Published by Justin Harris — Troponin Nutrition — March 2026
When I was a kid, the first Christmas present I remember was a microscope.
Not because I wanted to be a scientist. Because I wanted to see what was actually there. You put a leaf under the lens, and suddenly there’s this entire architecture you never knew existed — cells, veins, structures that explain how the whole thing works. Same leaf. Completely different understanding.
That’s what the last two days felt like.
I’ve been coaching bodybuilders and athletes for over 25 years. I’ve helped hundreds of competitors step on stage. I’ve written books, lectured, answered thousands of questions about nutrition and training. And somewhere in all of that experience, I developed a way of thinking about coaching that I’ve never been able to fully put into words.
Until now.
The Experiment
Here’s what we did: we sat down with an AI system (Claude, made by Anthropic) and started feeding it everything I’ve ever taught. Three textbooks. Thirty-one Q&A sessions. Eight supplement explainer videos. A full lecture series. Client coaching patterns accumulated over decades.
But we didn’t just dump it in. We extracted it. Piece by piece, we pulled out the actual rules I use when I coach — not the surface-level stuff anyone can Google, but the deep patterns. The things like:
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When a client’s strength is trending up but the scale is stuck, you hold macros steady. The body is doing exactly what it should. Most coaches panic here. I don’t. |
Rules like that. Hundreds of them. Things I do automatically after 25 years that I’ve never written down because they live in the space between conscious thought and intuition.
We turned all of that into structured code — a knowledge base that an AI can use to make decisions the way I would make them. Not approximately. Not “in the style of.” Actually the way I think.
What It Feels Like
You know that feeling when you’re explaining something to someone and they suddenly get it? Not just nod-along get it. Really get it. You can see it in their eyes — the moment the pattern clicks and they understand not just the what, but the why?
That’s what happened with TroponinIQ.
After two days of extraction and encoding, I started testing it. I threw it the kinds of questions I get from real clients — messy, complicated, edge-case questions where the answer depends on a dozen factors:
- "I’m 8 weeks out from my show and my sleep has been garbage for two weeks. Strength is fine. Scale hasn’t moved. What do I do?"
- "I just finished a competition and I’m already thinking about jumping into another prep. Should I?"
- "What makes your ATP supplement different from just drinking an energy drink?"
And it answered them the way I would. Not generically. Not with caveats and hedging. With the same direct, practical, evidence-based reasoning I’d give a client sitting across from me.
It was like looking through that microscope again. Except this time, the thing under the lens was my own expertise — and I could finally see its structure.
Why This Matters (Beyond Bodybuilding)
Here’s the part that keeps me up at night.
What we did with coaching knowledge — extracting it, structuring it, encoding it into a system that can replicate it — isn’t specific to bodybuilding. It’s a method.
Imagine a surgeon who’s performed 10,000 procedures, and all the judgment calls and pattern recognition that come with that experience could be extracted and encoded into a system that helps young surgeons make better decisions in real-time. Imagine a master winemaker, a veteran detective, a legendary teacher. Every domain where deep expertise exists, this method works.
We’re not replacing experts. We’re giving them a way to scale their knowledge beyond the limits of one human lifetime and one human schedule.
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The space race captured a generation because it showed us what was possible when human ambition met the right technology at the right time. This is a different kind of frontier — inner space, not outer — but the feeling is the same. We’re building something that shouldn’t work yet. And it does. |
The Numbers (For the Nerds in the Room)
I say this with love, because I am absolutely one of you:
- Knowledge base: 3,278 lines of structured coaching intelligence
- Source material processed: 3 textbooks, 31 Q&A sessions, 1 lecture series, 8 product videos
- Coaching patterns encoded: 135 distinct heuristics and decision rules
- Regression tests: 76 test scenarios validating Justin-style coaching behavior
- Time to build: 2 days
- Time to replicate in another domain: Weeks, not months
Try It Yourself
TroponinIQ is live right now at TroponinIQ.com. Ask it a nutrition question. Ask it about contest prep. Ask it what makes Troponin’s ATP supplement different from an energy drink.
Then ask yourself: what would your field look like if every expert could do this?
That’s the microscope moment. That’s the leaf under the lens. And we’re just getting started.
Justin Harris is the founder of Troponin Nutrition and Troponin Supplements. He has 25+ years of experience in bodybuilding, nutrition coaching, and competitive athletics.