With the rise of digital training and health platforms, there is an expectation that the training and feedback you receive needs to be personalised to you. However, there is a difference between receiving personalised feedback and following a personalised plan.
“The digital fitness segment is set to reach $59B by 2024”
Personalised feedback has almost become the norm. With the likes of Whoop, Zwift, Eight Sleep, Oura, Tonal and many others all providing you with personalised feedback based on your current training and health performance. But the question I asked myself is, 'Why stop there?'
Imagine if this personalised feedback could be linked into a greater goal or plan. Instantly, you’re providing more context for the everyday athlete, and now they’re starting to be immersed inside an holistic training experience. Taking this next step isn’t easy. The team and I have spent the last 4-5 years just thinking about this very pain point.
Will people value this next step? I believe so. People are becoming more educated about their training and health data. However, the training plan needs to be made simple and easy to digest, for it to be adapted into everyday life. This is not just about how smart the algorithms are, it's also about the front end experience as this is what delivers the first impression. Furthermore, most people would benefit from personalised guidance delivered by a PT or an online coach, but a huge barrier to this is cost. The technology we’ve created provides your business with similar benefits of a coach but delivered in a super accessible way.
How can we make this possible? Let me walk you through our take on what is the requirement for a personalised training experience, and how you can create this for your customers.
We recognise that there are many business pressures, including staying on top of the current roadmap, marketing deadlines and customer feature requests. Therefore, if your business wants to add a personalised training layer to your product, it needs to be made simple and easy. You have the choice of working with the raw APIs, to an SDK and a component library that you can easily embed inside your product.
The flow we use is OAuth 2.0 for registering and identifying athletes that will benefit from the personalised training experience.
Every plan is led by a goal. This goal isn't about winning the Tour de France. It can be as simple as wanting to lose weight. Understanding the athlete’s motivation and goal, sets the training demands of what they’ll experience. Plus, this process is adaptable to suit all different coaching methodologies as we blend the coach's experience with the smart algorithm to set the plan. What’s cool is the athlete has full control over their training plan. They can set when they want to train and Spoked will ensure the balance between intensity and volume is aligned.
Goals change, so the plan needs to be able to adapt to this. As an athlete you can schedule multiple goals together. Depending on the level of priority, the tapers for the goals are automatically generated and the right flow of phases are created.
Training zones are what communicate the expected level of intensity that needs to be ridden. The planned rides are broken into 3 segments; warm up (varies based on session intensity), workout and cool down. The workout efforts are rounded and grouped to keep it easy to follow, while still being based on science led coaching.
Your customers can also choose between planned rides, free rides e.g. bunch ride, coffee ride (not following any type of structure) and other activities e.g. walking, gym, running. The other activities are used to put a mark in the week and the planned work fits around this.
Data is becoming more accessible so it’s important to capture it, so that even if your customer doesn’t have a power meter or a heart rate monitor, they can still benefit from a personalised training plan.
Capturing ride only tells half the story. It can be argued that personal feedback is more important.
Alongside the ride data, Spoked analyses sleep, mental and physical stresses, which are then factored into the plan by the algorithms. This data is currently collected via personal feedback loops. This data is then benchmarked against the individual's 5 and 14 day baselines, plus what the research suggests.
Being able to understand what has been achieved helps with perspective and motivation. Becoming healthier and fitter is more than just producing more power, it’s about leveling up the knowledge base of your customer. If your customer can understand their strengths and weaknesses of a session they’ve just ridden, they’ll become more confident in themselves and the plan.
.png)
The Spoked engine adapts the training plan from a daily and weekly perspective. It blends your ride data and personal feedback to impact each zone individually based on scientific research and experience from world-class coaches. With this combination, it ensures the plan stays true to the rider’s training performance.
For future development we'll start to aggregate wearable data/health data to be factored into the daily adjustments.
There are many ways to measure progress. Spoked can add further value to your business by helping your customers understand if they're moving in the right direction. Additionally, you’re able to cherry pick the elements that suit you the best.
At Spoked, we've taken a back step and thought about what are the key habits that lead to a rider becoming fitter and faster on the bike. We've focused on 4 key variables that provide insight if a rider is on the right path to success.
While each element sits inside its own container, there are multiple relationships between each one to create a holistic training experience. This enables a seamless journey as your customers move through building the plan, following the plan, measuring progress and then completing the cycle to start again. In doing so, it becomes a habit within your customer’s training routine.
For the team and I at Spoked, we’re only just getting started. The increased amount of data being collected will continue to lead to further refinements of the personalised training engine. We're also exploring different scenarios your customers will encounter as they’re following a plan e.g holidays, injury, illness and menstrual cycles (we've already started this process through the skip session functionality).
This is personalised training, but different. We’re passionate about bringing this thinking into the market and striving for everyday athletes to benefit from personalised training. Lastly, if you’re reading this and want to connect, please get in touch via rich@spoked.ai
Curious for more? Check out our Swagger docs and/or API docs
