Hi Reader,

Before the year closes, I wanted to send a short note and let you in on what’s quietly been happening behind the scenes with Athletica and Sports Science 3.0.

1. A new Training Science Podcast with Andrea (save this for your long ride)

We’ve just released a new episode of the Training Science Podcast with our lead data scientist, Dr. Andrea Zignoli:

AI Agents, HRV Readiness & the Future of Coaching with Athletica

In it, we unpack:

• How AI agents and RAG (retrieval-augmented) AI sit behind Athletica’s upcoming conversational AI coach
• How our system interprets HRV and resting heart rate to guide day-to-day training decisions
• How we estimate critical power/pace, build your power/pace profiles, and why we don’t just rely on a generic LLM
• How sentiment analysis of your training comments is becoming a new internal load metric

Andrea has a nice way of putting it:

“Athletica is like Paul & Martin’s HIIT Science book – but applied to your own data.”

You can listen here:
​ AI Agents, HRV Readiness & the Future of Coaching – Training Science Podcast​

(Feel free to queue it for your next endurance session.)

2. A closed US coaching summit… and a live AI-coach demo

I’ve just come back from a closed coaching conference in the US with many of America’s top coaches.

On stage, we did something I’ve been wanting to test in public:

• We connected Athletica’s new AI coach to my own training history
• The room asked it questions like they would to a human coach or sport scientist
• In under a minute, it had read the relevant training files, assessed my power profile, my recovery profile, recent sessions, and explained its reasoning for every response in clear language

In other words, it behaved like a top-level sport science coach assistant sitting on your laptop or phone, with perfect recall of your training history and our HIIT Science framework.

The coaches in the room were… very awake after that.

3. What’s coming to you: new Athletica web interface, AI Coach, Athletica U

All of this is leading towards a big step for Athletica in the new year:

• New Athletica website interface
  ​A cleaner, faster UI designed around how athletes and coaches actually use the platform – not just how we’d like them to.
• Conversational AI Coach
  ​Just like the US Olympic coaches I told you about, you’ll be able to ask questions like:
  • “How recovered do I appear today?”
  • “How have areas of my power profile changed over the last 6 weeks?”
  • “Should I adjust today’s session given how I’ve been sleeping?”

And get answers grounded in your data, your context, and our AI-agents.

• Athletica U (inside your account)
  ​Not only are we offering up our sleek new UI with its conversational AI-coach, but we present our first certificate from Athletica U. Short, practical micro-lessons on endurance training, HRV, HIIT, and load management, built from HIIT Science and our Sports Science 3.0 work, in language that everyone can follow. The Athletica U Cert 1 idea is simple: the app doesn’t just tell you what to do. It teaches you why.

This newsletter is your first touchpoint for that rollout.

4. How you can engage right now

If you’re curious and want to be ready when new interface goes live, a few simple steps:

• Listen to the podcast with Andrea – it’s the best “under the hood” explanation we’ve released so far.
• Think about the main questions you’d ask an AI coach that actually knows your training history.

If you’re a coach, start noting the repetitive questions you answer for athletes and the ones that suck the majority of your time to answer well. Those are the first things we’ll aim to tackle first. If you know those immediately, jump over to the HIIT Science coach community and post so we can prioritize for you.

A quick holiday note

For many of you, this time of year is either a deep base phase or a long-overdue break from structure. Either way, I’m grateful you’re part of this community and that you care about pairing good science with better training practice.

We’ve got a lot to share in the new year. This is just the start.

Season's best,
​

Paul Laursen, PhD

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