We started The Breakaway to become that trusted coach and companion in your pocket. But what is a coach really? I’ve had many in my life, some good, some not, and some that were true life changers for me. To be clear, you can think of this as it pertains to coaching, instruction, teaching, tutoring and more. It’s all changing. Just recently Duolingo (which my daughters love) announced they are cutting a portion of their contractor team stating; “We just no longer need as many people to do the type of work some of these contractors were doing,”. I don’t celebrate anyone losing their job. That said, we can’t fight progress, so I choose optimism and get excited about how things can change for the better.

As I noted in the previous post, The future of AI & Coaching, human coaching is never going away. But I also noted that the future will enable anyone who wants an AI Coach, to have one at a fraction of the cost of a human coach. This will open up a world where millions of people who never thought they could afford a coach (or just didn’t want to/couldn’t spend the money) now have an elegant and simple solution at a low cost of entry.

When you break it down, Coaching is about what I call the 6 C’s:

1. Content
2. Customization
3. Cadence
4. Communication
5. Compassion
6. Channel

Below I’ll dive into the specifics of each of these, and talk about where AI can and can’t have a significant impact.

Content (AI impact: 10 out of 10)

Content is everything a Coach has at his/her disposal that they have accumulated over time. Content is the workouts, frameworks, recovery techniques, reference studies, knowledge, etc. For many coaches this lives in their heads, in their workout templates, and structured training plans and preferences.

This is where AI gets incredibly powerful. Someone once asked me “How will being coached by The Breakaway be different/better than a human coach”? My answer was that AI will never replace the true human element, but what AI can do, that a human can’t, is have immediate and infinite access to as much or as little content as you wish. New studies, new data, different methodologies and more can be instantly updated to your AI Coach. Soon, every athlete could have an incredible level of fidelity from their Ai Coach for the difference in training methodologies for say, a 35 year old women trying to break 4 hours in a marathon, vs a 55 year old man recovering from knee surgery to a 42 year old woman riding her first 100 mile race. In each of these your AI Coach will have access to the personal data, studies, methodologies and even population data that are specific to the needs of that individual.

Customization (AI impact: 10 out of 10)

As the examples in the last sentence above about Content suggest, the levels of customization with AI are infinite. Customization is the combination of athlete data, preferences, and insight to enable the ideal Content, Cadence, Communication and Channel (delivery) that adapts with the user over time. Imagine a coach that has access to your data, and is constantly looking for correlations and outliers to adjust your plan. Your sleep, your steps per day, all of it part of a 24/7 repository who’s only goal is to give you the best possible suggestion for the day. Further, your AI Coach will have access to your calendar, contacts, local weather and anything else you enable so that you’ll not only have the ideal workout for the day, but you’ll have it scheduled, and perhaps your favorite training partner will be invited as well (if that’s your preference).

Cadence (AI impact: 8 out of 10)

You could call this the Schedule, but that doesn’t start with a ‘C’. Cadence is the pace and programming that results in a training plan, a day off, a schedule, a recommendation, periodization, and more. Cadence is the packaging of all of the Content, Customized for you. Again with the power of AI, this can be targetted, adjusted at any moment and even compared to population level data to show you what’s worked for people like you. Cadence will soon tie into so much more including your settings, calendar, travel plans, patterns, and more.

Imagine a future where your AI Coach sees a trip booked on your calendar, lets you know that they’ve adjusted your schedule based on the travel, and even shows you a few gyms or hotels with a Peloton to make sure you can get your workout in while away. This is all in our not very distant future.

Communication (AI impact: 10 out of 10)

This is a key difference between a Coach and a Training Plan. You talk to a Coach and they talk back to you. This critical back and forth results in the coach asking key questions at key times. These questions can be LLM based, or simple UX interactions when a basic ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ will suffice. As the athlete provides more input and feedback, the AI Coach can learn adjust the Cadence and Content.

For an AI Coach, what you lose in the personal touch, you gain in multi-modal, 24/7 communication. Imagine a text message when you wake up, or a push notification when your Coach realizes you logged 12,000 steps walking the streets of Manhattan for meetings and asks if you still feel fresh for the interval workout that afternoon? Your AI Coach also knows you’re in New York, and has already reserved a Peloton bike at the local Hotel Gym for your 4:00 pm session. Communication with your AI Coach is always at your fingers, ready to go. Soon you’ll be listening to a song, and ‘talk’ to your coach asking what to do for the day’s workout because you feel fatigued. Your response will be immediate, and perfectly targeted for you.

Compassion (AI impact 2 out of 10)

There’s an emotional side to any Coach or Companion whereby the shared experiences result in emotional and mental feedback and support. This is an area where AI is a long ways from replacing a human, and likely never will. In fact, I hope this day never truly happens. But it might…

Sure there are ways AI will be able to infer emotion, but the reality is nothing can replace a human connection. Compassion is a key element to a top coach who knows that regardless of what the biometric data is saying, that the recent job struggle, relationship challenge or fight with your best friend has you in a not so great spot for training and improvement. As bullish as I am on AI, this is an area where human coaches will always win.

Channel (AI impact 1 out of 10)

To be clear: A chatbot is not a coach.

The Channel is the way/mechanism(s) and modalities in which all of this is delivered by your AI Coach. The normal channels for a coach are email and/or phone calls with some personal meetings as well. In some cases your coach uses software to deliver a workout that you can view.

For your AI Coach, the channels will change based on need, your preference, and where and how operate throughout your day. Your AI Coach will have access to all of your channels, at any time, and make smart decisions on where and how to communicate based on your actions and preferences.

Your AI Coach will live in an app, website, the cloud, etc and be able to adjust the delivery channel from a visual UI, to an audio workout, an email, text, even a phone call. Your AI Coach will know for example, that you’re on your hour long commute home, and that the weather has turned against you. You’ll get a phone call, since you’re driving, letting you know your workout plan has changed: “Hey there, Coach here. Given the rain, I’ve swapped your workout from outdoors to indoors, and sent the details to your indoor trainer. Have a great workout!”.

That’s the future I want!

Summary

As I hope you see now, AI is a powerful tool in delivering coaching and guidance and new software agents, and products will open up a world of opportunities for millions of people who previously didn’t have access to a Coach. Having been coached before, I know the feeling of having someone constantly making sure you’re becoming the best version of yourself, and it’s empowering.

All of this being said, there are two things to keep in mind here. You can wrap them both up in one of my favorite quotes (from an old coach): “I never saw a stopwatch that could see inside a person’s heart”.

First, AI is just a tool, and part of the toolkit designers and developers will use to deliver magical experiences but there are certain areas, where nothing beats the understanding of a human coach, sitting across from you, looking into your eyes with compassion on the day.

Second, you have to want it. You have to do the work to improve. Whether it’s improving at cycling, general fitness, speaking Spanish or anthing else, progress and improvement will always take effort and some sacrifice. AI can’t fix that…

In my next post I’ll show you how AI can be used in a ‘Co-pilot’ approach to help anyone (like a coach!) dig into large amounts of data.

Coaching & AI | Part 2 of 4: The 6 C’s was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s just over a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT and brought AI into the mainstream conversation. To be clear, AI has been part of the technology vernacular for decades. ChatGPT changed the story and made it mainstream. Below is the 5 year history of the search term ‘AI’ in the United States.

See what I mean?

To be clear, what happened this year was the introduction of Generative AI to the mass market. Now, for the first time, anyone can ‘talk to the machine’. A pandora’s box has been opened and we’re never going back.

As the year wraps up, I wanted to put some thoughts down on the convergence of Generative AI and Coaching. I’ve never been more excited about the future of technology and how it can come together to help people. In my case, most of my free thought is around how we can help people at The Breakaway and our vision has always been to become ‘the coach in your pocket’. The breakout of Generative AI this year has made that dream a nearer term reality. So let’s dig into 3 key points about how AI and Coaching are coming together.

Point 1. AI will not replace [most] coaches

AI is eating jobs. This headline drives a ton of clicks. It’s not really true…yet.

High quality coaches, who go deep in their craft, get to know their clients, and are there to help in a variety of ways, aren’t going away. AI is in it’s infancy and it will be able to do things we can’t currently fathom, but there are times you want a human touch, and that’s what a coach is for.

Well, that’s what a good coach is for. Good coaches are already using AI to make their clients better, and to alleviate some of the manual/repetitive work. This will only make them better at their craft and allow them to spend more time leaning in to their clients.

There are coaches who have enjoyed ‘phoning it in’ for a long time. They deliver templated workouts without personalization. They’ll answer a call when needed but mostly they run on autopilot. These coaches will either be invigorated by AI and learn how to use this new tool in their practice or they will hold on to the way things have been done, and over time their business will be threatened. To be clear, this is not unique to coaching. In almost every industry, we will watch areas that have long been repetitive get taken over by people using AI to bring new life and efficiency to their business sector. Like many shifts, it will happen slowly, then all at once.

The good coaches should be excited about how AI can make them better.

Point 2. AI will enable anyone to have a coach.

I’m passionate about this one because it’s the mission of The Breakaway. We are already seeing simple AI for tasks and agent-like processes pop up. I believe the future will have each of us with a handful of ‘agents or apps’ that help us in our day to day lives.

If you’re into Wine, you’ll have an AI app for it that will know from a GPS signal when you walk into a restaurant, have access to that restaurant’s online wine list and already have 5 suggestions for you, based on your likes and dislikes, before you even sit down. This might even have happened when you made the reservation, as your Wine Agent will have access to your Travel Agent.

If fitness is a passion, you’ll have a coach in your pocket. I hope it’s The Breakaway! What will this feel like? You’ll get a text message in the morning (unless you prefer email, which your Coach will know) with that day’s updated workout plan. Your Coach will have access to your calendar, your training partners calendars and eventually your nutrition app and more. Perhaps midday your Coach will get a signal that your resting heart rate is elevated and might ask you via text ‘Do you want to adjust the plan today?’. This conversation will feel natural and be multimodal, meeting you where you are. Each day you’ll be coached to the right workout based on your goals, progress and biofeedback from that day. Wake up with a low HRV (which is a sign of the body not being ready to push) then Coach will adjust your workout.

We already do this at The Breakaway. This past summer one of our customers with a coach asked our Coach a question at 5 in the morning and got his training question answered immediately. He would have had to wait until 9 am to call his coach for a response. Your AI Coach never sleeps, is never on vacation, and will know everything about you.

Point 3. Generative AI can enable humanlike coaching at scale.

In 20 years in Silicon Valley I’ve never seen things move as fast as they are moving right now. What took years in the adoption of the iPhone/mobile platforms happened in a few months this past summer. And we’re just getting started. To put it in perspective, we just started the first inning…

The unlock provided by Generative AI will make the conversational part of a coach scalable. There’s no data that can truly answer the question of “how do you feel after that workout?” which is the critical part of a coach understanding how to adjust the plan. Composite scores (readiness, etc) can be wrong as much as they’re right.

What evolves next, will be the conversational Coach in your pocket. This isn’t a chat-bot, but an AI enabled UX that knows when to ask for input, and when not to. This coach is multi-modal, never sleeps and is constantly assessing your activities throughout the day, week, month to help guide you towards your goals.

As we like to say with any training and coaching plan: It’s simple, but it’s not easy.

In a follow up to this, I’ll go over the 6 C’s of Coaching (Content, Customization, Cadence, Communication, Compassion and Container )and where and how AI fits in.

How do you think AI can best impact the coaching ecosystem?

The future of Coaching & AI was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Men’s world championships took place this past weekend in Glasgow, Scotland. Since 1995 the worlds have taken place in late September or October. Moving the worlds back to August meant that the big stars from Tour de France could carry their form and race for the honor of wearing the Rainbow bands for a year. When the race was held later in the year, we would rarely see the biggest stars all competing against each other, as it was too hard to reach a second peak of form, later in the year.

The course was point to point with local laps for the last 150 kilometers, par for the world championships. What was a bit more unusual was the technicality of the course…downtown Glasgow with almost 50 corners per lap, for 11 laps….the rain for last hour and a half did NOT help. Given the nature of the course and the lack of hard climbs on the circuit, the best teams attacked the race immediately upon hitting the circuits, with a 150kilometers to go! This made it almost impossible to stay in the race if your weren’t towards the front of the race, as the constant breaking and accelerating stretched the peloton to the breaking point immediately.

The riders at the front needed to be technically sound in the corners (not to mention the damp conditions) or pay the price of over breaking into corners and catching up on the straights, over and over again…..550 times to be exact. Lack of technical ability can be overcome with strength and savvy but not with the depth of this field, not after the Tour de France.

What was needed to win this race? The ability to absorb hundreds of accelerations and come back for more. The ability to fight for position at the front of the peloton. Incredible bike handling skills and a massive fuel tank to keep this pace up for six plus hours.

Mathiew Van der Poel was the worthy winner by over a minute and a half over Wout Van Aert, Tadej Pogacar and Mads Pederson. All of them had just raced the Tour de France. In fact, only one rider in the top 10 did not race the Tour. Many would think that you would be too exhausted after a three week race. Mentally exhausted, yes but physically, incredible. The reality is that it would be near impossible to prepare for a one day race as hard as the World Championships without the extreme work load of a race like the Tour. Nailing the fact the every incredible feat is on the heals of a massive workload, followed by rest. Everything is relative of course…but it does reiterate the basics of Consistency, Workload, Intensity and finding the balance with Recovery

Jasper Stuyven was the only rider in the front group who posted his numbers from the race and they are jaw dropping…..he finished in 6th place, 3:48 behind. What stood out to me wasn’t the amount of KJ’s (even though they are crazy) it was where he had to expend his energy to stay at the front. Over one and half hours above his threshold!? Obviously this was not at one time but accelerating over and over again out of corners and following attacks up hills. Death by one thousand paper cuts….big ones.

Now, these guys need a rest.

Jasper Stuyven

Distance-271km (168 miles)

Elevation gain 3,300meters (11,000 ft)

Time- 6’11’

Average Speed-44.2kph (27.4mph)

KJ-7,375

Average Watts-325

Weighted Power-370

Z1-(0–238 Watts) 39%

Z2-(238–325) 14%

Z3-(325–390) 11%

Z4-(390–455) 9%

Z5-(455–520) 7.7% (29min)

Z6-(520–650) 9.5% (36min) 😳

Z7-(>650) 8.9% (34min) 🫣

kJs, wet roads, and the cream rises to the top at this year’s Men’s World Championships! was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many of us enjoyed the insane climbing feats on the mountain top finishes at the Tour de France. What is hard to comprehend is what they did to get there.

I’m not talking about the thousands of hours of training to hone their craft, I’m talking about the 3–5 climbs the riders tackled before the finishing climb(s).

Seeing this first hand this year reminded me of how robust the engines on these athletes need to be. The ability to absorb a massive amount of punishment throughout the day and still have the ability to lift the pace after a big day, separates the contenders from the pretenders.

Stage 14 was a great example of this. This stage was not very long by TDF standards at 153k (95 miles) but packed in 14,100ft of climbing. With four categorized climbs before the last climb, this was a perfect scenario for Jumbo Visma to put a stranglehold on the race.

Their team captain and reigning champion held yellow jersey by a slender margin but knew that they had to start beating down their opponents (really just one, Tadej Pogacar) with an infernal pace throughout the stage. On every climb they held a reported pace of 5–5.5 watts per kilogram.

A majority of the peloton can handle this pressure on one or two long climbs but this compounds as the climbing stacks up. By the time they hit the bottom slopes of the last climb, there were only 15 riders remaining in the first group. Not one attack was launched, just a day that got exponentially harder with accumulation of fatigue. This, in a nut shell, is modern cycling.

The repeatability of efforts that are just below your maximal capabilities, will always be your true test of endurance and form in a Grand Tour. However there is only one Grand Tour where the standards are so high, Le Tour de France.

We don’t need to compare ourselves to these aerobic beasts. This is solely a reminder that one off efforts and PR’s are fantastic for morale and seeing where you stack up but the repeatability of efforts below your max is also an amazing reflection of your fitness. This is only achieved with longer rides and time in the saddle, which will give your engine a bigger gas tank and capacity.

Capacity and the third week at the Tour de France was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What a Tour de France! I’ve grown up watching this sport, and it’s become such a part of my life. Our family motto tends to be ‘It’s all about the bike’. My best friends, my best moments…I met my wife on the bike and today my favorite moments are rides with her or one of my daughters. It’s all about the bike.

And then to watch Christian on the back of the moto completely change the dynamic of race coverage. What a Tour! But the term ‘breakaway’ came up so much and my young daughter’s eyes lit up every time as they looked at me. “No honey, not The Breakaway, the breakaway in the race.” It did however get me thinking of our genesis, and why The Breakaway is so important to me, our team, and our customers.

In a bicycle race, ‘the breakaway’ is a rider or group of riders who accelerate ahead of the pack in the pursuit of glory. Sometimes they win, sometimes the pack catches them. But there’s always a moment in The Breakaway, when there’s a chance. A moment when there is hope, belief, wonderment at what could be…

We started The Breakaway to help more people find their personal moments of glory, more often. We started The Breakaway so that we could all have more hope, more moments of belief, and more glory.

The Breakaway exists to help you find your pursuit of glory.

It’s your moment.

It’s your time to believe. To awe. To realize you’re stronger than you think.

It’s your time…

To Breakaway from the norms.

To Breakaway from the pressure of the schedule, leaderboards and day to day, minute to minute buzzing to capture your moment of glory.

To Breakaway from confusion, training plans, too much data, too many apps and too many voices.

Breakaway for the best hour of the day.

Breakaway to find your flow.

Breakaway to seek out your pain cave.

Breakaway to build your strength.

Breakaway to improve your weaknesses.

Breakaway from your limits.

Breakaway from your fears, your anger, your stress and your worries. Just get on your bike, know what to do, and find your moment to Breakaway.

That’s what we all seek.

A moment to Breakaway.

Those moments of glory. The pain, the success, the speed, the sweat, the flow.

That’s our moment.

That’s when we truly are in The Breakaway.

What is The Breakaway? was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So there I was. Locked in my home in Truckee, with an itch to scratch and nothing but time…

It’s remarkable to look back at spring and summer of 2020. I wrote down some thoughts and memories that year, and looking back at the early days of COVID is such a shock still.

But I don’t sit still well. So I called some friends and former colleagues, some former Strava friends and people like Christian Vande Velde, and my eventual co-founder, Kyle Yugawa. And we started scheming. From ideas to talks to Figma sketches it became clear we needed to see what could be built. Beyond our desire, and our fascination with the problem, we saw, and continue to see, a real opportunity to answer the age old question every athlete who cares about performance asks themselves:

What should I do today?

That was, and continues to be our North Star. How can we simply answer that question, day in and day out, and help people find their path towards peak performance.

Christian and I know from our racing days, how good it feels when you find those moments. You truly Break Away from yourself, from your limits, from your notions of what’s possible. It’s magic.

Kyle and I know from our Strava days, that when you can bring technology to what people already do, and want to do, that there’s magic in that combination and you can have a real impact. A great workout solves a bad day every time. Every. Time.

So here we are, almost 3 years later, and while we’ve come a long way, I feel like we’ve only scratched the surface. I can’t wait for what we have coming this summer, this fall, next year, and in the years ahead.

Progress is fun. Getting better is fun. Feeling fast is fun. The right moments, the right advice, the right effort on the right day, can make the difference. We love helping people discover how simple this can be. We’re all so much stronger than we think.

Game on.

How we started The Breakaway (Part 2 of 2) was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How did this all start?

It was 2019 headed into 2020. COVID hadn’t hit but it was on the horizon. After almost 15 years in the Bay Area, my family took the risk and opportunity to move to Truckee, California. We went seeking the mountain air, winter, and a quieter way of life.

But The Breakaway started well before this. I grew up racing bikes in New Jersey. I did my first 100 miles at age 10, started racing at age 11 and moved to Colorado to test myself against the best in the world at age 20.

I was fortunate to learn quickly that I wouldn’t make a living racing a bike, but to also make lifelong friends, and race and train with the best in the world. I’m still honored to have toed the line with names we all know. One of the friends I made there was Christian Vande Velde, who was starting his career with US Postal at the time.

In the early 2000’s I moved to San Francisco, and across multiple startups, as well as a stint at Google, I wound up as an early tester, and employee, at Strava. Those were amazing days looking back, tryng to explain to people ‘what’ Strava was, and ‘why’ they should try it out.

So here we were in 2019/2020. A life of cycling, tech and Strava behind me, and I found myself in winter for the first time in over 2 decades. This was my first experience with Zwift and Peloton. What happened in that 2019/2020 time in my garage was the genesis for The Breakaway. Three things came together:

1. I got strong! I rode indoors for the first time in over 20 years and I got strong. Really strong. I hit spring 2020 hitting numbers I hadn’t seen in a long time!
2. I got frustrated! There were so many apps, so much data, and none of it was telling me what to do to improve. I was fortunate to be able to call people like Christian and other World Class coaches but why hadn’t someone solved this before.
3. I reached out! I talked to friends, former colleagues and more, to see what was here, not here, and who else felt this struggle.

So there I was, as COVID rolled in. I had an itch that needed scratching. I was convinced someone would solve this eventually. Maybe it should be me…

How we started The Breakaway (Part 1 of 2) was originally published in The Breakaway on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.