BaseCamp Introduces DataSmart: Purpose-Built AI for Better Human Coaching

September 10, 2026

Custom-trained AI model combines performance analytics, exercise physiology, BaseCamp coaching frameworks, and human review to support better athlete decisions

CARLISLE, Pa., (September 10, 2026) /ENDURANCE SPORTSWIRE/ — BaseCamp Endurance Coaching today announced DataSmart, a new AI-supported coaching system powered by a custom-trained model built specifically for endurance coaching.

DataSmart is designed to help coaches organize athlete information, analyze more data, identify meaningful patterns, and prepare more effectively for athlete decisions and conversations. It is not an automated coaching platform and is not intended to replace the judgment, communication, or relationships at the heart of professional coaching.

The tool supports the coaching. The coach still does the coaching.

“We want AI doing what AI does best: processing, organizing, comparing, and analyzing,” said Tim Cusick, Head Coach of BaseCamp Endurance Coaching. “We want coaches doing what great coaches do: listening, understanding, interpreting, deciding, communicating, and guiding.”

PURPOSE-BUILT FOR ENDURANCE COACHING

DataSmart is more than a general-purpose AI platform applied to athlete data. The system combines a custom-trained model with structured athlete inputs, defined analytical workflows, BaseCamp coaching frameworks, real-world coaching scenarios, and required coach review.

The model is being trained around BaseCamp’s coaching principles, advanced performance-analysis methods, exercise-physiology frameworks, athlete-development processes, event-analysis standards, and communication practices. This gives DataSmart a specific lens through which to organize and evaluate athlete information.

“There is a major difference between asking a general AI platform to summarize training data and using a model built to understand how experienced coaches evaluate an athlete,” Cusick said. “DataSmart is being trained to recognize the information, patterns, questions, and decision points that matter within the BaseCamp coaching process.”

Cusick has spent much of his career at the intersection of endurance coaching, athlete data, and applied analytics. Head Coach Dr. Namrita Brooke contributes the exercise-physiology framework, helping ensure that DataSmart reflects sound principles of adaptation, recovery, training response, and long-term athlete development.

“DataSmart combines advanced analytics with exercise physiology, then places that information in the hands of a coach who understands the athlete as a person,” Brooke said. “The analysis can inform the process, but the coach still has to interpret it, ask the right questions, and decide how it should be applied.”

AI FOR ANALYSIS. COACHES FOR DECISIONS.

General-purpose AI may be able to summarize a training file or identify an apparent trend. It does not automatically know which information matters most to an athlete’s goals, how training history should shape future priorities, how event importance should influence preparation, or which conclusions are sufficiently supported by the available information.

DataSmart is designed to provide that structure. Each tool follows a repeatable workflow that defines the required information, patterns to examine, questions to consider, output format, and areas the coach must review.

BaseCamp coaches will use DataSmart to organize athlete history, review workload and performance trends, identify meaningful changes and possible limiters, evaluate event demands, compare athlete goals with execution, and prepare structured analysis for coach review.

“AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is not a coach,” Cusick said. “It can process enormous amounts of information, organize data, identify patterns, and complete analysis much faster than a human working alone. What it cannot do is fully understand the athlete, the person, and all the variables that influence their performance. DataSmart is designed to empower our coaches with better information so they can make better coaching decisions.”

AI does not fully understand the meaning of an athlete’s goals, confidence, motivation, schedule pressures, emotional state, or life circumstances. It cannot fully recognize when an athlete needs to be challenged, reassured, redirected, educated, or simply heard.

Those responsibilities remain with the coach.

BETTER ANALYTICS, BETTER CONVERSATIONS

By reducing the time required to compile and organize information, DataSmart can help coaches spend more time understanding athletes, preparing for meaningful conversations, asking better questions, explaining the purpose behind training, adapting plans to real-life circumstances, and providing individualized guidance.

“Better analytics should lead to better conversations, not fewer conversations,” Cusick said. “The goal is to help coaches arrive with a clearer picture, then use their experience and relationship with the athlete to make a better decision.”

BaseCamp sees AI as a tool that can expand a coach’s analytical capacity while keeping judgment, communication, accountability, and every final decision in human hands.

“Our position is straightforward,” Cusick said. “We use AI as a tool to help us coach. We do not use AI as coaching.”

The future of coaching is not human coaching or artificial intelligence. It is expert human coaching made stronger by better tools.

ABOUT BASECAMP ENDURANCE COACHING

BaseCamp Endurance Coaching is built around expert coaching, athlete education, applied sports science, performance analytics, and community. Through personalized coaching, group programs, camps, events, and integrated performance services, BaseCamp helps cyclists pursue meaningful goals while training in a supportive community where they belong.

MEDIA CONTACT

Tim Cusick
Head Coach, BaseCamp Endurance Coaching
Product Leader, TrainingPeaks WKO
Email: info@joinbasecamp.com
www.joinbasecamp.com