The awkward questions first.

This is the main attack on any rating system where the rated party pays, and we treat it that way. Four things work together: we verify the organization before accepting a review, every review is published under the club's name so a fabricated club is visible to the real clubs in that league, each person can review a given engagement once, and we flag trainers whose reviews cluster from recently registered organizations.

None of that is perfect. It's why re-hire records sit next to every verdict — faking one review is cheap, and faking two seasons of paid work isn't.

It's the obvious objection and it deserves a direct answer. Payment buys a listing and nothing else. It doesn't influence ranking, it can't remove a review, and it buys no placement above the verdict. Clubs — the side actually writing reviews — never pay us anything, which is the structural reason this works. (Nothing is charged today — the site is free while it's being built. When listing fees arrive, a listing is all they will buy.)

If we ever sell featured placement, it will be labelled as such on the page. An undisclosed paid ranking would end the only thing we're selling.

Then say so, and it won't count against them. "Their style wasn't a fit for how we coach" sits with cost and scheduling — reasons about your club, not about the trainer.

A director who wants their athletes to have fun and one who wants them trained hard would score the same coach at opposite ends for identical work. That number would be measuring the reviewer, not the coach.

So style is described, never scored. Clubs pick the words — demanding, patient with beginners, highly technical — and the profile shows each one with the number of clubs that chose it. If "demanding, high intensity" isn't what your club wants, you'll know in three seconds — and nobody has been marked down for it.

No. We remove a review only if it's not from a verified engagement, contains personal information about a minor, or is abusive rather than evaluative — never because the trainer disagrees with it.

Trainers can reply publicly, and a reply sits underneath the review. Directors are perfectly capable of reading both.

Because no verified club has answered yet. A trainer with no confirmed engagements shows no verdict rather than a zero, and unverified reviews never fill the gap. New trainers are listed and searchable — they're just not ranked against people with a record.

Fair. Most engagements end well, so most verdicts are yes — the same compression that makes star ratings useless. The verdict's real job is to surface the minority who wouldn't, and that is worth a great deal.

What separates good from excellent is the second number: how many clubs actually brought them back. Saying you'd rehire someone is free. Rehiring them costs a season's budget. When those two disagree — every club would, none did — that gap is telling you something, usually about rate or availability.

Because one director's three stars is another's five, and a five-point scale collapses in practice — everyone lands between 4.6 and 5.0, which tells you nothing.

We ask the question a director actually wants answered: would you engage them again? That has a right answer the reviewer already knows.

Each club gets one vote. If four people from one club answer, the club still counts once, so a single enthusiastic relationship can't outweigh three other clubs.

And we show the fraction, not a percentage — "1 of 1 club" is honest where "100%" is not.

No, and we're careful not to imply otherwise. Where a trainer supplies a licence or certification document we confirm a document exists, and profiles distinguish that from self-reported claims.

Your club's screening obligations are unchanged by anything on this site. See how ratings work for the exact limits of what we verify.

Not currently. T-Rating connects trainers with clubs and their coaching staff — adults on both sides. We don't hold accounts for families or any information about individual athletes.

No. Plenty of good clubs run on free email. It means we verify you by hand against your league registration or the staff list on your website, which usually takes a day.

Nothing, and that isn't an introductory offer. The side writing the reviews should never have a financial relationship with us.

Their reviews stay. The reviews belong to the clubs that wrote them, not to the trainer and not to us. What lapses is the listing, not the record.

Claim your profile at the join page — your own email and password, a specialty, a sport. Then log a past engagement (which club, which season, who you worked under) and nominate that person to review you. Your profile goes live with your first verified review, and your dashboard walks you through each step in order.

Worth telling your director to expect the email from [email protected] — a first message from a young domain sometimes lands in spam.

Three things, and the order matters less than doing all three:

Log a past engagement. Which club, which season, who you worked under. Your record starts from work already done — you are not waiting a season to have one.

Nominate your reviewer. The person you worked under gets a single-use review link from [email protected]. Give them a heads-up — a first email from a young domain sometimes lands in spam, and your profile goes live with that first verified review.

Set your availability, rate and ZIP. Clubs filter by every one of them, so a blank is a search you're missing from. The ZIP powers “trainers near me” and is never shown — clubs see your city. A website is optional and shown on your profile.

Yes — and it stays yours. Name your business when you claim your profile (or accept their emailed invitation) and, once both of you have said yes, your profile shows the affiliation and inquiries about you route to the business. Your reviews and your verdict are always your own: if you leave, your whole record travels with you, and leaving takes one click on your dashboard — no permission needed from anyone.

Register at the business page — name, city, a work email, your website. We verify the business the same way we verify clubs, and registering is not the same as being verified: nothing about you is published until we've checked. Once verified, you get a public roster page listing every trainer you've confirmed, with their verified club records — it's your pitch page, and it's what clubs find when they search your name.

Deliberately — there's no password to manage or lose. On your roster page there's a line: "Are you {your business}? Email me a management link." It sends a link to the address we verified, good for one hour. From that page you confirm or decline trainers who've named you, invite employees, and end affiliations. Possession of the business's email is the identity — the same trust model club reviews run on.

Every affiliation takes two yeses, from either direction. You invite: from your management page, enter their email — they claim their own profile through the invite, with their own password, and that claim is their yes. Or they name you when they sign up, and you confirm through a link emailed to the business address. Nobody can attach themselves to your name without your yes, and you can't list a trainer without theirs.

While it's active: the trainer's profile carries your name, their rate reads "Rates through {your business}", club inquiries about them come to your address instead of theirs, and they appear on your roster page. What it never changes: reviews and verdicts always belong to the trainer. That independence is exactly what makes your roster worth showing to a club.

Either side can end an affiliation — one click, effective immediately, no approval from the other. They come off your roster, inquiries stop routing to you, and searching your business name no longer finds them. Their reviews go with them, because the reviews were always theirs. Clubs who liked your organization can still find you: searching your name brings up your roster page and whoever trains with you now.

Nothing today — the site is free while it's being built, same as for trainers. If that changes, account holders hear from us well before anything is charged, and payment will never buy a better verdict or an unlabelled ranking: reviews come from clubs, and clubs never pay us anything.