If you’re looking to get in shape but don’t have the budget for a personal trainer, look no further than AI.
I know. AI. Not again.
But this is a pretty cool one. So, stay with me!
AI fitness
AI can do a lot. It excels at helping with logical and iterative steps that would otherwise take your precious time.
This works with personal things too. To-do lists, blog outlines, Excel sheets, and even fitness routines, as you’ll see in a second.
First, let’s think about what you’d want as a beginner gym rat. A good workout routine, a plan, some weight recommendations, exercises and reps. Something like that.
A personal fitness trainer would assist you with all of this. But AI can do a lot of the same. For free. In seconds.
Let’s take a closer look!
AI workout plans
AI tools like ChatGPT or my current favorite Claude.ai can provide you with customized workout plans, goals, and progress tracking.
Customized to your needs, personalized, and even with progress tracking!
First off, AI prompts for this are super easy. All you need to do is provide some basic information like your fitness level, schedule, problem areas, past injuries, etc. and the AI will generate workout plans tailored specifically for you.
Having gone through that with an actual human trainer not long ago, I can tell you that the AI output was extremely accurate, if not to say exactly the same as the personal trainer’s advice I got.
Back to the prompts. You could start by saying:
- “Give me a workout schedule for a three-day-a-week routine targeted toward beginners.”
Obviously, you can adjust any part of this prompt, like the number of days or your fitness level. Here’s Claude’s answer to this prompt:
Pretty good. Generally speaking, a well-rounded set of exercises and reps.
What’s missing? The weights.
So let’s refine this.
Key metrics to get personalized output
Next prompt:
- Now give me some weight estimates for a male beginner with a weight of 90kg and height of 180cm, age 35, moderately active
You see what I did here. I gave Claude much more info about me and my body composition, namely height, weight, age, and activity level.
Progress tracking
For every good workout routine, time is the key factor. It’s called routine for a reason. You won’t get buff in a week.
Months are the ideal time measurement. And AI can help you track your progress and make adjustments to your workout plan,
Unlike an app or generic workout routine, an AI assistant learns about your body, strengths, weaknesses, etc. over time if you provide the necessary information.
So, after doing your workouts for a few weeks, you can share your progress and results with the AI assistant. Claude keeps a history of all your prompts active. You can simply go into the according chat and continue where you were.
By giving insights into the past weeks of training — the feel of the weights, soreness, the weekly schedule, the rep ranges — it can then re-evaluate your plan and provide new workout targets tailored to your changing fitness level and goals.
This is similar to how a real personal trainer would alter your regimen based on check-ins and demonstrated progress.
The AI assistant acts as your own virtual coach, adapting your fitness plan to help you continually improve.
The bottom line
Using an AI assistant for customized workout plans and progress tracking is genius. It provides next-level personalization without the high costs of one-on-one training.
The best part is that many AI tools like Claude are totally free to use. All you need to do is provide some basic information about your fitness background and goals.
So, if you’re looking to take your workouts to the next level in 2023, give AI a try. You may be surprised by how effective personalized plans can help you get fit when they’re tailored specifically for you.
