Adopting AI.

Gyms, here's how you should be adopting AI for workout creation
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If you start framing most AI products as automation tools - not ethereal, mysterious or sentient beings - and view them like any other technology that humans have been using for millenia, that already helps to better understand the potential use cases on the gym floor.

It’s also the reason why a more advanced workout automation solution, capable of sophisticated  personalisation and requiring a wider array of inputs in order to do so, is almost always going to be best utilised in the hands of a fitness professional.

If you give a carpenter and me both a big piece of wood, a circular saw (buzz saw for my American friends), a hammer and some nails, and ask us both to create a table… The carpenter would do it in one tenth of the time, and produce a 10x better table (and leave with all their fingers). The tools make it possible for me to do it too, but the professional’s training and experience is the difference in both the outcome and the journey to get there.

That’s not to say that we should only be giving any form of automation to trainers, but that the more sophisticated tools are probably better utilised in their hands.

I wanted to write a blueprint to help gym operators to understand how to adopt AI for workout automation, focusing on four areas:

1. Personal training
2. Online coaching
3. Self-training members who are unsure of what to do
4. Group exercise
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1. Personal training

I love this use case for workout automation, not just because personal trainers are my people, but because I believe they are the lifeblood of most gyms, the big personalities informing the culture of the gym floor.

In great gyms, the trainers are known beyond just their own clients. I am an advocate of doing what we can to support and enable them, so that we can reduce trainer churn which is a problem globally in the industry.

I see workout automation tools for trainers as a way to relieve them of a huge administrative burden, giving them more time to do the bits only a human can do: motivation, accountability, safeguarding and support.

The right automation tool can also help them service clients they otherwise would not feel confident with due to lacking the specialism or experience, helping them upskill quickly.

For new trainers, it’ll make their programming better. For busy, experienced trainers, it’ll free up time and allow them to make sure every client receives the right level of attention and personalisation, no matter the time of day or week.
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AI for Personal Trainers:

For trainers, give them the full bells-and-whistles, sophisticated automation product that handles a wide variety of inputs from goals, to injuries & medical conditions, to exercise preferences and focus areas of the body. Personal training clients expect to be asked for more information upfront and are happy to give it.

Issue an extensive questionnaire to PT clients that deep dives into their exercise background, motivations, goals, physiology and circumstances. Not all of it needs to be processed by the automation, the questionnaire serves to help the trainer to construct a full picture of the client. The AI tool creates a hyper-personalised workout plan, the trainer checks it over, tweaks if needed, and delivers the sessions.
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2. Online coaching

Online coaching here means a trainer providing a personalised workout programme to a client to follow in their own time, usually via a coaching app but sometimes via pdf or excel. Trainers then check in periodically with the client to keep them accountable.

Online coaching is where I see the next big shift in the fitness industry, and I think that a lack of credible automation tools has held it back until now. Without automation, it’s difficult to provide online coaching at a scale that can make it affordable to the end user and viable for the trainer in terms of time spent writing programmes.

From our data gathering so far it seems around 50% of in-person trainers are providing online coaching as well. I believe that gyms not offering this service are leaving money on the table; your members and your trainers are already doing it without you.

Online coaching is a fantastic option for trainers because it gives them the opportunity to earn a predictable baseline income. When I was training clients in the gym, the difference between a good month and a bad month could have been 1-2 of my main clients being on holiday, or stopping PT or just taking a break. If a trainer is able to make £1-2k per month from online coaching on top of their in-person clients, they’re going to be financially secure, happier, and far less likely to leave the industry.

Online coaching is also a way to engage a larger portion of your gym members with personalised fitness than traditional personal training. The reduced cost and increased flexibility of online training means that it’s a much more viable option. I’m telling you- you are leaving money on the table if you don’t find a way to work with your trainers to offer this service.
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AI for online coaching:

As with the in-person training, give your online coaches a full, sophisticated workout automation tool that allows them to spin up hyper-personalised programmes in a fraction of the time it would take to write them from scratch. The trainer will only need to check over, tweak if needed, and then send the programmes to the clients.

As with the in-person clients, give online coaching clients an involved, deep-dive questionnaire. They’re not expecting their workout plan to come instantly. This questionnaire can also help you match them with the right trainer for them.

With automation, trainers can coach 50-100 clients per month remotely during their ‘dead’ time, especially if you understand how to optimise the support and accountability side of the business. I don’t believe in automating or replacing the human connection with a chatbot here, but by asking the right questions upfront, such as ‘how often would you like your trainer to check in’, and training your coaches in good client comms, you can figure out a cadence that is scalable and trackable.
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3. Self-training members who are unsure of what to do in the gym

This is for the less experienced members of your gym who want to workout, but for any number of reasons do not or cannot engage with a professional.

As with my carpenter analogy, I don’t think you should give the advanced automation tools to these members. A tool is only as useful as the experience level of the person wielding it, and in some cases actually detrimental if the experience does not match the sophistication of the tool.

Like me trying to use a circular saw, giving someone the automation tool that requires an understanding of what questions to ask and then the ability to evaluate the programme after… it could end in tears in the wrong hands.

You also must consider what the journey is like for this person. It’s likely they’re going to want their workout there and then. Maybe they’ve downloaded your app as they’re walking in the gym. It doesn’t make sense to take them through a 30 question questionnaire that takes 15 minutes. You’ll lose them.
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AI for self-training members who are unsure of what to do in the gym:

For this member, the route to go down is light-touch, lower personalisation. Ask them 5-10 questions that give you the essentials of what you need to send them a programme that will be safe and effective enough for them to get started. The workouts won’t be as personalised and effective as what they’d get if they went through a trainer, but the trade-off is speed and scalability.

This way you’re also not going to make your trainers feel threatened or sidelined by technology, and are recognising the importance of their expertise.

4. Group exercise (fitness classes)

A great class requires two ingredients: an awesome workout plan and a brilliant instructor.

Both are equally important, one is much harder to automate than the other. In a perfect world, you’ll be able to hire your class instructors based on their ability to deliver a killer class, rather than their workout planning ability.

Class programming is a different skillset to programming standard gym workouts. On top of understanding what makes a good class for the target demographic, the instructor also has to take into account the ‘style’ of the class and make sure this is consistent in every workout.

As with personal training, the difference between a new class instructor and an experienced one is evident in the programming. You do not want your members feeling that they know more about exercise than the person teaching them, especially if their favourite trainer leaves the gym and is replaced by a newer member of the team.
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AI for group exercise:

Use automation to help your class instructors rapidly design their group exercise sessions. Leave their time and energy free to be at their absolute best for the class members, every session. As with the PT examples, give the instructors the latitude to tweak the workouts and put their own spin on it, this will help them to be passionate and energetic in delivery.

I hope you’ve found this useful. I wanted to create a resource that helps gym operators make an informed decision about how, where, and why to use automation in fitness programming, and it’s something I’d be happy to discuss any time if you’d like to get into it in more depth. I believe that this area is worth understanding and investing in if we’re to increase retention across the industry and also open the doors to new potential exercisers who do not feel fitness currently serves them. AI, applied ethically and sensibly, will revolutionise and grow the industry.

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