The Role of Ai in Personal Fitness: A Deep Dive Into Fitcoach
Fitness is a personal journey. It looks different for each individual, so there's no "one-size-fits-all" formula for success. Many people choose to hire personal trainers at some point along their path to getting fit, but this isn't a viable option for everyone.
Others still may choose to join local group fitness classes, follow along with online classes, or perhaps get a gym membership and try to train themselves. None of those solutions offers the same catered expertise as working with a trainer, so none of them will produce the same quality of results.
This leaves a conundrum for the average person unable to hire a trainer. How can they find expert fitness guidance without paying exorbitant fees and needing to squeeze regular in-person workouts into their busy schedules? A revolutionary yet practical answer to this is AI technology.
What Role Can AI Play in Fitness?
AI is a hot topic across many fields today, but thus far, it's largely been underutilized in the world of fitness. AI technology has the ability to collect vast amounts of data to garner high-quality fitness advice specifically catered to specified situations.
As long as appropriate data inputs are collected, AI can create an intelligent workout plan specialized for specific results, bodily capabilities, and personal interests. Most AI trainer technologies will need to collect information similar to that a personal trainer would collect. They'll need to record body metrics, completed workouts, aesthetic or training goals, and more. All of this can help the AI trainer to regularly recalibrate and personalize a given training plan.
There are a few AI trainer technologies like this already available on the market, with one of the most popular being the FitCoach app. Many fit coach app reviews already highlight the pros and cons of this app, but this particular review will focus on its usefulness as an AI trainer.
FitCoach App Review
The FitCoach App is available on Apple or Android phones from google play or the apple store. Combined across all platforms, it has over 195,000 5-star ratings. This app is clearly popular and well-received, but what exactly does it offer, and can it replace a real-life personal trainer?
What FitCoach Offers
Personal Training
The FitCoach app has several features that emulate both personal trainers. It creates a scheduled personalized workout plan for each user to follow along with. The workout plan includes videos demonstrating each movement, timers for certain exercises, and a workout journal to keep track of completed workouts. A particularly handy feature is that the user can complete a quick questionnaire after each workout to provide feedback on the difficulty. This allows the app to subtly adjust and recalibrate to ensure optimal training based on the user's current fitness level.
When filling in information to set up an account, users have an opportunity to denote preferences in several factors that help direct their personal training plan. The app will ask what aesthetic or fitness goals are a priority (i.e. weight loss, toning, strength building, etc.), what length workout they prefer, what their current fitness level is, what fitness equipment they have access to, and more.
They also have several different types of workouts to choose from, including:
cardo
strength
yoga
pilates
HIIT
boxing
stretching
recovery
libido boosting
face building.
This means the workout plans are always fresh, exciting, and well-aligned with each user's interests.
Nutrition Coaching
In addition to the customized workout plan and the workout journal, FitCoach's comprehensive built-in nutrition coach services are also impressive. The app can create a customized meal plan from a wide selection of recipes appropriate for a range of dietary restrictions, nutrition goals, and taste preferences. The calorie, macronutrient, and micronutrient profiles of each meal are displayed to help keep food tracking simple. The recipes come with pictures and step-by-step instructions to make meal prep as easy as possible.
The app also gives access to "the Cookbook" which is a database of healthy recipes to use for personal inspiration or manual meal planning.
The app comes up with an automatic personalized meal plan based on data inputs of dietary preferences, fitness goals, and more, but these parameters can be adjusted at any time, and the meal plan is merely a suggestion. It can give a loose guide to nutrient and caloric intake and provide a helpful sense of structure throughout a user's fitness journey.
Trackers
The personal training and nutrition coach features of FitCoach already make it an impressive app, but it offers even more tools to help users reach their fitness goals. One of the most important and often forgotten components of improving fitness is keeping track of progress. FitCoach has built-in trackers for steps, intermittent fasting, and weight tracking.
Counting steps is a great way to ensure daily activity is high enough for reaching weight loss goals, and the weight tracker can more specifically help measure if progress is being made. Intermittent fasting is one popular eating method many users enjoy following for its weight loss and digestive health benefits, so this built-in tracker can also help increase the effectiveness of the app for reaching personal health goals.
Education
A final important component of the FitCoach app is access to educational materials. The app includes access to courses, guides, and events. This is a big bonus since one of the main reasons for working with a personal trainer is to benefit from their education and experience and gain new fitness knowledge from them.
The FitCoach app can give you access to advice and information from some of the best trainers in the business, and this arguably is an equal or superior alternative to one-on-one in-person coaching.
The Verdict: Can FitCoach Replace Personal Trainers?
The comprehensiveness of the FitCoach app is impressive, but it still doesn't quite answer the question of whether or not it can replace personal trainers. Overall, it seems both options offer customized workout and meal plans, consistent modification of these plans based on ongoing results and preferences, as well as educational expertise. The one thing the FitCoach app cannot replicate is human connection and the accountability that a real live trainer is able to hold their client to.
Despite lacking these things, the FitCoach app is able to make up for it in other ways. The built-in trackers are an extra feature that makes it easy to stay on track with fitness goals, and the anytime access to educational resources gives users an opportunity to go above and beyond in attaining new fitness knowledge. On top of this, the comparative affordability and convenience of the app make it hard to justify using a personal trainer instead.
With the exception of highly unmotivated individuals who prefer the accountability of a coach or those with specific injuries or health concerns that the app may not be able to cater to, it seems the app is a superior choice. AI is still in its infancy, so as time goes on and the technology continues to develop, it seems clear that the future of personal fitness will continue to shift away from in-person trainers and towards more affordable options like the FitCoach app.