The AI Pole Vault Coach is Here
It's already here.
Hey all - it’s been a while but with track season beginning to ramp back up for many, I wanted to get back into writing a bit again. For those who don’t know, the author of this blog is Nick Neral. I’m a former pole vaulter from Maryland who went on to train at UTennessee and UAkron for a short while before getting into coaching. In my day job, I’ve worked in healthcare artificial intelligence.
So the question for today is, is there a future for AI in pole vault coaching?
Whether we like it or not, artificial intelligence is creeping into the habits of everyone and everything. Harvard Business Review reports that one of the most common use cases for ChatGPT is emotional/mental health related conversations. But, how helpful can artificial intelligence be in sports?
Today, apps like Mustard are already being used in golf and baseball. They combine coaching expertise with artificial intelligence to bring nearly real-time insights to your swing.
What makes pole vault a great fit for AI?
Pole vault is a physics dominated sports. It’s speed, angles, positions, timing. These all make for a great fit for artificial intelligence. In a team sport like soccer, it’s hard to imagine the chain of events of kicking to player A versus player B and the difference in likelihood of scoring. In pole vault, AI can determine how your pole drop affected the final steps of your run, and how that affected your shift, and how that affected your swing.
What can’t AI replace?
AI can’t replace the relationship a coach has with an athlete. If it’s the third attempt at a personal best, AI might make the best recommendation according to the data, but only the coach knows whether the athlete’s been struggling with run throughs recently or gets the jitters from moving up a pole. AI’s never pole vaulted before. Have you ever had a coach describe what something should feel like in the air only for it to click in your head? AI won’t know what it feels like...
What will an AI pole vault coach look like?
Well, we’re building it at https://polevault.coach
An AI pole vault coach will be able to take a video and provide feedback on your jump in seconds. From the run up, pole drop, swing, the turn over the bar, etc.
In the heat of competition, it’ll even be able to give recommendations on your standards and whether you’re on the right size of pole.
How is this possible?
Well, a lot of “coaching” the AI. Out of the box, AI isn’t that good of a pole vault coach. What AI can do though is analyze video frame by frame, and this is a big innovation that helps make this possible. This is where training and prompting and coaching comes into play to make the AI designed around acting like an elite pole vault coach. We’ll also be building in safeguards to protect young or inexperienced vaulters from making adjustments they’re not ready for. If you’re personal best is 8’ or 18’, the AI will provide different insights according to your skill level.
The AI will get better over time as we tell it when it’s doing a good job and when it could use improvement. We’re also able to feed it information on how to be a good pole vaulter and how to be a good coach.
If you’d like to be a part of this journey or contribute, please email me at nneral@gmail.com or message me on Facebook.
If you’d like to join the waitlist, click the link or photo above.
I would suggest rolling this out a month before the start of the spring season and getting the word out on all social media platforms.