At November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit at the Oval in London, a coach was overheard saying: ‘I have a team looking at AI but I have no idea what they do’.

Gary McCoy is the CEO of Peak AI, which has been shortlisted in Sports Business Journals' list of the 10 Most Innovative Sports Tech Companies of 2023.

Peak AI uses psycholinguistics to enhance performance and Gary has a firm view on that coach’s comment.

“If you don’t know what they do, go and lead them because they probably don’t know what they’re doing either,” he tells Joe and John on the latest edition of The People Behind the Tech podcast.

“Artificial intelligence and data, as a general staple in sports, needs guidance,” he continues, “it needs transactional guidance to evolve the athlete.”

Gary spoke at length about the need for coaches to fully engage with AI and also dipped into a range of areas, including:

• Preventing the injuries that may be a consequence of practitioners “asking the wrong questions” [20:00];
• The need for the sports industry to develop a collective ethos for using AI [23:00];
• The significance of an athlete’s cognitive load on their ability to train and perform [30:30];
• Why analysts who better understand performance will better understand how data transacts [46:50].

Joe Lemire LinkedIn | X

John Portch LinkedIn | X

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.