If you are like me you are experiencing an explosion of AI promotions offering to write your Emails, fix your photos, and just about everything else short of washing your windows. For athletes, this includes coaching services.
Remember this: The popular AI tools like ChatGBT produce output that more-or-less looks like other examples. They can examine thousands of training plans and come up with one that looks pretty good. Just as good as any free plan you can download from a website. Almost as good as a well-made plan purchased on TrainingPeaks. What is wrong with that? They know nothing about you as a person.
There is a lot more to creating a training plan than coming up with a nice, balanced sequence of workouts. It has to align with your life. When can you swim? Can you train in the morning or only in the afternoon? You have a pickleball group that meets every Tuesday morning, so no workouts on Tuesday mornings? A coach can do all of this juggling for you. All you need to do is check your phone and do what is assigned.
There are plenty of training plans for marathons, 10Ks, Olympic triathlons and long course triathlons. What you need is a plan for your upcoming year. A half marathon here. A sprint triathlon there. A week off to attend your friend’s wedding. You need a plan that incorporates all of that.
Wait. There’s more.Things change. You get sick and can’t train. Smoke from a nearby brushfire prevents you from training outside. Runoff from heavy rain means you can’t swim in the ocean. Your friend’s wedding is the night before your race (which actually happened to me!). A coach can help you adjust and adapt to unforeseen circumstances.
Perhaps the toughest, yet most essential, role of a coach is developing mental toughness skills. Sure, there are athletes who don’t need help in this area, but they are very much in the minority. Most of us will benefit from having someone to talk to. Someone who knows all about us and understands what we are trying to accomplish.
Yes, I have seen AI chatbots that provide someone to talk to. I hope you push aside that option and choose instead a real, flesh and blood person.
If you would like to discuss your plans further please get in touch, [email protected]. A real, flesh and blood person.