AI Feedback Focus

General Feature Requests
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So a random thought while watching the black line up and down the pool. Something has been bugging me about the AI feedback, as in I just wasn’t finding it useful, and I now realize why.

At the moment, all the AI feedback is doing is converting your data from the workout into sentence form, and repeating what numbers you hit from the data shown in the workout summary.

I can see some limited usefulness there, but I think what would be more useful for the AI feedback is to interpret the numbers from that session, along with the recent training data from relevant sessions from the day(s) before, and give feedback on where you are going wrong, can improve, might be missing the mark, or might be overdoing things.

An example, my most recent session feedback:

You completed the planned 40 minutes of running while slightly exceeding the planned load (59 vs. 53), which is a positive sign of your improving strength. Covering 6.5 km at an average pace of 06:10/km with an average heart rate of 135 shows you maintained the intended L2 HR intensity. Your efficiency factor of 1.31 indicates a good balance between pace and heart rate. With an RPE of 2/10, it seems the session felt easy, and your 4/5 feeling score reflects your positive experience. Keep up the great work!

You can see, that is really just telling me the numbers I can already see on the workout summary in sentence form, some like RPE etc I entered myself anyway.

Instead, it would be way more useful if it noticed things from within this and recent workouts and gave suggestions. For example, this one asked me to do that workout over undulating terrain, and to take it super easy (L2), slower than normal L2.

In reality, it was on a flat course (just the nature of my surroundings), and while I did take it easy, my pacing was faster than it should have been.

More interesting feedback would have been pointing out (based on Garmin data), that I might want to use a treadmill, or find better terrain to run on next time as I wasn’t getting the intended benefits of the session, that my pacing seems high, but as the HR data was good, maybe it is time for a new FTP test to ensure we are setting the right zones.

Perhaps not the best example, but you get the gist.

I guess, in a nutshell, if it was a human coach, and I did a workout, and they said “great job mate, give me your Garmin so I can read all your data back to you then go on your way”, I doubt they’d be my coach much longer :wink:

Keep up the great work!

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Do you put your own feedback into the session text box? I find it gives slightly more useful feedback when you give it context (as most AI tools do). If you tell it that you ran a flat course, or a treadmill, instead of an undulating course, it will usually comment on it. If you tell it you were dying of heat exhaustion it will usually take that into account.

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@AdamJowett thanks for your feedback. I would agree that the AI coach has its limitations, but as @MartinM notes, the more context you give in your comments, the better the feedback.
I’ve gotten some funny replies when I give it more context.

I usually skim through the feedback - it’s just stating what I already know (data), then I give it a little more context other than the hard data and subjective scores, and the second feedback is usually better.

In the future, I would like to see it exclude warm ups and cool downs and focus on giving feedback on the main set. I think that would be more useful (I sometimes walk / do ABCs and skips to warm up). I’d also like it to “see” historical data like in the power/pace curve - it already does that with showing your Workout Reserve, and make a comment like “your recent aerobic runs are getting faster while in the same time your heart rate is lower or steady, indicating you are getting fitter” or something along the same lines. Or during summer time the opposite while I’m getting used to running in the heat when pace slows quite a bit at first. It could say something like:”stay patient as you allow your body acclimatize to the heat. Run by heart rate, and allow your pace to slow. Don’t let your ego stand in your way and push the pace when you get used to the heat as this can increase the internal stress and require longer recovery time.”

I think we are just in the beginning in the journey with AI coach and much to do to improve - but overall I really like the instant feedback.

Let me know what happens when you give it more context- try to play with it a bit. You may be surprised :grin:
MJ

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some good suggestions here fyi @Andrea

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Continuing the discussion from AI Feedback Focus:

I totally agree with this. I don’t need the numbers in feedback as I can see that myself anyway. The improvement I would like to see in the feedback is to separate the warmup/main set/cooldown. When the workout is a ‘tempo run’ for example, the average pace of the entire run is so irrelevant. I actually write my tempo pace in myself… I give a lot of feedback on how my workout went and so on but the feedback seems to be repeating what I say but just changing up the ‘wording’ a bit… Looking forward to that part of improvement in the near future!

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Completely agree. GenAI should be able to offeruch deeper analysis. I also agree with having AI comment on the most recent workout trends as well.

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@Marjaana thanks for the suggestions, I have been playing around with it some more, giving it some more info, more asides, and for sure it shows some fun replies and a bit of personality. In the end though, the analysis is no better, and it seems the written feedback doesn’t seem to be taken into consideration when it comes to planning from what I can tell (I think I remember this being mentioned as a future feature).

I’ve tweaked a hamstring a week back (two weeks from race day, grrr), and have told detailed that along with how it felt each day to see if any adaptations were made accordingly. At the moment, it doesn’t look like it, as threshold and HIIT sessions were still scheduled, and no load reduction or time reductions were made.

Of course, I have my own brain, so made my own, but at the moment, the AI feedback really is just a summarizer of what has been done. I look forward to our AI overlord becoming more like a coach and comments being brought into adaptations in the future.

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Oh no, hamstring! Hope you recover in time for your race.
AI overlord still needs some training but I believe the vision is to train him to deliver exactly what you are suggesting in the future.
In the mean time, please listen to your body and use the workout wizard liberally!

Regardless of the training status of AI Overlord; YOU are always going to be the only one who truly knows how your body feels and adapts, so I guess it makes You the Overlord :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Wishing you a quick recovery and a smashing race :star_struck: let us know how it goes!
MJ

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Thanks @Marjaana, lots of light active movement, ibuprofen, and some cycling to keep the blood flowing has it recovering much quicker than previous niggles.

Looking forward to see how Derek (the name I give my AI, some will know the reference), gets smarter as time goes by and AI tech improves.

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I’ve been prompting the AI to give more feedback. As in “Don’t sugar coat the feedback. I know I screwed up this workout. Be firm and direct about my failings.” It gave me firm and direct feedback about intensity issues, not sticking to plan, etc.

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