An open letter · June 2026

We're coming for the $100-an-hour lesson.

(Coaches: we're on your side.)

I want to pick a fight with a number, not a person.

The number is $100 an hour. Sometimes it's $80, sometimes $150. It's what a good tennis lesson costs in most American cities, and a good strength coach isn't far off. The coaches earning it are worth every dollar — that's not the problem.

The problem is what the number does to everyone who can't pay it weekly.

Motor learning doesn't work on a once-a-month schedule. The lesson wasn't bad. The silence between lessons is what's stealing your progress.

You take a lesson, your coach fixes your elbow, and by Thursday the elbow is back where it was — because nobody was watching on Tuesday and Wednesday. There are about four and a half million committed tennis players in this country, and most of them can afford exactly enough coaching to be reminded, monthly, of what they're doing wrong — and never enough to actually change it. Lifters have it worse: most have never had a qualified set of eyes on their squat even once.

I spent a year building Palaistra because I was one of those players. It's an AI coach that lives on your phone. You prop it on a fence or a bench, and it watches your body — every swing, every rep — and talks to you about what it sees, out loud, while you play. It remembers last session. It catches your contact point drifting before you've lost six games to it. It costs about what a can of balls costs, per week.

Is it as good as a great human coach? At reading your match psychology, no. At being there every single session, watching every single rep, never getting bored, never double-booking? It isn't even close — in the other direction.

Now, the part where I'm supposed to say "coaches hate this." The opposite.

For teaching pros & strength coaches
If you're a certified teaching pro or a strength coach, email me from your club or gym address and I'll give you Elite free — not a trial, free. Use it between lessons with your students. Assign homework that watches itself. Your students will improve faster, stay longer, and book more lessons — because what kills coaching retention isn't price, it's students quitting when they stop improving between sessions. founders@palaistra.ai

The price wall is the enemy. The people behind it never were.

The doors open June 16 — palaistra.ai. Come argue with me: founders@palaistra.ai. I answer everything.

— Milo Ferenczi, founder
(and a 3.5 NTRP forehand that's finally improving)

To be precise about what it can't do: match strategy, psychology, and the human accountability of someone you don't want to disappoint. The $100-an-hour coach is safe where they're irreplaceable. Everywhere else, you deserve eyes on your form every session.