Coaching in the Age of Machines..
We are entering an age where coaching is becoming increasingly automated. Plans generated by AI in seconds. Feedback delivered by algorithms. Training reduced to charts, scores, and coloured zones. On the surface, it looks efficient and smart.
But something vital is being lost.
I’m an online running coach, yet I find myself deliberately moving in the opposite direction of the AI age. Not because I reject science or technology (well maybe I do reject technology a little bit), but because I believe coaching is, and always has been, a fundamentally human craft. And the more digital the world becomes, the more valuable real human connection becomes alongside it.
Most athletes don’t fail because their plan was missing a metric. They fail because life intervenes, Motivation dips and confidence wobbles. Fatigue appears in disguise sometimes. These moments don’t announce themselves neatly on a screen. They’re heard in tone of voice, read between the lines of a message that says “I’m fine”, or felt when something just isn’t quite right.
That is where the ART of coaching is.
The art of coaching is understanding the person as an individual. Knowing when to push and when to protect. Recognising that two athletes with identical data may need entirely different responses. It is the blend of experience, intuition, context, and trust that guides decisions when the textbook answer isn’t the right one.
Science definitely matters. I use it every day. Training principles, physiology, load management, adaptation, recovery. These form the foundation. But science fails when it is applied without judgement, It fails when numbers are followed blindly, when context is ignored, and when the athlete is treated as a system to optimise rather than a human to develop.
No algorithm knows when an athlete is carrying emotional fatigue from work, family, or pressure they haven’t yet named. No AI feels the shift in energy during a long build-up or senses when belief is starting to erode. No software can stand on a track at 3 a.m., or on a trail, and say the right words at the right moment.
The most meaningful coaching I’ve done hasn’t happened when writing the plans. It happened on calls made at the right time, not scheduled weeks in advance. It has happened crewing athletes through some of the worlds toughest races, Badwater, Spartathlon, 24-hour races, being there as a person, when things got dark. It has happened by acting early, not because a metric flashed red on an app or software, but because experience told me that something was off.
Technology can support coaching, but it should never replace the relationship at its core. The future I believe in isn’t anti AI (maybe a little bit) or anti data. It’s just pro human, pro connection. It’s coaching that values conversation as much as computation, trust as much as tracking, and wisdom learned over time more than information delivered instantly.
As everything becomes more automated, choosing human coaching becomes a statement, a choice for depth over ease and experience over speed.
That’s the kind of coaching I believe in and it’s the kind I’ll keep practising, however smart the machines get.
