A note of thanks and a new initiative I’m proud of


Hi everyone,

First, I want to sincerely thank you for your patience and support over the past month as we rolled out the new Athletica Experience.

Our team has worked relentlessly, and we are now seeing relative stability for around 98 percent of users. We know there is still work to do, particularly around re-architecting the Workout Wizard. This is important foundational work to ensure performance and reliability as we scale, and we truly appreciate your patience as the team builds this out properly.

I wanted to take this moment to share a new 2026 initiative that I’m genuinely proud of.

It’s called the Athletica Development Athlete (ADA) Scholarship.

This initiative comes directly from my own experience as a young athlete. I trained long and hard, and while I had some success, I could never quite find the right way. Deep down, I knew there had to be something better than simply doing more. Athletica is the result of that lifelong search for a smarter, more sustainable approach to training and development.

The ADA Scholarship is a 12-month performance scholarship for competitive athletes who know they have potential and want to train smarter, not just harder. It provides full access to Athletica, including unlimited AI-Coach support, adaptive training, analytics, and education.

This is not a sponsorship or influencer program. It’s a development opportunity, and in return, athletes allow us to document their journey so others can learn from real, evidence-based stories.

I’ve written more detail about the motivation, history and philosophy behind ADA and who it’s for on my Coaching Prof Substack.

If you or an athlete you coach feel this resonates, you can apply using the button below.

Applications for the 2026 cohort close February 15th, with the program beginning March 1.

Thanks again for being part of the Athletica community. We’re building this for the long term, and I’m grateful to have you on that journey with us.

Warm regards,
Paul

Paul Laursen, PhD

Athletica AI Coach and Training Science

Smarter training starts here. Athletica’s newsletters deliver science-backed insights, expert tips, and AI-powered training updates for endurance athletes of all levels. Catch up on past editions and subscribe to stay ahead in your training journey.

Read more from Athletica AI Coach and Training Science

Hello Reader, The new Athletica Training Experience is now live. This update brings together a refreshed interface, a conversational AI Coach, and Athletica U into a single, integrated training environment. The best place to begin is by taking the Tour. Start with the TourFrom the left-hand panel, navigate to Learn → Tour. This guided walkthrough will orient you to the new experience and show you how the key parts of the platform fit together, including the Calendar, Dashboard, Roadmap, Plan...

Hello Reader, As we prepare to launch the next chapter of Athletica, I wanted to take a moment to speak directly to you and to recognize the people who made this release possible. This update has been a long time coming. It represents years of work across science, engineering, design, and coaching, all with one goal in mind: to build the most effective and trustworthy training system possible for athletes and coaches. Before outlining what is coming, it is important to acknowledge the team...

Hello Reader, As our team at Athletica puts the final pieces in place for the launch of our new platform, including the new UIX, conversational AI-Coach, and Athletica U, I wanted to pause and share a broader perspective. There is a lot of noise right now around “AI coaching.” Much of it is well intentioned, but some of it risks distracting from the real work that matters: helping athletes and coaches make better decisions day to day. The piece below is longer than a typical email, but it...