How I Use AI

I’ve been doing this online coaching thing since 2014, running things solo and sharing my personal approach to fighter performance training. Ever since I started, I’ve joked with my wife Deborah, “If only I could clone myself. I could do all the jobs that only I can do without me being the bottleneck.” Well, it looks like that wasn’t so daft after all. It’s a lot of work, but that’s really where this is heading. And I’m excited.

My background as an engineer influences everything I do. So now I use Claude, Google’s Gemini Notebook, Eden, and API tools behind the scenes to help me out researching, drafting, and delivering my work. This page openly explains how and why. I apply the same principles I use in training here too, and you deserve to know how I go about things.

I’ve resisted hiring people to take on the work that spreads me thin. I’m incredibly careful to make sure what you see is true to both the sports science evidence and my own fighter performance training principles. Content easily drifts off path into generic fitness advice or completely messes up the practical application of the science. Cloning me is the only solution.

What stays human (Don)

This is important. I’ve reviewed and edited every word that reaches you, so you can trust I’m only sharing what’s accurate and useful. If the voice doesn’t sound like me, I rewrite it until it’s right. More on that coming up.

Every single framework, personal experience as both a fighter and a coach, and judgment about is genuinely helpful vs wastes your time is 100% mine. AI is my sparring partner to sharpen my ideas. And it turns out, a really good one.

What the AI intern does

The AI tools I use serve as my intern, learning how I do things and getting work done. As I get better at teaching the intern my craft, it’s freeing me up to work on projects only I can truly do. Did I say I’m excited?

There are three main jobs the intern handles for me.

First, there’s research. Everything I produce demands I brush up on the latest findings in various fields, such as energy systems development, motor learning, flow state, or tendon adaptation. The intern searches the literature, including peer-reviewed papers, much faster than I can. And let’s face it, with a better memory. It makes sure I don’t miss anything, and helps me cross-reference claims against the evidence. This helps me question my assumptions, challenge my own bias, and continue to evolve my approach to training.

Second, there’s structure. Once I’ve collected all my notes and the material I need, the intern helps me organize everything so the final piece is super dense with my principles and practical action steps. It helps me cut what feels important to me as a nerd/coach, but doesn’t help you put this stuff into action. It’s like having a ruthless editor who’ll “kill my darlings”.

All my work uses principle-based frameworks (the Input-Process-Output model, the Optimal Training Cycle, the Fight Strategy Matrix) and the intern helps me slot new ideas and knowledge into my own structures without losing the thread.

Third, the intern writes the first draft from my own voice guidelines, built from my own material (there’s tons of it). It mimics my tone, my vocabulary, my habits, and the way I build an argument. But it never decides what’s true (it has no idea), and I never let it see the slop out there. I strictly enforce quality control, providing every framework, every performance model, training recommendation, every statistic and fact. Every piece of judgement about what actually works for fighters is all mine. The intern speeds up the process, but never replaces my thinking. Quite the opposite, it affords me more time for thinking and developing my ideas.

Learning in public

Using any new tool means experimentation, to understand what it’s good at and where it holds you back. I’ve been doing this in public, which means you’ll see the evidence in my content over the years. You’ll see where I’ve trusted the AI is doing a better job than I can, when it really wasn’t. There’s some cringey turns of phrase I should have just dumped. But that’s how you learn, you need to eat a few shots before you fix your guard.

As a result, I’ve landed where I’m at now. And I’ll continue to evolve how I do things, continue to apply the same principles. Experiment, be honest with the results, and don’t hide behind the polished version. I’m not going to delete old posts to make myself look clever, they’re just part of the record.

The AI assistant coach behind the scenes

I’m also using AI behind the scenes to act as my assistant coach. I’m teaching the coach my personal principles, methods, and structures, and it helps me deliver that know-how to my clients, worldwide in realtime. I’m no longer the bottleneck. More people get instant, personalised feedback on their training and current situations using my personal knowledge base and background.

I’ll share an example. My programs already come with calculation tools for planning training blocks to peak for fight dates, but I still get asked what’s the best approach for different personal situations. Those scheduling decisions live spontaneously in my head, and they’re deeply principle based. That’s just how I think. I can see the answer clearly after years of doing this and working with well over a thousand fighters.

Now I’m training my AI assistant coach to make the same calls as well as I can. Maybe even better. The assistant coach has a better memory for all the historical personal details than I do. Hand up to that one. And then there’s the fact I work with fighters in over 95 different countries. I sleep, the assistant coach doesn’t. My fighters get instant support, even for last minute panics demanding an immediate answer.

Over the years, I’ve built a robust coaching process. I follow repeatable steps when I build out a training cycle. I test, identify the constraint, apply the minimum effective dose, and retest. I’ve developed these frameworks with my Heavy Hitters athletes, and the assistant coach delivers the same process and programming principles at scale. You’ll never see a lazy, generic template because the thinking behind everything is still all mine, and it always will be.

Fighter Forever and the AI assistant coach layer

This is still in development, so I may be sharing this too early. Fighter Forever is the first service I’m building this way from scratch. It applies my 16-week Optimal Training Cycle specifically for the over-30 athlete, and offers an optional AI assistant coach layer built entirely on my own methods and real age-related advice.

When the assistant coach layer goes live, it’ll help adapt your training to your injury history, your lifestyle, your test results, and your fight dates too. And with a superhuman memory, it gets smarter the longer you use it. But it never steps outside of my coaching principles, and never invents advice from God knows where.

The assistant coach delivers targeted, principle-based feedback round the clock to more fighters than I ever could one-on-one. If you need me directly, I’m still here for video calls, in the community forum, on the YouTube channel, answering your questions.

Why I’m telling you this

It’s an embarrassing story really. Back in 2002, I was training in my garage with a heavy bag, and there was a problem. I wanted to listen to music and have a round timer at the same time, but mobile phones were still bricks and mobile apps were still a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. So I designed a custom CD with music and round timing sounds together, and it worked brilliantly.

I used it in Muay Thai classes I’d teach, and other people wanted it. So I studio recorded it and had a batch of thousand CDs delivered. I didn’t do my SWOT analysis. Soon after, mobile phone apps came along and did a better job running a round timer while playing music at the same time. I still have those Timer Training Mix CDs in my loft.

I’m not making that mistake again.

AI is a genuine opportunity to scale my personal approach at high quality, but only if I learn to use these tools as well as anyone. And only if I’m honest with you about how I’m using them. You deserve the truth about how I’m building and delivering my training programs, and producing the content you read here.

I use tools that earn their place and cut those that don’t. The same principles that govern how I program your training (test, be honest about what works, don’t hide behind tradition) apply to everything I do. The content I make, and the services you trust will deliver relentless progress.

Reach out if you have questions about any of this. You know where to find me.