Getting started

What the twin is

The twin is you, built from your material and how you describe your coaching: your method, your voice, your face, your presence, your philosophy. It answers your athletes the way you would. It's AI, not you typing live, and it never pretends to be.

It also knows each athlete — their health, their training, the workouts they log — and gets sharper the more it's used. It can hold more about every athlete than you ever could, and it still answers each one your way.

1. Gather your material

The twin runs on what you bring here. Its answers, its voice, its face, the clips it shows your athletes — all of it is your material. Get it together first; the rest of the build runs on it.

Four things to pull together:

• How you coach. Your method, your rules, your cues, the calls you make when it gets hard, the questions athletes ask you on repeat. This is the spine of the interview (step 3), where the twin learns to coach the way you do. You won't write it up; you'll talk it through. Just have it clear in your head.
• Your written work. The plans you reuse, your programmes, the welcome PDF you send new clients, any guide you've built. The twin reads these and answers athletes from them (step 6), so years of refined work go in as your method, not a paragraph about it.
• Your videos. Demos, technique breakdowns, sessions, talks, the clips on your phone and your feed. The twin plays them to athletes when they ask how to do a move, and learns how you deliver (step 6). Old and rough is fine.
• You. The twin takes its voice and face from short recordings you make in the app (steps 2 and 4). Nothing to prepare — just be ready to talk to camera.

Most of this you already have, scattered across your phone and your drive. Dig it out: it makes every step faster and the twin far more you.

What you don't have, film. A few demos, you answering the questions athletes ask most, you explaining your approach to a new athlete. One take on your phone, rough is fine.

Starting with nothing? You can still go live from a few answers and a 60-second intro. But the trade is real: the twins that feel like the coach are the ones the coach fed.

2. Build your first twin

Sign up, answer a few questions, record a short intro. Your twin is live in about 10 minutes.

In my axl you'll:

• Sign up with your email. No password. You get a link to click, and you're in.
• Claim your link: axl.coach/yourname. You pick the name in it. This is the address you give athletes, and where they meet the twin.
• Set two names. The name on your profile, and the name athletes call you: Coach Mike, CJ, your first name. The twin uses the second when it talks to them.
• Set your sport and your audience. Your sport sets the twin's vocabulary. Your audience sets who it speaks to, and how: adult lifters, mixed youth, masters.
• Record a 60-second intro, by voice or video. This is how the twin greets every athlete who joins, and where it takes your voice and, on video, your face. Talk the way you'd introduce yourself to a new athlete: who you are, how you work, where you start them.

From that, axl builds the twin and it goes live. You'll see its first answer to an athlete. Keep it, or record your intro again until it sounds like you. Then you have a link to share.

You can change any of this later in your twin settings.

3. Make it genuinely you

Your twin is live. The interview is how it becomes you.

You'll find it in my axl, under My Twin: 18 questions about how you coach. Answer each one the way that suits you: talk to camera, record your voice, or type it.

One rule runs through all of them: be specific, not philosophical. "I care about recovery" gives the twin nothing. "Fatigue over 7 out of 10 the day before a key session, I cut intensity and hold volume" it can use, and it's yours. Turn what you believe into the calls you make.

What it walks through:

1. Introduce yourself. Your name, your role, how you want the twin to greet a new athlete.
2. Your background. How long you've coached, and what you specialise in.
3. Your disciplines. The sports and training you call your expertise.
4. Who you coach. Youth, amateur, collegiate, professional, elite.
5. Your style. Calm and supportive, direct and demanding, or your own mix.
6. Your cues. The phrases you repeat with athletes.
7. What the twin should never say. Words and tone that aren't you.
8. Your framework. How you build a block: the goal, the progression, a sample session.
9. Your principles. The beliefs and rules behind your calls.
10. When the plan breaks. Missed sessions, no time, no equipment, travel, fatigue.
11. How you give feedback. Correct on the spot, explain it, lean on the data, or a mix.
12. What you expect. The effort, discipline, and communication you ask for.
13. What you don't accept. Your boundaries, and what ends the relationship.
14. Your safety rules. When you stop, modify, or refer to a doctor, and what you won't advise on.
15. Nutrition. Whether you guide it, and where your limits are.
16. Equipment. Whether you prescribe specific equipment, or work with what the athlete already has.
17. Anything else. Any principle or way of deciding that should be in the twin.
18. Your last word. A short message on your mindset and what training with the twin is like.

Where a question touches your programming or framework, bring in the work from step 1. A plan you've refined over years is your method in a form the twin uses directly.

As you work through it, the "Like You" score climbs. You don't need to answer all 18. Publish whenever you want: a version with a few strong answers can go live today, and you keep adding from there.

When you publish, axl runs a safety check. The twin doesn't give medical or psychological advice, so if your answers stray there, publishing is held until you adjust them. Question 14 is where you draw those lines.

The questions may change as axl improves, and you can update any answer later in your twin settings.

4. Give it your voice and face

The interview finishes with the part athletes hear and see.

• Your voice. Record a short voice clip. The twin uses it so its replies sound like you, not flat and generic. Adjust the speed, and hear how a reply sounds before you keep it.
• Your face. Record a video. The twin uses it to answer on video, so athletes watch your twin speak, not just read text. This is the you they see, so give it a real take.

Get both in and the twin doesn't only answer like you. It sounds and looks like you.

5. Choose which version goes live

Every time you work on the twin, you save a version. Each keeps its own "Like You" score, so you can see which is closest to you. One version is live to athletes at a time, and you pick which.

From My Twin in my axl you can:

• Activate a version to make it the live one. From then on, athletes get that version.
• Continue the interview to build a stronger version.
• Review the recordings behind any version.
• Take a version offline, or delete one you no longer need.

Nothing you publish is locked in. Put a new version live, and if it isn't better, switch back to the one that was. Athletes only ever see the live version.

6. Your library

Everything the twin learns from lives in one place: My Library, inside my axl. Add to it any time. The twin uses everything you put there to get closer to you.

• Videos. Upload them, or bring in your videos from Instagram. The twin analyses each one, so when an athlete asks how to do a move, it plays them your video of it — your demo, not a stock clip.
• Documents. Your plans, guides, PDFs, whatever you've written. The twin reads them and answers athletes from what's inside.
• Interview video and voice. The recordings from your interview, kept private. Athletes never see them. Review or delete them whenever you want.

This is where the material from step 1 goes. The more you add, the more the twin has to draw on, and the more of your real work an athlete gets.

7. Test your twin

Test it the way an athlete will, not from your dashboard. Go to your profile at axl.coach/yourname, download the app, subscribe to your own twin, and start talking to it. This is exactly what your athlete sees and does — go through all of it, so you feel what they feel.

Give it 30 minutes. Ask it your hardest questions, the ones athletes actually bring you. Ask it something it shouldn't answer with confidence, and watch where it stops. Push it to the edges of what you'd say.

You're checking two things: it sounds like you, and it stops where you would. When a line is off, that's the next thing to fix, not a dead end. Go back to the interview or your library, add what's missing, and test again.

8. Share your link with your first athlete

Start with one athlete, not a broadcast. Where you find that athlete depends on what you've built.

If you coach athletes now, pick one who knows your work well enough to tell you straight where the twin sounds like you and where it doesn't. Send a note, not an announcement:

Hey [name] — set up a way for you to reach me between sessions. Ask it anything you'd ask me: training, recovery, a session that didn't go right. It answers the way I would. It's AI, built on my method, not me live, and it doesn't replace our work together. Here: axl.coach/yourname

From there it travels through your own channels: a word at the end of a session, your athlete group chat, your email signature.

If you have an audience, put the link where they already follow you: your bio, the end of a video, a story, your email list. One line carries it: this is how you train with me now. A direct note still converts best, so when there's someone you'd point to first, point to them first.

Either way, they subscribe from your profile, at the monthly price you set. Billing runs on its own.

9. Earn from your twin

Earning is optional. Keep the twin free as long as you like, and switch on payments whenever you want to charge.

• Set your price. Any monthly price you choose, or free. Change it whenever.
• Connect Stripe. It's how athletes pay and how the money reaches you. Set it up once in My Earnings.
• Keep up to 90%. That's your share of what athletes pay. We cover the Stripe fees and pay out monthly.

For a coach, that's income between sessions. For a creator, it's an audience that finally pays.

10. Keep it sharp

Once it's live, the twin runs without you, there at the hours you can't be. Your job now is the one thing it can't do alone: keep making it more you.

Run this loop every week:

• Read your conversations. In my axl you see what athletes actually asked. Every answer that came out thin, or wasn't quite how you'd put it, is the next thing to fix.
• Feed the gaps. Go back into the interview and answer more, or sharpen the answers that missed. Add to your library as you make things: the programme you just wrote, the demo you filmed this week.
• Ship the better version. Each pass builds a new version and climbs the "Like You" score. Activate the stronger one when it's ready.

When your method changes, change the twin with it. A new protocol, a new way you handle an old problem — put it in, or the twin keeps coaching the way you used to. It only says what you've taught it.

It also sharpens on its own, the more athletes use it. But the method is yours to grow.

Want a hand?

Got years of material to bring in, or want help getting the twin right before it goes live? The team will do it with you.

Reach us from the side menu in my axl, or at support@axl.coach. Send a feature request the same way, and we read all of it.