The AI coach
TEMPO's AI coach acts as a year-round periodization engine that thinks about your whole season, not just this week.
Season periodization
When you add a race, the coach reverse-engineers from race day: it allocates base, build, peak, and taper blocks, then slots each week's load so fitness peaks exactly when you need it. Multiple A-races get their own tapers separated by maintenance blocks. The coach never collapses a full season into a single peak.
Week-to-week adaptation
After each week the coach reviews what you actually completed versus what was planned. Missed sessions shift TSS forward; extra load prompts a lighter follow-up. The plan adjusts in place without manual intervention.
Rescheduling around life
Tell the coach about constraints in plain language via the Coach Notes field:
- "In Sardinia next week, no bike — I can swim and run"
- "Work travel Mon–Wed, prefer to train evenings"
The coach rebuilds that week's schedule around the constraint and returns to the original plan structure the following week.
Science-backed by default
Every rule the coach applies to your season — how long to taper for your race distance, when a deload week is due, what a bad night of sleep or a low HRV reading is allowed to change, how fast your long run may grow, how to fuel a long ride, how to prepare for heat — comes from a curated set of doctrine cards written from published sports science, each one graded for its evidence (A: meta-analyses and consensus; B: trials and cohorts; C: coaching practice) and checked source by source.
When the coach prescribes, downgrades, reschedules or replans, it names the card by title so you can read it yourself and argue with it. When nothing in the library covers your case, it says the call is coaching judgement — it never dresses an opinion up as evidence. Cards also state when they do not apply, and the coach checks that against your situation (your level, an illness, a hot race) before using a rule.
The same cards set the plan's numbers. Your taper length follows your race's length, not your sport; a deload week is placed on a 3:1 rhythm that turns into 2:1 once you are past fifty, or past forty when your recovery lags; your HRV is read against your own recent baseline; a rebuild of the plan waits for two weeks of low adherence, not one bad week. Every one of those numbers is visible in Settings → Coaching rules with the card and evidence grade it comes from, and you can override it — at your own risk, inside limits that never loosen a safety line. The coach then says the number is yours rather than the card's.
Three postures follow from that science, and the coach holds them:
- Stick to the plan. A well-built week changes only for a reason the coach can cite — a readiness signal past its threshold, a missed or overdone session, a life constraint, illness or injury — never on one data point.
- Readiness is a morning call. Sleep, HRV, resting heart rate and body battery after the night decide today's session; an evening body-battery dip is context, not a trigger, so nothing gets rewritten at 11 pm.
- Adherence is read over weeks. One skipped session is rescheduled; only a repeated pattern over two to four weeks means the plan itself needs to fit your life better.
What the coach reads
- Your training history and fitness trajectory
- Daily readiness signals (HRV, sleep, body battery)
- Race calendar and goal priorities
- Per-sport zones and recent threshold changes
- Notes and manual overrides you provide