete a house. To build a really good one, the coach has to understand the nuances—what this athlete actually needs, floor by floor.

Let me make that analogy more concrete. One of the blocks we developed is called Aerobic Expansion. It’s for the athlete whose easy work costs too much. You may be that athlete: You can hit your numbers in a workout, but when you go long, your heart rate starts climbing forty minutes in. There’s a wide gap between what you’re capable of and what you can actually sustain.

That block lifts the bottom of your range, not the top. And it may belong close to your next race, not months away from it.

We have different block types for different needs, and our methodology helps us determine which block each athlete needs and when they need it.

That’s why we don’t march everyone through base, then build—what some call threshold—and then race specificity. That’s the standard approach in endurance coaching. The problem is that the sequence assumes every athlete arrives missing the same thing. They don’t.

Two athletes who are twelve weeks, six weeks, or even three weeks from the same race may be doing completely different work. We match the training to where each athlete actually is—their physiology and current status—not where the calendar says they should be. Chasing threshold numbers simply because of a race date is one of the fastest ways to stall an athlete. We don’t chase the date. We keep pace with the athlete.

Now, about my coaching team at Angela Naeth Coaching—because this is the part I care about most. It wasn’t always this formalized, but now it has to be.

Every coach on this team is formally educated in ECHO Devo: the physiology and why each boundary sits where it does; our specific zones, from ZR—recovery—all the way through VO2 max; how blocks are chosen; and how load is set, progressed, held, or reduced for each athlete each week. That shared foundation sits beneath every athlete, at every level.

Here’s what makes it real coaching for every coach and every athlete: Each coach brings their own experience, education, and judgment to the athletes they work with—the same way my coach has brought his to me for fourteen years. That isn’t a weakness in the system. It’s what the system is for. The methodology carries the science and the standards, so each coach’s experience can be used where it matters most: on you.

So why am I telling you all this? Because there’s something in it for you, whoever coaches you.

You’re investing in coaching—your money, your time, your season, and your goals. You deserve to know what that coaching is built on. Ask your coach about their methodology. Ask whether it’s written down, and have them explain it in detail. Ask what drives the decisions they make for you. Their approach may combine standard endurance principles, certification coursework, personal experience, and lessons learned from their own coach. Whatever the answer is, you should know it, because you’re the one making the investment.

Angela Naeth Coaching is built on my experience as a professional racer who is still competing—I’m in year twenty, and I live and breathe this sport—along with a master’s degree in physical therapy and a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and nutrition. And it isn’t just me. Our coaches bring experience and education of their own. I handpicked each one and brought them through a formal process in ECHO Devo, the philosophy and methodology we built with QT2 Systems.

Here’s what I want you to take away: Anyone can hand you the vocabulary—more base, more tempo, more time in Zone 2. The words are the easy part. They’re free, and they’re everywhere. But the words are only the output. Behind them is a decision, and the quality of the coaching depends on the quality of that decision.

That’s what deliberate coaching looks like: a reason behind every session, and a method behind every reason. So whoever you train with, hold them to that—not just the words they can recite, but the decision underneath them and whether they can show you why.