How Joe took on more clients without changing how he programs

What changed for his business#

Joe Pedulla (@pedullaperformance) coaches strength and conditioning in Power 4 collegiate athletics and is training director at Apex Athlete. He coached in the Kansas City Royals' minor league system before that, and owns Pedulla Performance, where he programs for his own athletes and mentors other coaches. He wrote to us in September:

"Relay has singlehandedly optimized my programming and helped me add more revenue to my business. I am able to handle so many more clients with convenience, repeatable workflows and overall ease."

His training principles did not change to get there. His progressions, his velocity thresholds and his sprint charts are the same ones he used before. What changed is that he no longer types them out.

It started smaller than that.

"Originally I started using Relay in a way that was just a minor upgrade from my previous workflow. I started by using the periodization feature for a while, where I was able to make long-term changes in one shot across an entire training cycle, but then the Claude connection dropped and I started using that. This is where things became incredibly efficient."

The programming stayed his#

Joe did not ask Claude to write a program. He asked it to read his.

"One of the first things that I did was tell Claude to go into Relay and scrub all of my programs and all of the templates that I had built out (not just for my clients, but all the templates in my Relay library). I had it analyze them so that it could recognize programming tendencies of mine."

Then he made it prove what it had learned.

"I then had Claude ask me questions regarding what it picked up and recognized. I sat there for a solid weekend and confirmed or denied the things that it suggested it had learned about my programming - what my tendencies are and what my actual training principles are. I added even more context and even educated it on literal mental models I work through when making decisions."

That weekend is what separates this from a model guessing at a coach's style. A model that has only read your programs infers your habits. One you have corrected, claim by claim, works from principles you confirmed, and the wrong guesses are gone because you threw them out.

The rules he wrote down once#

After the principles came the rules Joe applies without thinking about them. He has taught Claude dozens. Four show how specific this gets.

Coach notes are the plainest. Claude reads the exercise in the program and attaches the cue Joe would have written.

"Canonical notes that it will automatically apply to different exercises so I never have to write any notes for exercises."

Progressions come next. Claude picks one from the length of the training block, the style of periodization and the emphasis of that block, the same three things Joe would weigh.

Resisted sprint loads run off his own charts.

"If I program 30% VDEC, Claude knows to go into Relay and write in the notes that the approximate bodyweight for 30% VDEC is 40-50% bodyweight."

So do his velocity cutoffs.

"If I program 2 RIR for a squat pattern, Claude knows to automatically add a velocity cutoff of 0.47m/s, which is informed not only by VBT research, but my unique approach to VBT."

None of that is a Relay feature, and none of it came from the model. It is his method, written down once and applied every time he programs.

He speaks the changes now#

In Claude, Joe keeps a project with a separate chat per one-to-one client, so each conversation carries that athlete's history. When he changes someone's programming, or several athletes at once, he talks instead of typing.

"I activate Wispr Flow and I speak all of my programming changes and updates directly into Claude."

He leaves it listening while he works.

"Wispr Flow was a great addition to this workflow because Wispr Flow can listen to you for up to 20 minutes. I will just keep it running in the background and as new thoughts come to mind, I speak them and move on."

On models he is blunt: "To even further optimize speed and simplicity with this Claude x Relay connection, I would recommend Sonnet 5."

Two summaries a week, not a scroll through every athlete#

Twice a week Claude reports back on how his clients trained, and Joe decided what counts as worth reporting.

"It knows exactly what information and red flags to communicate to me because I've educated it on what to look for. No need to look at individual chats, numbers, nothing. I get actionable information immediately."

The reading is done before he opens anything. The coaching call on what to do about it stays his.

He keeps it current#

Every two to three weeks Joe has Claude run the original analysis again over his programs and update a document in the project context.

"It iterates my 'Programming Knowledge & Tendencies' doc that I have saved and uploaded into the project context within Claude."

His one condition is the same one he met that first weekend.

"The more you program using the Claude connection, the more it becomes educated on your training approach so long as you provide the context."

He thinks most coaches have not found this yet.

"I don't think coaches are truly using this connection as well as they should, and I'm genuinely at this point: the only reason the large majority of coaches in S&C aren't using Relay in tandem with Claude is because they don't know how much they can truly pull off with this tool."

Start where Joe started#

You do not need dozens of rules on day one. Joe began by letting Claude read what he had already built, then telling it where it was wrong.

Start free, connect Claude with the Relay MCP setup guide, and ask it what your programming tendencies are. Spend an afternoon correcting the answer. That afternoon is the setup.