Should ChatGPT be your Coach? No!

ChatGPT is Not a Coach

Every week I’m seeing another clickbait YouTube video: “I let ChatGPT coach me and you’ll never believe the results” (if you spend any time on Cycling YouTube, you know what I mean).

I get it. It’s provocative and it's the hot topic right now for a good reason. Athletes and coaches alike are experimenting with large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to “write me a cycling training plan for X” and the initial results seem impressive enough to explore further.

At Racepace we have a very direct opinion on using ChatGPT as a coach: it isn’t one. If you are using ChatGPT as your coach, you are just adopting the role as your own coach. Even the best elite cyclists have coaches. They don’t have coaches because they’re incapable or not special, it's just a fact of life that we need others to hold us accountable and shoulder some burden.

You Need to Be Obsessed With Coaching

Let’s say you’re the unique exception and you are so self-motivated that you can be coach and athlete. Great, but you still need to be obsessively interested in training/coaching to do it right.

We’re obsessively interested in these topics. Most human coaches are. We are the people who are endlessly curious about training load, periodization, polarization, TSS ramps, recovery dynamics, fueling & nutrition, race strategy & training psychology, equipment, and more.

Be honest with yourself: if you were that person you definitely wouldn’t be asking ChatGPT to do the work for you in the first place! You’d be so deeply curious you’d want to approach these topics from first principles and not take shortcuts.

Just to drive that point home: if you’re training for something (or just trying to get fit), you know you can’t take shortcuts. You need to spend hours and hours a week making the physical and emotional investments required to be successful. There will be sacrifices you have to make, like time away from friends, family, or even work. If you can’t take shortcuts to achieve your goals, why are you willing to take shortcuts in creating a plan? A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Why Isn’t ChatGPT a Complete Solution?

Humans want solutions to problems, not tools to create their own solutions. We want a 3 inch hole, not a drill (although a drill is a great tool).

Think about the real workflow if you’re using ChatGPT today. Do you really want to:

• Manually add every workout into TrainingPeaks?
• Build each workout in TP so it syncs to your head unit or Zwift?
• Download/upload each FIT file daily to ChatGPT to get feedback?
• Set up a notification system to get workout reminders or nudges?
• Curate historical rides so the model can look for trends and plot TSS/CTL, etc.?
• Keep notes about how you’re feeling so ChatGPT can “interpret” your mindset?
• Be the glue that holds everything in your training together?

We are making a bet that you don’t (because even as technologists we don't want to!). But you do want a solution that does this and more.

How Can Anyone Create a Unique Tech Coaching Product?

To frame this simply: ChatGPT is a text generator. Racepace is a system with workflow, memory, validation, personalization, and continuous oversight from a coach. We are the three-inch hole; we’re not the drill.

Workflows, Built for You

All that messy manual work? You shouldn’t have to and you don’t have to with Racepace.

Validation, Done for You

Unlike ChatGPT or equivalents, which are trained on the entire internet (including long-disproven training literature and incorrect advice), we built on a foundation of approaches earned the hard way, through training and racing.

The secret is not in the plan creation. As we’ve seen, ChatGPT can create the plan.

The secret is in the personalization. This is why we think of Racepace as an AI-augmented solution. These are plans built by hand, by event. The tech helps personalize them and update them for you in real-time. No more wacky weeks of crazy TSS when you should be deloading or any other surprises.

Memory, Done for You

One of the major unsolved technical problems today is agent (AI) memory. How does ChatGPT remember your preferences, mood, training data, etc.? Today, it simply can’t.

We asked: “What would the world’s best human coach find important to remember and reference over time for an athlete?” Focus solves memory.

We believe that domain AI is transformational, while general LLMs are merely impressive. We are pro-human coaches for those who can afford it and pro-AI. Why do human coaches need to charge several hundred dollars? Because they can only support so many athletes a month, and they need to earn an income too. It’s a failure of the industry that coaches can’t scale beyond ~20 athletes at a time, and we believe AI/LLMs are a solution to that problem.

Get In Touch

If you are a coach who wants to multiply your reach with technology, get in touch with us.

If you are an athlete who wants a real tech-enabled coaching solution, join the Racepace team.