How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Personal Fitness : As if choosing to make fitness a top priority in your life wasn’t difficult enough, selecting the right training regimen for your individual needs and circumstances can be even more challenging. Gyms present a huge variety of weight training tools but it’s ultimately up to you to figure out which exercises to perform and how much weight to use.
One promising way to simplify this intimidating process is through artificial intelligence (AI), which uses large amounts of data to not only create personalized workouts for users but also push them further, so they can continuously increase their strength, flexibility, and endurance.
Though there are certain aspects of an in-person training session that AI can’t quite replace – at least not yet – AI’s massive knowledge base and its ability to personalize represent legitimate competition for the one-on-one fitness model.
How does AI in fitness work?
Over the past few years, an increasing number of gym-goers have begun using fitness apps centered around artificial intelligence to develop personalized training regimens based on performance data.
First, users enter their fitness goals into the app along with any other information the app would find helpful – e.g. specific parts of the body the user wants to improve, previous injuries that might restrict usage of different areas. Then the app compiles a series of exercises to get a sense of the user’s current physical capabilities and limitations, comparable to the initial “getting to know you” workouts assigned by personal trainers.
After completing each exercise, users enter data in relation to the difficulty of the experience, so AI can determine how much easier or harder the next workout should be. AI also incorporates data from its arsenal of recorded workouts (sometimes in the millions) from other users to adapt sets, weights, and reps to optimize fitness goals.
All of this information ultimately enables AI to harness a critical aspect of effective training known as progressive overload, which refers to gradually increasing the intensity of a workout in order to maximize results. Rather than cycling through the same workout routines over and over again, AI-driven fitness apps consistently challenge users with new exercises and heavier weights.
Advantages of AI-driven fitness apps
Average gym-goers may not know which of their muscle groups require the most attention or when they’re ready to begin a more intense regimen and the level of difficulty to apply. That’s why most people tend to just do the same workout routines every time they go to the gym. These exercises could be completely random, with no long-term goals in mind. Even if you take a rigorous fitness class regularly, it’s still not necessarily helping you reach your goals.
That’s where AI comes in. Not only can AI help you reach your goals through progressive overload programming, it can also prevent you from overtraining or challenging your body to an unsafe point because the data tells the programs what you’ll be able to handle. Also, there’s the cost advantage. Many AI-driven fitness apps also cost about as much as a cup of coffee every week, whereas a personal trainer can easily cost more than $100 per session.
AI-driven fitness apps vs. personal trainers
Though AI can deliver the same personalized workouts as a personal training session, it has yet to replicate the psychological benefits of human trainers, who succeed by instilling motivation and dedication.
Once your trainer gets to know you, they’ll eventually come to understand exactly how to coach you through an intense session. Research has even shown that personal training can change someone’s entire attitude towards fitness and influence them to make healthier lifestyle decisions in general.
But when it comes to designing training regimens, AI can harness its massive library of workouts to select the perfect exercise for strengthening each specific muscle group. Personal trainers, on the other hand, are only human. Their training regimens may be exclusively limited to the workouts they’ve assigned or completed themselves. Personal trainers may also be susceptible to forgetting things like which level of weight you lifted two weeks ago, or how much easier you handled your last workout compared to the previous one. You won’t have to worry about this with AI’s infallible memory, which tracks your progress with the utmost accuracy.
The most important factor to consider is results. Due to its super-specific training regimens, AI has the potential to deliver more significant improvements in fitness than a personal trainer. Put simply, if you want to improve a certain aspect of physical fitness as efficiently as possible, AI may very well be the most logical choice.
Making personalized workouts affordable
Thanks to AI, the results-driven workouts that come with personal trainers are now within reach for a much larger number of people. Realistically speaking, these apps have not yet reached the point where they can match the full value of human trainers, largely because of the psychological benefits mentioned above.
However, if you’re looking to reach specific fitness goals or you haven’t been to the gym in a while or you’re bored with your usual exercise routine, AI can bring back the enjoyment that comes with a fresh, new workout that feels just right for you. And for a fraction of the cost of a personal trainer.
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