by Grant Paling. AI Endurance released an integrated chat feature earlier this year. As I’ve been using it now for a few months, I thought I’d write up my experiences.

I think this is kind of what I was expecting when I started looking for an AI coaching app back in late 2023.

Something that would structure my training and more importantly, give me continuous feedback. AI Endurance ticked all the boxes and more.

But there was always this nagging feeling of something missing. Sure you could give feedback every day on how you’re feeling, your level of perceived fatigue etc.

But it was also a bit like - once you’re in the plan, you’re in the plan. Not much adaptation during a training plan.

Changing the game

By integrating generative AI chat functionality into the app itself, the biggest gain for me was the “in plan adaptation”. Week to week, day to day - an ability to ask questions (with some helpful prompts along the way to point me in the right direction - like any good coach of course should do!)

So here is a few real life examples of how I’ve been using the chat functionality - I’ve taken a few questions I asked along the way and shared some of the output I got back. Where it is a standard prompt within the app itself, I’ve said so in brackets so you can see both what I came up with but also some that came “out-of-the-box”.

1️⃣ Based on my plan progress modify the upcoming 7 days of workouts (standard prompt)

As this is one of the prompts that comes out of the box, it is the first one I tried. And it has been very useful.

I won’t write out the whole response here as it is quite long but here is a summary of what it said.

RESPONSE: the AI begins with a reassuring “sure!” then lets you know it is checking your plan progress and your upcoming 7 days of workouts.

I use this quite often, especially if I’ve been training hard and want to analyse if for example (as I’m prone to doing sometimes) if I am spending a bit too much time at high intensity… or equally, not enough time in some cases.

In this instance the AI coach:

• Let me know I was significantly under for Endurance workouts and VO2Max
• That I was over for Anaerobic work
• That my tempo and threshold work was close to the plan
• And that generally I was only 66% matched with the plan (eek! What can I say, it was early in the season…)

It then suggested 3 changes to workouts I had planned:

It then can automatically make the adjustments - either it can make all of them or you can pick and say which ones you want to make - and it then deletes the old workouts in the plan and creates replacement ones with the new suggestions.

This is very cool. I don’t always agree with the changes but more often than not they make sense, and I implement them. It’s a nice check in that is different to the daily check in and feels of course much more targeted which is a big step up in AI coaching.

2️⃣ I am not sure I will fit in my ride today, what is your feedback?

Basically “hey coach, I can’t do it today - is that alright?”

There has always been a function within AI Endurance where you can skip a workout or if you miss a workout the AI coach might suggest extending an upcoming workout.

But with a prompt such as this, the AI coach is going to go further. Here is what it said:

So the coach has deduced I should be ok physically and has even perhaps got a “hunch” it’s a time issue but of course wants to confirm. I confirm that it is.

So there you have it. 3 solid options (I chose option 1 on this occasion) and a guided decision / reassurance that I felt I needed on this occasion.

3️⃣ How am I looking ahead of tomorrow’s race?

I asked this ahead of the British Age Group championship race back in May. I wanted to know if statistically my AI coach thought I was in good shape. I very much knew I wasn’t.

AI Coach disagreed and thought I was in good shape for the championships.

These were more or less the standard predictions from the dashboard itself anyway though.

I was particularly interested in setting my expectations around swimming, so I asked for some further analysis on that:

What was my time on race day? 29 minutes! Spot on from the AI, so there you go!

4️⃣ I can only run on Wednesday and Thursday this week - which two of my three scheduled workouts should I prioritize?

Another common scenario. Realizing something must give with your planned workouts.

Wanting to adapt the plan for that week considering where I am in terms of my progress with the plan and which workouts are therefore more important was the aim here. Let’s take a look at the response:

So there’s the advice I got, complete with the why as well, not just a simple answer. And you can continue the conversation from here if you want to.

Summary

The chat function has been a welcome addition and works a lot better than some “AI” functions introduced in other fitness apps, where you’re getting very general advice and summaries but you aren’t able to ask the questions back that really matter to you as the athlete.

This is a key function if AI coaching is going to continue to develop and I am excited to see what comes next.

Expectedly, the standard prompts in the system work well as they have no doubt been tried and tested. But you can also easily step outside of these and ask questions and the AI coach is able to advise based on the data it has access to and with an understanding of what it’s job is, without going off on some weird sidetrack.

I would love to see some more race preparation specific features such as performance prediction and race strategy (though there isn’t room here to go into it - I have also used it for advice on pacing strategy and that worked well also).

If you’re an AI Endurance user, I urge you to give it a try (if you haven’t already). If you aren’t but this looks interesting, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial of AI Endurance right here!