Is AI Making Personal Trainers Dumber?

AI is turning everyday work into a shortcut button, and that’s exactly why we’re asking a risky question: is AI making us dumb, or is it exposing who never built real skill in the first place? We break this down through the Dunning-Kruger effect and a wild true story that shows what happens when confidence beats competence. The point isn’t to fear AI, it’s to stop using it like a mask for weak fundamentals. 

We get specific about what “sloppy AI” looks like in the fitness industry: ads with obviously broken images, impossible anatomy, and generic messaging that kills trust in seconds. If you’re a personal trainer, online coach, or gym owner, you already know how fast people scroll and how quickly they judge. We talk about the simple standards that protect your brand, from proofreading and human review to writing outreach that proves you did your homework and actually care who you’re talking to. 

Then we zoom out to the bigger career move: doubling down on foundations. Anatomy, programming, assessment, pain red flags, and knowing when to refer out aren’t optional if you want to be excellent and get paid like it. AI can help you study, organize, and execute, but it can’t replace reps in the trenches, mentorship, and the humility to keep learning. 

If you want AI to make you sharper instead of louder, listen through, then subscribe, share this with a trainer who needs it, and leave a quick review so more coaches find the long-game path. What’s one way you’re using AI responsibly right now?

Want to become a SUCCESSFUL personal trainer? SUF-CPT is the FASTEST growing personal training certification in the world!

Want to ask us a question?  Email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Successful Personal Trainer Book Vol. 2 (Amazon): https://a.co/d/1aoRnqA
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com

Transcript

Welcome And The AI Question

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Haday all, welcome back to the show fitness podcast. Today we're going to talk about is AI making us dumb? And the answer, like everything else as a personal trainer, it depends. Are

Dunning-Kruger And Lemon Juice Robber

SPEAKER_00 0:12

you familiar with the Dunning Krueger effect? Do not be MacArthur Wheeler, 1995. This dude robbed a couple banks. And guess how he did it? He got some lemon juice and squirted it on his face. And he went into these banks. Straight up, give me your money. No mask, nothing. Because he thought, just like with a Polaroid camera, lemon juice makes things invisible. Mr. MacArthur was so dumb that two Harvard professors, Dunning and Krueger, wanted to investigate this further. What is going on here? There are people out there with a lesser intelligence that actually believe they're smarter than the average person. This guy thought that he was a genius. He found the secret. And I think with AI today, it's very similar. There's some geniuses out there, there are some idiots out there, there's some smart folk. But if you're like me, I'm like right over here. I'm not the smartest trainer in the world. I know my stuff, lots of internships, experiences, great team. I surround myself with the best. And therefore, that's why our product is superior. And for a lot of folk, it's that red pill or blue pill. How you utilize this. You cannot take away hard work, efficiency, and focus, those are all things that go into this equation. And with AI, you can utilize it to your advantage and you can become a genius. Or if you're sloppy, you're going to be like MacArthur Wheeler. And let's take a closer look to what I mean by this. You have an opportunity to use AI to your advantage, but what does the average trainer do? They read a textbook and they go out there without hands-on experience, without the proper expectations, that hard work getting into the trenches, what's going to separate you. If you think you're going to become a successful personal trainer, which I wrote the book, 20 years of experience, 15 teaching trainers, gym owner, one of the best certifications out there, yes, I'm a little biased. But if you think you're gonna become successful just by going online and getting a certification, you're looking like Wheeler over

When AI Makes You Look Fake

SPEAKER_00 2:20

there. This is a funny photo. Does that look like me? Absolutely not in my dreams. But if I walked around thinking that was me, or if I use this as an ad to attract people in, you are utilizing AI against you. So if I were to use this as an ad for our company, people would be like, what the hell? That looks nothing like the belt buckle trainer. Look at that bicep, Vinya, small little biceps, those are 30-inch cannons right there. But that's how people utilize AI. They're not leading with a genuine professional foot. What do I mean by that? I saw a certification online recently, and they were talking about their core patterns and how it's the great thing and why you should invest in their company and use their certifications, blah, blah, blah. You pull up their images. Do you notice anything wrong here? Here's a single leg hip thruster, the bars on the guy's head. Here's a kennel row. What the hell's going on? Looks like it has a third leg and they're rolling from there. What the heck? Arms up front, but their feet. Another three legs. What about here? Hip extensions on GLUT hamrays. What the hell is that? AI today is like the version one of the iPhone. It's only gonna get better. When we get to super intelligence, it's gonna be a whole new ball game. But people are not meticulous on how they use it. And if these are your ads or this is information you're putting out there, people are gonna read right through it. Thoracic extensions, he's making out with the ground. The foam roller is on his stomach. Steep. What the hell is that? Look how long her arms are.

Generic Outreach Gets Deleted

SPEAKER_00 3:53

I get people reaching out to me all the time. Here was a company, I know they used AI. Hey, we're a new brand of organic sour gummies launching with air one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. First off, hold on a second. I'm not hey. Don't address me as hey, do your research. Don't be sloppy. You know how many times people reach out to me? Yo, here's a generic message. It's an audio saying, hey man, how's it going? I like your page. Do you want to work with me? I can help you level up your business. You need to personalize it. If this was a message where I wanted interest from someone, you address their name, you do some research, you go above and beyond provide that service. You reach out and say, I just sent you some gummies. They're amazing. When's a time when I can follow up, meet you for coffee, my treat, and I'd love to see if this is something that we can incorporate into your gym. No, they're using that AI side where let's send out a thousand cold DMs or emails and let's just hope five respond. That's sloppy. If you don't prompt AI and have a second set of eyes, real human eyes on this, you're gonna fall through the cracks. And all this shows is that you are not serious about this. And when you see little errors, people are gonna know it's AI and they're just gonna delete it. Think about that for a second yourself. When someone calls, do you answer? When someone sends you an email, how quickly do you go through that? The attention span of people today is even shorter. Go back to those photos. How sloppy are you? If your certification is leading with those images, what do you think the bulk of the content is? It's the same stuff. The human elephant of today is losing its value. So if you focus on that, you're gonna elevate above the average trainer.

Foundations And Mentorship Beat Shortcuts

SPEAKER_00 5:45

The average textbook trainer. I want to become a trainer. What do I do? Get a textbook, 800 pages, and then what are you gonna do? Read every single line, highlighting, circling, using AI in books to learn more about that information? Or are you just gonna go find a shortcut? I wanna pass this as quickly as I can because I've been in the gym for 20 years. I know what I'm doing. That's N1 anecdotal evidence. You know your body. Great qualified trainers understand the human body. You need interaction, mentorship, internships. The trade career, which we are, fitness trainers, is going to be super, super lucrative to those that do what others are not willing to do. Double down on the time learning the foundations. There's a lot of coaches out there, business executives and entrepreneurs like Tom Beleu, Bilu, Bilo, whatever, he's the guy from Quest. Sold it for a billion dollars. His net worth is over 400 million. He's on that genius side. He's utilizing AI to his advantage, and he's gonna make more from that. How you prompt AI is what separates you from the average person. You should take workshops on this. I'm not talking about some $10,000 course. Find a company like Canva or maybe chat. Whoever is designing the AI, if they offer workshops, learn more about it. Use YouTube, but don't be sloppy. Don't just click on the first link. I want to become a personal trainer. Now some do you know they're owned by Blackstone? ISSA, do you know they're owned by Tailwind? Billion dollar investment companies? Private equity that can just pump in ads to brainwash you into thinking it's the gold standard of movement. No, because they realize via market search who's looking for their product. It's people like MacArthur. We're not doing our research. We are simpletons. Don't be a simpleton. Don't be a cog in the machine. Think bigger, read more. Actual physical books. Our attention span. You've probably already stopped watching this. And for those that are, you're probably looking at a phone over here, looking over here, our attention spans are gone. So when you can focus and deliver a high quality product via professionalism and service, and you understand our industry, you can absolutely crush it as a personal trainer. Numerous streams of revenue. Clearing two, $300,000, that might sound crazy to you, but if you utilize AI to your advantage, you can build a great team. The average trainer makes between $40,000 to $50,000. Do you want to be average? Don't do what the average person is

Prompt Better, Research More, Think Clearly

SPEAKER_00 8:36

doing. It's called the veil of ignorance. I remember learning this way back when I was at Chico State and going to the University of Connecticut in philosophy. You have a veil. You take away your cognitive biases and you look at it through the lens of the consumer or a person who hasn't been jaded with that information. It's very challenging to do. You lift that veil up and try to use a free conscious, critically thinking mind. What is being presented here? Are we over here on the genius side? Or are we over here on the MacArthur side? And if you want to be successful, you have to follow those that are doing it, but don't be led into those traps. You're gonna make $100,000 in your first year. That's more than those professionals make. So you think that by reading a book that you're gonna be elite? That's a shortcut. And what do we know about shortcuts? Michael Jordan became the best. He just didn't go to college, skipped North Carolina, and he skipped the hard playoffs against Detroit and Boston. He went right to the finals, he won six championships, super easy. That's gonna be me. I want to do that fast. How can I be like Michael Jordan? I wanna be a five-star general. Nah, I don't want to go to boot camp. I don't want to do all that stuff. I don't want to go to a war. I just want to be a general. I want to be a successful personal trainer, but I don't want to lay the foundation for what our clients need. Anatomy, not easy. Can't skip that. 17 muscles around the shoulder? Can you name those for me? Um, the sub paper to douce? Nope, that's not even a muscle. What the fuck did you just say? What about programming? How do you train a 98-year-old who comes in as a 20-year-old? Uh, stability ball, squat, curl, press, OPT model. Yeah, that's gonna work very well for you. How do you train someone who comes in with knee pain? Do you know how to assess knee pain? Do you know the red flags for knee pain so you can refer out to your physical therapist? Do you have a physical therapist on your team? Do you have an RD on your team? A psychologist, a professor, doctors. You build your team and you do what the average trainer

Real Programming And Pain Red Flags

SPEAKER_00 10:35

is not willing to do. You can be a very successful, lucrative online coach, but you got to get in the trenches and understand who your market is. General pop, if it's athletes, if it's moms, if it's dads, whoever it is, can you relate to them? If you send out half-assed messages, yo, bro, what's going on? Hey, I can help you. Not professional. They're not gonna bite because they know it's AI. Personalize it. Send a video. Hey, Chris, how's it going? I love your last post on A, B, C, and D. You're doing really great. Just wanted to say hi, have a great day, and keep showing up because I know you like to say that. Oh, interesting. That's personalized. He's watched or she's watched my videos. They've looked and done their research. If you send an email and you want to work at Show Up Fitness in Santa Monica and you have NASA on your resume, I'm not going to give you an interview because I know what the NASA trainer does. They're going that walker route. Easiest possible way. Overhead squat assessment, here we go. Yeah, that's gonna work. Oh, you have uppercross syndrome. No, you don't. That's been debunked 30 years ago. Alex Schermozy, he's utilized AI to his advantage because of his team. He sold his company 43, 46 million dollars. Jim launched, utilized, and positioned himself as an authority when it comes to business and acquisitions, hence his company, acquisition.com. Five years of being in the trenches. Do you think he took shortcuts? He was in the trenches, surrounding himself with the best, paying the best to be the best. And now he has an AI tool, $1,000 per month, $12,000 that you get access to his brain. I'm not saying this is what you need to get. I'm saying he utilized AI to his advantage. He positioned himself, did the market research, got in the trenches and did the work, and now look at the output. You look at someone like Alex, oh I want to be like him. I'm gonna be a trainer really, really quick and start making millions like him. Not gonna happen. The most successful trainers, if you truly are passionate about this craft, they're still training. If I'm gonna work with a business coach who's a personal trainer and they don't have clients, that would be like a law professor who hasn't practiced law for 20 years, giving you advice 20 years ago. There's podcasters out there that are, oh, they're the gold standard of podcasts. They have all this great information. When was the last time they trained someone? 20 years ago? How is that relevant to today? Can you navigate the gym floor? Do you go to a gym? You're giving advice on trainers on how to be successful. You don't train, you haven't been to a big box gym, you're not in the trenches. It's like saving Private Ryan. Amazing movie. Who was the person they pushed back most against? Tom Hanks' son in real life, that's his son, but it was a general who just went to school, learned about war, and now he's supposed to be in the trenches leading these soldiers when he's never experienced what they have. We have to do better at thinking. It's a lost

Action, Focus, And Closing Challenge

SPEAKER_00 13:39

art. If you're still watching this, comment on this video. What book are you currently reading? What podcast are you learning about that's getting you to think bigger about business, about growth, scaling? I love acquired, I love founders, I love learning about people back in the day who were doing it old school because they figured it out. Today we aren't willing to do that. We want to skip the line, and we want all the fame and glory that people who we highlight on social media. They got a million followers. I just need to post twice a month. Action wins everything. Consistency with action, who you are, sharp, and the third one, focus. If you have those three things and a grit to really do what you got into this to do, which is help people, this is a very fruitful career. AI is an amazing tool. It can be used for you or it can be used against you. And what I'm seeing as a business owner, lacksadaisical actions, thinking that more is better, which it can be in certain circumstances. Like if you suck at free throws, getting a coach and shooting more is definitely gonna help you. But what people are doing is they want to skip the hard work. Why? Oh why? Tell me. It'll be like me wanting to climb Mount Everest. Oh, I'm just gonna get on a helicopter and drop me off the top. Hey, look at me. That's not right. That doesn't feel good. I know if I was standing up there looking down on everyone, all the dead bodies around me, be like, oh, I accomplished something. No. Success comes from proving to yourself that you're capable, that there's a hardship in front of you, there's a hurdle that's challenging, but you worked through it. You didn't give up. So many people give up because they're afraid of accomplishing what they're truly worth. You can do this. You are a great trainer. You're a qualified trainer because if you stuck around this long, you have the wits, the faculties in your mind to figure out difficult situations when they're presented in front of you. Because you're gonna have a ton, whether it's difficult clients, other trainers, coworkers, employees, bosses. You're gonna learn that people skills, business skills, and the technical skills trump everything in this field. Trainers don't do what's required. They want the quick fix. AI will help you become very successful if you're not lazy. And most importantly, you get a great certification behind you within a community where you can ask questions, go out there and do it, come back and become better. Do better. And remember, big biceps are better than small ones. Keep showing up.