September 20, 2022
We built Fitbod to give people at all fitness levels the most personalized workouts possible. With Fitbod, you can just show up, open the app, and get to work on your progress.. The heart (and brain) of our app’s capability is our algorithm.
It’s just like working with a personal trainer: The more Fitbod knows about you, the better it tailors its workout recommendations to your specific goal and preferences.
Of course, this isn’t something that happens overnight.
You’ll need to provide Fitbod with feedback for it to learn what’s best for you. Keep a consistent regimen, input your max efforts, change your exercises, and update your training environment to get the most progress out of the algorithm.
How Did We Build The Algorithm?
In short, it’s a combination of fitness expertise, machine learning based on your behaviors, and the power of 400 million+ data points. Keep reading to find out more.
How Fitbod Generates Your Next Workout
We ask about your exercise goal, fitness level, available equipment, and recent muscle use when you join Fitbod because this basic info helps our algorithm develop your first and future workouts.
Our algorithm builds those workouts from two major components: The exercise selector and the capability recommender.
1. The Exercise Selector
We score each of our 800+ exercises based on these factors:
- How recovered the primary muscles are that you need for the exercise. This is calculated based on past workouts or manually adjusted muscle fatigue.
- How appropriate the exercise is, based on your fitness goal and fitness level. These ratings are set by our in-house personal trainers.
- How often you’ve added or removed the exercise from your workout. Our algorithm will pick up on changes you make to your workouts over time.
- If the exercise fits your selected training split. No bench presses on leg day!
- What equipment you have available. We won’t recommend leg presses if you’re only working with kettlebells.
2. The Capability Recommender
This determines the sets, reps, and weight for any given exercise.
- We recommend sets and reps based on best practices for each fitness goal.
- Weight per exercise is calculated by Fitbod’s estimate of your One Rep Max (1RM), or the most weight you could lift in one repetition of an exercise, according to our algorithm’s data.
- Remember: Adjust sets, reps, and weights for each exercise to feed our algorithm the right data at the start. It’s how your 1RM is calculated.
- The Fitbod app uses data from millions of logged workouts to give you a strong starting point based on your profile.
- Every few workouts, you’ll get one or two exercises marked as “Max Effort Day.” Do as many reps as possible for the final sets of those and log the number. It’ll help us make better recommendations for you.
Fitness Tracker Syncs
The Fitbod algorithm can also incorporate workout data from Fitbit, Apple Health, and Strava (iOS only). Connecting these third-party integrations in your Settings will automatically update your muscle recovery from other activities.
Pro Tips for Quick Progress
Take these easy steps to get the best workout recommendations for you:
- Adjust your workouts at first. Fitbod needs to learn about your abilities: Change your given weights, reps, and sets to your fitness level.
- Tell the app what you want: Mark which exercises you want to do more, less, or never.
- Do your “Max Effort Days.”
- If you’re on iOS, connect Fitbod to Fitbit, Apple Health, and/or Strava to improve the accuracy of your muscle recovery.
- Keep your equipment list up to date.
You’re also free to update your experience level, goal, or training split whenever you need to. We’ll build you a great workout no matter what. You just need to tell us what we’re working with.
