This summer, I’m embarking on a long-distance swimming journey – but I’m not doing it alone. My training partner isn’t a human coach or a fancy swim app; it’s an AI. Specifically, I’ve recruited OpenAI’s new o3-pro model as my personal swim coach, supercharged with its agentic Deep Research to make it even smarter. This post kicks off a series about how I’m building an AI-driven training partnership to get back in shape in the pool. It's about how genuis-level AI can help one out-of-practice swimmer (👉 me) train smarter, adapt on the fly, and maybe even have some fun along the way.
Back to the Pool (After 5 Years!)
It's been nearly 5 years since I last really swam laps. I’ve splashed around with my kids here and there, but proper training? Zero. This morning, I took in the glorious California summer sun and went to our local outdoor pool. 1,000 yards (of 50 meter laps) later, I was exhausted but reminded of how much I can actually like swimming (sunlight and an open-air faraday cage? Perfection.) My arms felt like noodles, my lungs were on fire, and I had the humbled grin of someone who just remembered that swimming shape is ... different.
My Apple Watch doesn’t lie: 1,050 yards of swimming (including a modest 50-yard butterfly attempt) took me just under an hour – with an average pace per 100 yards that a sea turtle would laugh at (or not, they're such beautiful and kind creatures). Seeing those numbers after my first swim back was equal parts humbling and hilarious. Maybe an AI-savant can help?
If you want a laugh, check out my splits: my first 100 yards (with generous rest included) clocked in at a glacial 7 minutes 37 seconds. 🤦♂️ By the time I got into a rhythm, I was still slogging along, and my heart rate was spiking into the 160s. The graph looks like a seismograph during an earthquake – and I'm not sharing my VO2max to avoid embarrassment. I have nowhere to go but up from here, and that’s where my new AI coach comes in.
Why an AI Coach (Instead of a Human)?
After replacing Otter.ai with 4 prompts, I wondered how GPT might help me here. I didn’t just want a generic plan; I wanted a coach that knows me – my goals, my schedule, the fact that I’m juggling work and family, and that I’m motivated by fun (and cool tech) as much as by getting faster.
So, I gave the AI all the personal context it could need. I told it my current fitness level (screenshots from today's swim), my long-term goal (build endurance for long-distance swims by end of summer, and not drown when I race my kids in the pool), and my constraints (e.g. I can realistically swim 3 times a week, I have ~45 minutes per session, and learning to tread water like a water polo player sounds like it'd be handy for pool time kid play). I basically handed over a dossier on “Sutha, the Wannabe Swimmer.”
Then, I handed the AI some expert knowledge to work with: I uploaded Total Immersion by Terry Laughlin – the classic book on efficient swim technique. Yes, I bought the book (probably more than once), so I'm happy to hand the AI a PDF of it. Why that book in particular? Because I knew I didn’t just need endurance, I needed to relearn how to swim well. Terry Laughlin’s philosophy is that well-executed technique beats brute fitness any day. In other words, flailing through endless laps won’t help if you’re swimming like a brick. His Total Immersion method preaches balance, streamlining, and efficiency: swim smarter, not harder. Deep Research noticed when scouring the web that there lots of folks who preach "just keep swimming until you finally get a continuous mile." Maybe that works for some folks, but isn't my style, so giving it my "source of truth" text was key.
Finally, I turned on Deep Research mode for the AI. What’s Deep Research? Think of it as giving my AI coach a superpower: it can actively read and synthesize info from the internet and my files instead of just regurgitating whatever it was trained on. Equally important, it's an "agentic" mode: it means the AI can scour sources, delegate subtasks to itself (spinning up as many instances of its genius-self as it needs), and plan with real data and citations, almost like a research assistant. This isn’t your vanilla ChatGPT spouting generic tips – it’s an AI that can double-check itself, pull in new ideas, and think more deeply about my training plan. There's no question it's smarter and more thoughtful than the median human coach.
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