The Future of Fitness & Nutrition Coaching in the Age of AI
We're in a rare moment in technology. I've worked in software since 1991. I started writing code in 1982. There have been some big moments — the first Mac, first PC, the internet, the iPhone — but nothing comes close to what we're seeing right now. The entire process of creating software is being reshaped by AI. And if you're a fitness and nutrition coach, then the software you use is going to undergo an equally radical change.
But I'm pretty sure that the future is not going to be “AI replaces coaches”. Instead, AI will raise the level that you are able to coach at. If you don't adopt AI now, other coaches will — and they will surpass you, probably much sooner than you think.
We build Pono for serious coaching teams and brands, people who care about doing this really well. My vision for where coaching software is headed is simple:
- AI will be everywhere.
- It will become invisible.
- And eventually, the very idea of a “coaching platform” may change.
Here's what I mean.
The next 0–3 months: AI becomes part of every feature
In the short term, the shift is clear and practical. PonoAI will show up in every single feature.
It's no longer a gimmick. It was, a year or two ago — a chat assistant in your app, something that might generate a meal plan or summarize your progress. Now it's a set of coaching accelerators built into the work you already do every day. There's nothing extra that you need to learn, it just lets you do what you do more effectively.
AI is exceptionally good at many things that online coaches spend far too much time doing manually:
- Summarizing and extracting signal from noise — check-ins, notes, message threads, trends.
- Spotting patterns — compliance changes, weight trends, training fatigue signals, missed habits.
- Generating first drafts — programs, workouts, replies, follow-ups, reminders.
This is where you'll feel an immediate impact, in the small, repetitive tasks that add up to hours every week. PonoAI gives you that time back so that you can spend it where it actually helps.
And the client experience improves too. When logging gets easier, feedback gets faster, and monitoring progress is more fun, their adherence improves. When adherence improves, results improve, and that's what coaching is ultimately about.
The next 3–9 months: AI stops being “a thing” and becomes the system
The medium-term shift is bigger. Before the end of this year — probably well before — PonoAI won't feel like a separate product at all. You won't see a "PonoAI" button in your admin. It will be integrated deeply inside everything, so seamlessly that you won't even realize you are using AI. You'll just feel like Pono is so much smarter, faster, and more helpful.
This is the point where AI becomes quietly operational: it appears where it's needed, it stays out of the way where it isn't, but in everything you do it is silently helping raise your standards.
This is also where I think the best coaching software will differentiate itself. I've always said with Pono that the goal is not to replace coaching with automation. I have seen some companies do that over the years, and inevitably they do not last. The goal is to automate what should be automatic, while keeping the human parts human. Premium coaching is not more automation. Premium coaching is a more consistent, higher-quality experience across the entire coach/client relationship.
In practice, this “invisible AI” might look like:
- A coach opening a client check-in and instantly seeing the important parts highlighted.
- A coach getting decision support that's grounded in the client's context (not generic advice).
- A client getting nudged at the right time, without being spammed or treated like part of an automated workflow.
- A company making better decisions because they have so much deeper insights into everything that's going on.
In this phase, AI becomes less like an add-on and more like an assistant deeply embedded inside your workflow — always there, very rarely intrusive, and genuinely useful.
The next 2 years: coaching platforms might not look like “platforms” anymore
The honest answer here is that I cannot reliably predict where we will be even one year from now. The rate of change is so fast, but equally the potential for shifts that change things are so strong. Predicting the exact form is impossible. But the direction is clear.
If I had to speculate then I'd say that there's a real possibility that platforms like Pono won't exist in the form they do today.
I want Pono to exist — and I'm very optimistic that it will — but it may very well evolve into something that looks less like “software you log into” and more like a blueprint that AI systems use. Here's my feeling right now:
- You'll use whatever AI you want — your preferred assistant, agent, model, interface.
- That AI communicates silently with Pono in the background.
- Pono provides the structure — the rules, the workflows, the data model, the permissions, the coaching standards, the “how this business runs” blueprint.
- The AI handles the surface layer: conversation, planning, execution, reminders, summaries, drafting, and coordination.
In that world, a platform is less about screens and buttons and more about providing a set of instructions. It controls the engine that ensures that the right thing happens at the right time. But AI becomes the primary interface. Your computer and your phone don’t have apps anymore. They’re just an AI interface. At this point what then matters is the quality of the underlying instruction set, the blueprint. And that's how I think platforms like Pono remain valuable: not just as an app, but as a coaching operating system.
Of course I don’t know if this is exactly how the future unfolds. But the direction feels clear, and I think there's at least a solid chance that that's the future we're heading towards.
What doesn't change: coaching is still human
Even with everything that I've said, one thing stays constant. AI can't care. Coaches can.
Fitness and nutrition coaching is not just information delivery. It's behavior change, trust, the art of knowing when to push someone, when to step back, when to focus on the next tiny step. AI shouldn't replace that. It should strengthen it.
At Pono we are building AI that enhances coaching performance and client outcomes, without replacing the coach or cheapening the relationship.
What we're doing right now
The most exciting part of this moment right now is not that AI can generate workouts or summarize check-ins. It's that we can finally build systems that really support coaches on a level that was previously unthinkable. And we can build them at a speed that until just very recently was unimaginable.
The future of coaching isn't less human. It's more capable.