AI is telling us how many dumbbell presses to do. It’s working | Canada Voices

Nine months before her wedding, Nika Kuzmin set a fitness goal of dropping her body-fat percentage by 5 per cent. To help her accomplish it, she enlisted a personal trainer: ChatGPT.

Kuzmin, a 29-year-old Toronto resident who works in software sales, already used generative AI to keep track of food plans and come up with recipes. Why, she thought, should she approach fitness any differently?

She told ChatGPT all the info that one shares during an initial consultation with a human personal trainer: her height, her weight, how much body fat she wanted to lose, that she preferred Pilates and yoga to running and how often she wanted to work out. In seconds, it created a suitable eight-month fitness plan. In December, 2023, she walked down the aisle having reached her target.

“It felt like a life hack: It certainly cost less money than a personal trainer,” said Kuzmin, who still uses AI to guide her exercise routine, with occasional pointers on technique from a human professional.

While her methods would have sounded avant-garde, or even absurd, just a few years ago, the proliferation of AI in the fitness world makes asking ChatGPT how many dumbbell presses one should do feel like small potatoes. Companies racing for our money, data and trust are supercharging a tech boom in the weight room. There are now gyms that make their own heart-rate monitors to collect data from their members; coaching apps that provide individualized workouts based on users’ sleep and nutrition habits; and fitness centres that have replaced personal trainers with AI-powered sensors that dish out advice.

It’s all having a major impact already. In a 2023 U.S. survey conducted by fitness-brand Peloton, 44 per cent of respondents said technology motivated them to exercise when they didn’t want to.

“The question is no longer whether or not you will use AI as part of your fitness routine in the upcoming year, but rather how much of it will you use,” said Connie Beaulieu, a certified personal trainer based in Ottawa.

Wear and share

Beaulieu, who once worked as a trainer at an Olympic high-performance centre in Toronto, started her career as a fitness coach in 2000, back when the best biotrackers were the shoddy heart-rate monitors on cardio machines. A decade later pedometers became popular, but they were rarely sophisticated enough to differentiate a step from a shake of the wrist. Then, around 2018, development went exponential: Smart watches and rings that detect metrics such as workout intensity, sleep quality and heart-rate variability became ubiquitous.

These days, Beaulieu estimates that more than three-quarters of her clients use a wearable such as an Apple Watch, Oura Ring or Whoop band. Others feel squeamish about sharing their data with big tech, and fair enough. A Belgian study showed the ease at which hackers can find the locations of Strava app users, even when privacy settings are enabled. In the United States, a dearth of data privacy around period tracking in a post-Roe world also raises concerns.

Some of her clients are simply loathe to quantify each part of their workouts and their lives. But tech-curious exercisers far outnumber the Luddites, and strictly pen-and-paper has become rare, Beaulieu says. More common is the person who drops her as a coach because they feel they can get what they need through an AI-powered app.

Yet she still welcomes the shift to artificial intelligence, explaining that it makes her a better personal trainer. She uses apps such as Trainerize and Thrive Coach to collect and dissect her clients’ biometric data, then to help her make workout plans that suit their individual needs.

“They help me know the story beyond the gym, like how they slept, or if they’re under stress from something else, and make adjustments from there,” she said.

Weight room tech boom

AI and wearables are even changing the look of traditional gyms – typically not software juggernauts.

Orangetheory Fitness, a Florida-based company that delivers high-intensity workouts at its 37 Canadian locations, has seen the shift coming for years. In 2016, it launched its own wristband heart-rate monitors. Now, big screens that hover over treadmills display the data in real time: Each person is represented by a square that changes colour based on which heart-rate zone they are currently in and how hard they are working out.

Over the past five years, Orangetheory has improved its monitor’s tracking capabilities, integrating an algorithm that calculates a user’s max heart rate. It also bolstered its treadmills and rowers with tech that capture and record a person’s speed – all in the goal of tailoring workouts to the individual.

Scott Brown, Orangetheory’s vice-president of fitness, says the company is doubling down on its tech efforts in 2025. He knows that the battle for supremacy in the fitness world is changing: Soon, his main competitors may no longer be gyms like his own that are developing tech capabilities, but instead software companies that are developing gyms.

Already on the more extreme end is Lumin, a Texas franchise that bills itself as “the world’s smartest fitness studio.” In dimly lit gyms, people lift weights and perform cardio in front of massive LED screens. Using tech built into the gear, the displays track each user’s progress, reps and form. Human trainers are nowhere to be found.

“Where everyone’s trying to compete is who has access to what to unlock more integrated workout methods,” Brown said. “Our goal for the future is having all the tools to provide maximal personalization.”

Data overload

Who delivers the next best training products is one question – what those products might include is another.

It’s possible that we are just scratching the surface of what we know about our own bodies. Lynne Peeples, a science writer who just published The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms, says learning which times of the day each of us are most receptive to exercise could unlock huge lifestyle benefits. Brown, meanwhile, is excited about the eventual deployment of optical glucose monitors – non-invasive eyepieces that track blood glucose in real time.

For Brennan Clark, a CrossFit coach based in Toronto, it sometimes feels as if there is already too much to tinker with and track. He believes the best way to leverage tech and AI, as a coach and as an athlete, is to choose just one wearable or app and stick with it for a long time. He has worn a Whoop band for the better part of the past decade, and now it can compare his workout frequency, exercise intensity or sleep pattern to what it was at any point over the past eight years.

“I don’t think there is any new fitness tracking tool that could replicate the Whoop or be more valuable to me than it, just because it knows me at this point,” he said.

Another part of the appeal for Clark is access to the Whoop community on the app, which allows him to compare fitness scores with other members of his gym; they often offer each other support and advice.

As it stands, most exercisers use a smorgasbord of services. I am a competitive distance runner, and I typically wear an Apple Watch, track my sessions with Strava and use the app Final Surge to communicate with my human coach. There is a significant business opportunity for a brand that can do it all: operate fully vertically by collecting user biometric data, offering detailed workout plans, providing gyms to perform them in and employing personal trainers to assess and adjust the workouts – all without relying on third parties.

But the fact is – regardless of how sophisticated and tailored workout tech becomes – the best AI tool ultimately comes down to one thing: It keeps you around and exercising.

Orangetheory’s Brown agrees. “It’s not enough to sift through data to tell you whether you should do nine reps instead of 10,” he said. “I’m more interested in learning how to make sure a person enjoys their experience and comes back to the gym next time.”

Fitness apps

Whoop band

• Price: $49 plus monthly subscription of $40
• Who it’s best for: The long-term workout analyst. The Whoop stores biometrics data including sleep quality and exercise intensity, allowing you to compare your scores from year to year.
• Best feature: Recovery score, which tells you how ready you are to exercise based on biometric data such as heart rate and body temperature.

Oura Ring

• Price: $329 plus $7.99 monthly membership
• Who it’s best for: The sleep geek.
• Best feature: Sleek, unobtrusive design. The Oura Ring makes fitness watches and bands feel bulky in comparison, and can be worn in any situation without ruining a look.

Trainwell

• Price: US$99/month
• Who it’s best for: Those who want to combine the best of what tech and people have to offer. App users are matched with a human personal trainer who develops a custom workout and provides real-time feedback.
• Best feature: Compatibility with various fitness trackers such as Apple Watch and Google Pixel.

Apple Watch Ultra 2

• Price: $1,099
• Who it’s best for: The Apple lover who wants one device for work and play.
• Best feature: Daily Rings, which track your minutes of exercise, calories burned and time standing up.