How to Get Coaching Practice Hours (and Why Peer Coaching Counts as Paid)

You finish your coach training with a certificate, a framework, and a requirement: 100 hours of coaching experience before you can apply for your ICF ACC credential. 500 for PCC.

Your programme taught you how to coach. It probably didn't tell you where those hours come from.

What the ICF actually requires

The numbers, from the ICF experience requirements:

• ACC: 100 hours of coaching experience, of which at least 75 must be paid
• PCC: 500 hours, of which at least 450 must be paid
• A portion must be recent: 25 hours (ACC) or 50 hours (PCC) within the 18 months before you apply

That word paid is where most new coaches get stuck. You can only log 25 pro bono hours toward ACC. So coaching your neighbour for free, or volunteering sessions into a Facebook group, runs out of road fast.

The rule most coaches don't know: barter counts as paid

Here is the part that surprises even coaches who are deep into their hour count. The ICF's definition of paid coaching includes barter, and it names peer coaching as the example:

"Direct Coaching for Payment: You receive payment (or barter, such as peer-to-peer coaching or coaching in exchange for goods or services)."

In other words: when two coaches practise with each other reciprocally, each is compensating the other with coaching. Balanced peer coaching lands in the paid bucket, not the pro bono one. If you coach a partner for 10 hours and they coach you for 10 hours, that's 10 paid hours each.

The balance matters. Hours beyond what your partner returns count as pro bono, not paid. And as with anything credential-related: log carefully, and check the current requirements with the ICF (or your own accrediting body, if it isn't the ICF) before you apply.

So the real question is: where do you find the partners?

Once you know reciprocal practice counts, the problem changes shape. It's no longer "how do I find paying clients before I'm credentialed?" It's "how do I find other coaches who need the same hours I do?"

The usual routes all have the same problems:

• Your training cohort. Available at first, but you all speak the same curriculum language, and cohorts drift apart after graduation - right when the hour requirement starts to bite.
• Facebook groups. You post publicly, share your personal details with strangers, arrange everything over email and Zoom links, and hope the other person shows up. Many don't.
• Advertising free sessions. You're coaching strangers one-way, which caps out your pro bono allowance and gets you nothing back.

What actually works is a standing pool of coaches who all need the same thing, with the logistics handled.

How coaches do this on Robin

Robin is a free practice-partner platform for coaches. You browse a directory of coaches from different programmes and countries (sorted by timezone overlap, so you're not doing 4am calls), message them, schedule sessions, and run the call - all in one private space. Your email and phone number are never shared. Every session can go in your logbook, so when application day comes, your hours are already recorded.

Because practice on Robin is reciprocal - you coach and get coached - the hours you exchange with a partner are exactly the balanced peer coaching the ICF describes.

It's free, and there's no catch to that: Robin exists because finding people to practise with shouldn't be the hard part of becoming a coach.

Join Robin free and start building your hours.