I thought it would be fun to ask Chat GPT a question around training and see what it came up with.
With all the buzz around AI like Chat GPT, are we really heading to an age where fitness coaches like me will be replaced by AI?
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy. Kevin Don here with some thoughts around the future of the coaching industry and AI apps designing your workout.
This past couple of months, there has been a lot of chatter around Chat GPT-4. Italy has banned it over privacy concerns. Academic institutions are musing over whether or not students will use AI to write assignments and if that would be plagiarism. Writers and artists are nervous that AI will take over their jobs.
On my side, I wonder if someone would choose an AI fitness coach over me. I think in many ways, the fitness industry already has a large amount of impersonal product offerings, so I’m not even sure there will be any difference anyway. If you get a program from an AI or a program from a person who you’ve never met and isn’t unique to your needs, it’s pretty much the SAME THING.
I have talked on the show before about intent around training. Its just facts that if you have a goal in mind, unless you have a specific strategy to reach that goal, it probably won’t happen—and if it does, you’ll have taken a highly inefficient path to get there. That starts with an assessment of where you are RIGHT NOW in your ability to express your goal. If you want to run a marathon but right now you can’t jog more than 400m and have chronic knee pain, then you need a different approach to someone who can already run 10k. Intent is also important—if you have a goal in mind, a general approach doesn’t work because it wastes time and energy on things that aren’t driving you toward your goal.
This week, with AI on my mind, I thought it would be fun to ask Chat GPT a question around training and see what it came up with:
“Chat GPT, write me a 3-day-a-week strength training program.”
Here’s what it spat out:
“Sure, here’s a 3-day-a-week strength program that focuses on full-body strength development:
Day 1:
Squat—3 sets of 5 reps
Bench Press—3 sets of 5 reps
Bent Over Rows—3 sets of 5 reps
Chin Ups—3 sets of 8 reps
Plank—3 sets of 30s
Day 2:
Deadlift—3 sets of 5 reps
Overhead Press—3 sets of 5 reps
Pull-Ups—3 sets of 8 reps
Lunges—3 sets of 10 each leg
Russian Twist—3 sets of 20 reps
Day 3:
Front Squat—3 sets of 5 reps
Incline Bench Press—3 sets of 5 reps
One Arm Dumbbell Rows—3 sets of 5 each arm
Dumbbell Flyes—3 sets of 10 reps
Side Plank—3 sets of 30s each side
Rest 2-3 mins between sets
Increase weight when you can perform all sets and reps with good form.”
Ok, so the program itself took Chat GPT about 12 seconds to spit out, but is it any good? Will this make someone stronger? Well…. I’ll be generous and say maybe. If you are a total novice OR completely detrained, then sure, but that's only because a total novice could go for a bike ride and see their bench press go up. Just being active will improve physical capacity. But what about someone in an intermediate stage or someone who is resistant to improvement because they have been training for years? Probably not.
The first thing you will notice is that Chat GPT didn’t give us any guidance on the maximum recoverable dose or the minimum effective dose. If I say 3x5 squat, it's effectively meaningless. I know if I say that to two different clients, one will squat whilst having a chat with a friend and not break a sweat and the other will squat so heavy that their eyeballs will be sticking out their head like a tree frog. With no effort prescribed, results are not guaranteed!
The next thing I noticed was the advice at the end: “Increase weight when you can perform all sets and reps with good form.” So, yeah, I mean, that's good advice—I have to hand it to Coach Chat GPT there—but it hasn’t given any criteria about what good form would look like. Again, 3x5 squats doesn’t tell us much. Who gets to decide if it's good enough to increase the weight? Me? But how will I know it's good without instructions on how to perform?
And finally: intent and the ability to express intent. Chat GPT doesn’t know what my goal is, besides that I wanted a strength program. A strength program for a triathlon and one for judo will look completely different. This is where the human factor comes in. An AI isn't asking probing questions or deciding it needs more information. It isn’t recognising that it can't write an optimal program without more specific information on training intent and current ability. I could have asked it a much more specific question, but people don't work that way. People keep their cards close to their chest, even when it's beneficial not to, or are unable to articulate their goals and current fitness status. Only a human coach can dig deeper.
So, will AI replace coaches like me? The truth is that I don't have any clients who would follow a general template and my client demographic isn't the group who want that. It's people who recognize that individual design is the only way to have the best outcome that come to me. An AI-seeking client wouldn’t ever be my client anyway, so I won't be breaking a sweat about this. AI cannot currently empathize, it can’t learn about your family and your joys and your stresses, it can't read your facial expression when you come into train and say “I think I need an easier session today.” If you want to future-proof yourself against losing business to AI, you need to become more human-focused. Because that personal connection, the empathy and the understanding and genuine benevolence, cannot be recreated. AI can only create a program based on its own database and parameters.
I wonder if any listeners have the same worries about AI replacing their jobs or if that has already happened—I’d love to hear about it. Oh! And don't follow the Chat GPT program I have given you today! GET A COACH!
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