Will Artificial Intelligence and Chat GPT Replace Personal Trainers? What Trainers Need to Know.

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the fitness industry from workout programming to client communication and performance tracking. So where does that leave personal trainers?

In this episode of Smittyville, we break down what AI really means for the future of personal training — without the hype or fear. We talk about how technology is changing the role of the trainer, what AI can support, and what it can’t replace.

This episode is hosted by Chris Smith, CEO of Fitness World, who built his career from personal trainer to leading one of Canada’s largest fitness companies, and Krissy Vann, a national television host and fitness journalist behind All Things Fitness and Wellness. Together, they bring both operator-level insight and frontline training experience to the conversation.

You’ll also hear from a new voice in town — Bad Ass Betty, our audio AI co-host — offering AI’s perspective on how it fits into the personal training profession.

If you’re a personal trainer wondering whether AI is a threat, a tool, or an opportunity, this episode is for you.
🎙️ Trainer Tuesday
🏙️ Welcome to Smittyville — Population: trainers
#personaltrainers #personaltraining #gymlife

Transcript

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so if there's no value added then again that change of technology it's going to exterminate what I would call shitty personal trainers there won't be very many if any shitty personal trainers in the future because technology will replace you welcome to smittyville the smartest small town in fitness real talk for real trainers hosted by Chris Smith CEO of Fitness World and fitness business journalist Chrissy Van this is the show for personal trainers we talk business leadership money and the stuff no one teaches you on the gym floor welcome to Smithville Population Trainers let's start in Town Hall this is where we talk about the things that actually shape a career in fitness so the question is can algorithms and AI as a partnership really change the shape of personal training so when it came to building programs in Chris's personal training days what's the process quill and Parchment just kidding I'm not that old but there was paper for sure involved and there was drafts generally speaking involved like notes almost an outline of thoughts and ideas and again I you know I grew up from an NSCA now strength and Conditioning Association perspective slash then subsequently NASM was kind of my formal personal training background information aside from my degree but yeah I was you know building you know macrocycles and mesocycles and thinking about sets reps and rest ratios and what movements and why and you know strength and you know stability and power phases and when are we gonna do all these things and what sequence for this client and that goal and yeah you get you write it all down and then you you're doing nutrition program you had nutrition books where you're flipping pages and writing everything down and putting meals together and counting macros and whatever so stuff that you can do now in a minute or less that would take hours in terms of you know what AI can do for you and in many cases maybe a better program and that's exactly it obviously there's tons of different use cases for AI but for the modern personal trainer where should people be leveraging it and where do you feel it's potentially more hype than helpful I think you can leverage it if you're using the right content so I'll get you know I I wrote a program uh help my my brother write a program for a football team and I used AI to help it but in my prompts I was very specific on what information I wanted to use to source to build that program uh again meaning NCA and NASM particular like very specific prompt and then I reviewed the program made some modifications tweaks adjustments that I thought were appropriate based on how that weight room is shaped and what tools are available to say you know coach the kids and what movements that they can actually perform safely in that environment so you know I think all those kind of things have to be considered and then in terms of you know helpful or hurtful yeah again it's just how you use it right can it be hurtful absolutely right if you think it's a one size fits all or like hey generate a program that I can use the following tools for a for personal training clients and it spits out a workout and you're gonna go do that workout with the same six people all day long well I mean that's just lazy which again trainers were doing that before AI anyway they would write one program for the day more or less you'd see client after client doing the same thing and be like what are we doing what what are we doing so if anything I think it it it should take that away and make it easier but it can't be harmful if you're just not going to apply it correctly or again not be situational um in what you're doing or if you don't prompt it correctly my client is 62 years old I don't include their age if I don't include the fact that they've had a knee replacement if I don't include the fact they have a herniated disc in their back and aren't able to do certain movements that I know from an assessment perspective or conversation perspective but if I don't include that in my prompt when I'm quote unquote writing a program well it's not gonna take that into account so I think you have to be very detailed and specific what's the capacity that you're having trainers under the Fitness World umbrella utilize AI if at all at this point we're not telling them to utilize it at all um we're using the other programs that are synthesizing other material to help do that for them uh so there are tools that we're plugged into that help them do that but we're not advising hey use chat GPT or use this or use that to help kind of write your programs and I guess I would use maybe the phrase you know yet there are some platforms out there now that are doing that I mean my big conversation to everyone around personal training I is is pretty simple as to say if you think that knowing programming or knowing how to write programs is gonna give you job credibility and stability in the future like you're delusional elaborate well like what makes them delulu as they say well if you think that your value add to somebody is that you have the knowledge necessary required to like build and give a program I mean that's actually where I think like all these trainers are doing online training like they're hooped you're super hooped yeah cause what do you think the future of that road looks like I just think it's it's a short it's a short road with a dead end because again that it's just a lot harder to have a true service continuum without like an actual personal relationship that is built on like the physical presence of and the world class customer service of and again I think it's really hard at least with today's technology to good catch it's yeah good catch on your microphone there it's difficult to with today's technology to be a 360 degree trainer look at all the individuals like you know where are they struggling where do they need to be you know prompted and and and and coached right so if I'm giving you feedback around I need you to move your shoulder here or do this here and as you're doing all that and you're queuing P folks right like you gotta be able to do that in a meaningful way so the technology as we sit there is some tools available quote unquote digital tools but they're they're that technology is not all the way there yet where it's just readily available so I think that's again where you win that's where you beat the machine if you will as again what is my service level how am I queuing my client how am I making that experience unique and fun and enjoyable and whatever else versus like I did the program I just you know programs are program it's like well anybody can do that so a lot of the conversation is around job loss because of AI and AI replacing jobs so in summary you feel as though nothing can really beat the face to face client experience if they're giving strong customer service but online training may be a dead end in I think it's a lot harder to deliver that kind of experience from an online perspective cause a lot more of it is just kind of the program and you can see some of it and they can queue and you can have folks with headphones in and they can have an iPad or a phone in front of them they can at least see some stuff so it's not like there's no queuing going on but I think that personal connection was already lost and now I think it's on it's on it's way to disappearing fair enough well we have some AI workouts here or maybe they're human LED workouts and you're gonna decide whether they are they are not okay okay human or robot engage your core like you're bracing for a punch then drive through your heels to power up every squat uh AI who's human bummer squat down 90 degrees and then return to the starting position while maintaining proper biomechanical alignment hahaha well we'll go with AI again yeah I figure what if I just say AI every time does that make me right 50% of the time oh well I'm not gonna tell you that cause then you'll know that's my strategy damn it ensure optimal oxygen intake by maintaining consistent inhalation and exhalation pattern during cardiovascular there we go this was kind of to drive the point inhalation exhalation patterns can you imagine yeah and this is probably the type of things that some trainers are spitting out to their clients if they're not prompting AI correctly yep no what and and again I mean I specifically when I use prompts even for my own stuff I'm not just prompt I say using Chris Smith's tone of voice and language use and whatever so it if I'm gonna do anything like that I want it to sound like me well and you would have trained it that way I'm actually really curious now and I've just thought of this but I never use do you ever use the chat GPT voice function no okay we're gonna use voice mode right now what's something that you're currently working on not gonna let me do it with my microphone plugged in that's so upsetting hello can you hear me I can hear you loud and clear no worries at all if the microphone was giving you trouble we are all set now that's so creepy absolutely happy to help if there's anything else you need or you wanna dive into just let me know what are your current fitness goals Chris um I am I'm glad you asked I didn't ask you no you're Chrissy it thinks you're Chris yeah okay but I wanna know what's your current fitness goal and then we're gonna feed it to okay hold on okay hey there hahaha it's so weird to talk to a robot it's not weird at all I'm just here to chat and make things as easy as possible so just think of me as your friendly digital buddy brilliant digital buddy can you help my friend Chris here with his current workout goals absolutely just pass along what Chris is aiming for and I'll be happy to help out let's get those workout goals sorted alright Chris what are your workout goals uh well yeah Chris feel free to let me know what you're aiming for whether it's building muscle improving endurance or just getting a bit more active I'm here to throw some ideas your way well I appreciate that I'm currently working on strength conditioning and I'm actually gonna do an Olympic lifting competition in January for like USA Masters so can you help me with a program on Olympic lifting absolutely that sounds like a fun challenge if you're aiming for your first Masters competition or just leveling up your training we can definitely tackle that let's dive in yeah I'm 51 years old male and so I need a program that can you know combine sets reps and rest ratios for both the clean and jerk and the snatch lift cause it'll be a combined total so what frequency should I be training at and what would that look like so if you're marking on both the clean and jerk and the snatch typically you'll be looking at something like three to four sessions a week that focus on those lifts you might do a mix of heavy days and technique days and for each session you could structure it with a few sets of lower reps to keep your form solid and then build up the weight as you go we can find two in the details from there cool one last question before you go what do you think the future of artificial intelligence will be when it comes to personal training will it replace jobs or do you think that that in person connection is going to remain of utmost importance that's a really great question and honestly it's a little bit of both I think AI is gonna become a super useful tool in personal training like it can help personalize workout plans track progress and give real time feedback but that human connection the motivation and the relationship you have with the trainer that's always gonna be special and important so I think AI will enhance things but not fully replace that human touch oh okay what's your name well you can just call me whatever you like I'm just your friendly Chad GPT here to help out did you ever have like a pretend best friend as a little girl absolutely what was their name oh I definitely had a fleet like what's your most prominent oh cause then you can name her oh that's true I feel like I need to mull this over I don't know why the name Betty's coming to mind I like Betty let's go with Betty Betty Betty Badass Betty can you tell me you're a badass Betty absolutely I can own that so you've got yourself a badass Betty right here just let me know whatever else you need and badass Betty's on it that's pretty good that was excellent that over delivered that was great that's pretty good I'm really really happy that worked out badass Betty will own it alright bye bye hi Betty all right well you know where to find me whatever you want to chat again take care and have a great one oh she sounded a little sad when we were like we're gonna part ways that's how they get you goodbye Betty goodbye Betty badass Betty down the rabbit hole that was amazing let's head to the trainer circuit real questions real situations Chris shows up listens and mentors from experience what do you see as the biggest like shift in the fitness industry in like 5 years and how is fitness world preparing for it what feels obvious is certainly you know the the advent of AI and where is that going and what's it going to change and how is it going to change and you know my my answer is to say well so what can AI do and what can't it do at least at this stage and or will will I want to be queued by a robot maybe at some point they're going to have a personal trainer robot that can actually queue you as well because even right now I mean I can go onto a website and if you're good at prompting right and you're working with some of the right algorithms if I prompt like hey using NCA NASM standards write me a 45 minute program this and that da da da progressions regression like if you write the prompt correctly that AI will spit it right out that's easy what it can't do is cue and it definitely can't cue from a 360 degree parameter and so I think if you're like hey how if I'm a personal trainer and I wanna still add value to my clients that no robot or machine can ever do how do I do that well what you can't do is take the universal trainer stand standing over my client by the way counting reps one good job three more four yeah you nice nice nice good work good work if I'm just a machine counting reps I mean even right now I'd say you're already outdated like you're gone the person the person you're training just doesn't know it they just don't understand that technology will already give them the same thing you're giving and then some cause that like the apps count the reps out loud on the pacing the sets the repetition the sequencing the time and attention like it'll do all that now but what it can't do is Q3 planes of motion right and then we have all these different lines and different things and we have breathing mechanics and all this other stuff that goes into different movements right and so again if I'm a personal trainer and I'm only queuing from one spot here or here versus what and again I wanna be eye level with my client so that might require me to get down on a knee it might require me to on that rep I'm gonna be looking here and I'm looking specifically at oh that's the transverse plane and here's how it's moving then I'm moving my body around like okay now I'm checking it out from the sagittal plane or whatever it is I'm looking at and however I'm moving right but you have to move and then you have to q while you're moving and add value so if there's no value added then again that change of technology it's going to exterminate what I would call shitty personal trainers there won't be very many if any shitty personal trainers in the future because technology will replace you if you're really good and you're a 360 degree trainer that understands how to give auditory and verbal and all this good feedback right hey is it okay if I touch your scapula real quick that's your back I'm gonna touch your back is that okay okay very good I asked permission to touch right I then place my hand somewhere right here this is your wrong boy I need you to squeeze right here while they're doing that row or that face pull or whatever because maybe they're just rounding their shoulders or doing something whatever they're doing wrong and you're trying to correct because again no machine can do that and it won't be able to do that now maybe someday it will under the thing of robots who's this this is my robot personal trainer come on Bob and like Bob comes in the gym with him but I think we're always off from that before we wrap we'll leave you with a Smithism a lesson Chris has picked up along the way it's hard to transition but it's time for a Smithism we'll go with this one today which is like if you can you must and so I think if you can learn about digital technology and AI and how to stack some of these tools in a way to make your own personal life better to make your professional life better to enhance those that you're serving in the form then then you must right like if you have an opportunity so simple phrase the symbolism of it I think it applies to more things than certainly this but the phrase is if you can you must that's today's Smithism Chris Smith is the mayor of Smithville and I'm Chrissy Van your town correspondent this is the smartest small town in fitness we'll see you back here every other week