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How AI Will Make a Better Endurance Athlete

By Gaelle Abecassis | Sep 5, 2023

Humango uses artificial intelligence to elevate endurance training and boost athletic performance.

Endurance sports have long pushed the leading edge of coaching and technology. Think Bill Bowerman of University of Oregon Track fame, who famously moved U.S. runners’ training for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to the higher altitude of Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to prepare his athletes for competing at altitude in Mexico City. He later started Nike with the goal of engineering a better running shoe. Over the decades, training technology has only gotten better. We now have heart rate monitors to track the intensity of efforts, GPS units to track speed, distance, and efficiency, and bicycle power meters to measure watts. Artificial intelligence, (AI) promises to bring all that data together and help marathon runners, ultra runners, cyclists, triathletes, and other endurance athletes — plus their coaches — perfect their training.

The Endurance Coach

Athletes who hire a coach to help them achieve their best results can pay thousands of dollars a year for the guidance. The coach designs a training program and then monitors the progress. The most important benefit they provide is knowing when to dial back efforts to avoid burnout or injury and when to push an athlete through a mental block to reach their full potential. The difference between the two is what makes an effective coach. Data helps the coach determine whether a bad training day came from a poor night’s sleep, a bad mood, or over-training. 

Artificial intelligence can process the same data to arrive at the same conclusions. And like the coach, AI can adjust an athlete’s training program to compensate for that poor training day, a sick day, or a week where an athlete can’t train for some reason. A 2022 study published in the online journal PLUS One found that AI coaches were as effective as human coaches in helping people reach a goal. The caveat is that this goal has to be focused and specific, with a clearly identified pathway to success and easily obtainable data to measure progress — exactly what training plans deliver. 

The Novice Athlete’s Shortcut to Their Best Performance

Put simply, endurance training — and coaching — is about managing fatigue. Building endurance means pushing back the moment when fatigue sets in. Most free training plans, even the best-designed ones, factor in a perfect training program where the athlete eats well, sleeps well, and never misses a workout. Unfortunately, life never works that way. A work trip blows a hole in the week's most important workout. A bout of COVID knocks out weeks of fitness. Managing these setbacks is where coaches really earn their pay.

But cost is the main benefit of the AI endurance coach. Instead of spending thousands of dollars a year, motivated athletes can deploy an AI coach to guide them through their training for a fraction of the price, flu bugs and family vacations be damned. And because of the low cost, novices and beginners to the sport can employ AI to train smarter instead of following the usual years of trial-and-error until injury or simple frustration leads them to invest in a coach.

AI Coaching Still Needs Real Coaches

This new AI-powered era won't bring the end of human coaching. Successful coaches will always retain the unquantifiable soft skills that no data set can capture. The word of encouragement spoken at the right moment to push an athlete out of their comfort zone or the confident command to take a day off and not feel guilty about it, these are the subtle nuances that require the human touch. Still, AI puts a powerful tool in the coach’s toolbox. AI can now review data quickly and handle the tedious and time-consuming process of rejiggering a training program based on the results. In short, a human coach assisted by an AI coach should be a more effective and efficient coach. That’s a win-win for everyone involved.