Artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere in sports performance.
But for strength and conditioning coaches, the important question isn’t whether AI can do more. It’s whether AI can make the coach’s job simpler.
Most performance programs don’t have a shortage of athlete data. They already collect information from strength training, GPS systems, velocity-based training (VBT) devices, timing systems, jump testing, force plates, assessments, attendance and other sports performance technology.
The challenge is what happens after all that data is collected. Someone still has to identify what changed, determine which athletes are improving, find athletes who may need attention and communicate those results to coaches and athletes.
That’s where AI can be genuinely useful.
AI Shouldn’t Replace the Coach
A strength coach understands things that a data set doesn’t. They know an athlete’s training history. They know what happened during practice yesterday. They know when an athlete is learning a new movement, returning from time away or simply having a bad day.
AI shouldn’t try to replace that context or make every coaching decision. Instead, it should help coaches get to the information they need faster.
AI surfaces the insights. The coach decides what they mean.
Start With a Simple Question: What Changed?
One of the most useful things AI can do in athlete performance is continuously review data and identify meaningful changes. Instead of opening multiple reports and comparing testing sessions manually, a coach should be able to quickly see which athletes are trending up or down, who recently set a personal record, who has made the biggest improvement in a particular metric and which athletes may deserve a closer look.
None of these questions are particularly complicated. The challenge is answering them across dozens—or hundreds—of athletes and potentially thousands of data points. That’s where automation matters.
RockDaisy IQ helps surface team-level trends and athletes who may deserve a closer look.
Coaches Shouldn’t Have to Hunt for the Story
Dashboards have made athlete performance data easier to visualize, but dashboards still require someone to look at them. A program may have GPS data, force-plate results, VBT data, timing results and strength data available across multiple systems.
Every system may be doing exactly what it was designed to do, but the coach is still responsible for connecting the dots. AI can help change that workflow.
Rather than starting with a dashboard and asking, “What should I look at?”, the coach can start with the information that deserves attention. An athlete’s speed improved. Another athlete has been trending down. Several athletes just established new personal records.
The goal isn’t another dashboard. It’s less searching.
Let Coaches Ask Questions in Plain English
AI can also change how strength and conditioning coaches interact with athlete data. Traditionally, answering a new question might mean building a report, changing filters, exporting data to a spreadsheet or asking an analyst for help.
Instead, imagine simply asking: Who improved their vertical jump over the last 60 days? Which athletes made the biggest gains in our 10-yard sprint? Who hasn’t been tested recently? How has this athlete changed since the beginning of the summer?
The technology can do the work of finding the relevant information. The coach can spend the time deciding what to do with it.
Reporting Should Happen Automatically
Coaches also spend significant time communicating progress to athletes, sport coaches, administrators and other staff members. Those reports often contain information that already exists: personal records, improvements, testing history, rankings, trends and key performance metrics.
AI and automation should make it possible for athlete performance reports to be generated continuously rather than rebuilt every time someone wants an update. A coach should be able to open an athlete profile and already have a clear summary of that athlete’s progress.
The information was already there. The coach shouldn’t have to rebuild it.
Automatically turn athlete performance data into clear, easy-to-understand reports showing progress, team standing, personal bests and improvements.
Turning Athlete Data Into Useful Insights
This is the idea behind RockDaisy IQ, the AI-powered athlete insights layer within RockDaisy AMS.
RockDaisy IQ analyzes athlete performance information already being centralized in the AMS, including assessment data, GPS, VBT, jump and timing data, force-plate results, attendance and other performance metrics.
Instead of requiring coaches to dig through every data point, IQ helps surface athletes trending up, athletes trending down, new personal records, athletes who may need attention, and team and individual progress.
Coaches can then go deeper into an athlete’s results or ask questions about their data in plain English. The objective isn’t to have AI make coaching decisions. It’s to give coaches the information they need to make those decisions faster.
AI Should Give Coaches More Time to Coach
The future of AI in sports performance probably shouldn’t look like coaches sitting in front of a chatbot all day. It should happen quietly in the background.
Data comes in from the tools a program already uses. Important changes are surfaced. Reports are ready. Coaches ask questions when they want to go deeper. Then they get back to coaching.
Because the real value of AI in sports performance isn’t how sophisticated the technology sounds. It’s whether it helps a coach better understand what’s happening with their athletes.
WE SURFACE THE INSIGHTS. YOU COACH THE ATHLETE.
About RockDaisy LLC
Founded in 2014 by the developers of the NFL’s analytics services, RockDaisy is a New York-based analytics and data visualization platform serving a growing number of sports organizations across the NFL, NBA, NHL, NCAA, NAHL, NHSSCA, and other elite leagues worldwide. For more information, visit rockdaisy.com | X: @RockDaisyAMS | Instagram: @RockDaisyAMS
visit rockdaisy.com | X: @RockDaisyAMS Instagram: @RockDaisyAMS
