Our world is increasingly enriched by AI and the data that feeds it. Think of Google Maps – not 20 years ago, we relied on atlases, verbal directions from friends, and the obsolete MapQuest. With data abundant, Google Maps plots the optimal route for you taking into account accidents, construction, average speeds, and road closures. In the world of endurance sports, a company called Predictive Fitness has harnessed the power of athlete training data to “teach” the AI-driven platform to produce the best endurance training possible. More athlete data means better training for everyone on the platform, so Predictive Fitness conducts research every year to further bolster its dataset, and everyone wins. Participant data contributes to ever-improving training prescriptions for all athletes on the platform, the company’s industry-leading endurance training app becomes even better, and the participants themselves receive two free months of training. The Preseason Project is research by the people, for the people.
For TriDot, Predictive Fitness’ genesis brand that offers optimized triathlon training, the Preseason Project also gives TriDot the data it needs to quantify the performance gains that TriDot delivers over training alternatives. The statistics generated from that research speak for themselves.
By joining the platform and connecting their training devices, athletes are directly involved in making the industry’s best training program even better and quantifying how effective it is. Not only does the Predictive Fitness team use the information on the platform to improve and enhance the user experience – but because the platform is driven by AI and machine learning, it gets smarter and more effective with every piece of data it gathers. Simply put, the more an athlete trains on the platform, the more effective the training software becomes.
The time of year for this initiative is critical. The months of November through March, known as the preseason, is the ideal time to conduct research since racing interferes with reliable results. Athletes build, taper, and recover from events that both positively and negatively impact performance ability. By gathering data during the preseason, TriDot is largely able to control for those variables.
As VP of Marketing Matt Bach explains, gathering research data during the preseason months is essential to TriDot’s rapidly accelerating improvement. With so many athletes on the platform, TriDot can create training programs that adjust to the specific needs of every athlete, creating a custom plan that generates greater results than a one-size-fits-all program.
“TriDot is always iterating based on all the possible combinations of information that is entered, so it can come up with the best training plan more effectively than any human possibly could,” Bach says. “Because we have such a massive dataset, TriDot can develop the optimal program to train an athlete based very specifically on who they are. This includes age, gender, performance ability, time in each sport, and even their genetics and the environmental conditions they face in their training and racing.”
For triathletes, joining the Preseason Project research initiative gives them unlimited access to one of the best training programs available – an innovative solution that is gaining the attention of some of the best athletes and coaches in the triathlon world. Mark Allen, who was named by ESPN as “The Greatest Endurance Athlete of All Time,” has all of his athletes on TriDot, calling it “the best training technology you’ll ever find in coaching.”
Joining the research program is remarkably easy. After gaining access to the platform, athletes simply need to connect their device (such as a Garmin or Apple Watch) to the TriDot app – their data will automatically feed into the platform after every workout.
“It shows right up on the platform, so you can see metrics like your power output, your heart rate, and your pace,” Bach says. “And then TriDot digests all of that information and prescribes future training based on that data, so it will refine your training each time, based on what you just did.”
The platform has generated massive results for athletes of all levels, and the team at Predictive Fitness continues to improve each year, thanks in part to the information provided during the Preseason Project. Many thousands of participants apply to participate in the research each year, and Bach expects that number to continue to grow as more people embrace TriDot’s research that is by the people, for the people.
For more information and to apply for the TriDot Preseason Project, click here.
