So, sure, I'd love to avoid the headache and learning curve of designing my own strength program. But do I really want AI to replace the nuanced decision-making of workout planning? After a few months of testing this app, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the answer is more nuanced than Fitbod's marketing suggests -- but I do think the answer is more positive than I expected, at least for the right user.
A fitness app can't afford to be cluttered or glitchy. If it isn't easy to use, it'll become just another obstacle to you sticking your workout program. How an app looks and feels really is important, and on this front, Fitbod doesn't disappoint.
The onboarding especially strikes the right balance between comprehensive and accessible. The initial questionnaire covers your experience level, primary goals, available equipment, and current recovery state without overwhelming new users.
The app addresses a key concern upfront: ensuring your equipment settings are accurate. If you're not seeing expected exercises, the troubleshooting process is straightforward -- check your Gym Profile, review any accidentally excluded exercises, and manually add movements to help train the algorithm. Plus, the equipment selection process will be exciting for experienced lifters.
As someone accustomed to straightforward fitness apps like Strava or Nike Training Club, Fitbod's learning curve feels pretty minimal. One visual element I really love is Fitbod's muscle recovery heatmap. It's an intuitive way to visualize your body's readiness, which fans of recovery-focused fitness trackers will appreciate.
I think the app's clean, focused screens deserve special praise. I simply can't stand cluttered fitness apps that assault you with badges and achievements. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want my strength coaching to feel like I'm doing a side quest in Duolingo against an onslaught of targeted ads.
Navigating through the app is intuitive, even during workouts. For instance, the "rest timer" integrates seamlessly with exercise tracking, and adjusting weights or reps requires only a simple tap.
Let's take a look at Fitbod's main attraction: custom AI-powered workouts. On its website, Fitbod explains its algorithm and how the app generates workouts, but simply put, it starts by analyzing multiple factors: previous workout data, muscle recovery status, available time, and your feedback on individual exercises. As you keep using the app, it analyzes your logged data, calculates muscle recovery, measures training volume for progressive overload, adjusts for your specific goals (hypertrophy vs. strength), applies intelligent variation to prevent plateaus, and generates your next customized workout. This process repeats with every session, allegedly making your program increasingly personalized over time.
According to Fitbod, the app's recent algorithm updates (as of June 2025) make your manual inputs and exercise history even more influential in shaping future recommendations. Consistently logging certain movements signals preference, while manually adding or replacing exercises provides valuable feedback that improves future workout generation.
Another major factor to understand about Fitbod's programming is its "non-linear" approach. A ton of beginner strength programs go by linear progression. This means you add small, consistent increments of weight to a given lift each workout or week, keeping the exercises, sets, and reps the same. Fitbod doesn't go by this linear "add 5 pounds every session" approach of traditional programs. The whole AI-powered promise here is that Fitbod pushes you to increase weights when it deems you ready, not according to an arbitrary schedule.
The non-linear progression initially concerned me as someone already skeptical of AI fitness solutions. Would I ever actually progress?
Starting out, the workouts themselves are simple and satisfying. If I didn't know how to do a certain exercise, there was a high-quality "how-to" video and explanation to help me out. That being said, the workouts were maybe...too simple. I'm a beginner lifter, but I'm still pretty fit. It was tough to resist the urge to adjust most of my workouts to make the recommended weights heavier. More on that below.
The Fitbod approach challenges muscles differently than linear progression while maintaining the progressive overload principle essential for strength gains. For runners like myself who need strength training to complement endurance work without overwhelming recovery, this variability is clutch.
Similarly, I like how Fitbod is able to adapt to your environment. You can maintain separate profiles for home, gym, and travel scenarios, which totally eliminates the friction that would otherwise derail strength routines. The hotel room profile deserves special mention -- as someone you travels a lot, I love a good ol' fashioned bodyweight routine.
Despite Fitbod's extensive exercise database and claims of intelligent variation, I can't say the app is some beacon of constant innovation. The default "Balanced" variability setting often cycles through the same 15-20 exercises repeatedly, creating the sort monotony many users probably downloaded this app to avoid.
Then again, the app provides solutions for this limitation: updating your equipment profile, adjusting your experience level, un-excluding previously filtered exercises, or switching to "More Variability" in your gym profile settings. However, these adjustments require user intervention that contradicts the whole "set it and forget it" appeal many seek from AI-powered apps. It's almost as if robots can't replace the nuance of the human experience...but I digress.
Luckily, maybe Fitbod's greatest strength is how it lets you override its suggestions. Its recommendation system allows you to flag exercises for more, less, or no future inclusion -- gradually shaping workouts to your liking.
More problematic is the occasional programming logic that, to me, defies basic training principles. The app sometimes prescribes multiple max-effort exercises for the same muscle group within a single session -- such as heavy deadlifts followed immediately by Romanian deadlifts. When I tried following this suggestion, I think the combo led to completely unnecessary fatigue.
On the flip side, when it comes to weight suggestions, I can appreciate how its starting recommendations err on the conservative side. It may have bored me, but I know it's for safety. However, not everyone agrees with me. For experienced lifters accustomed to working near their limits, this learning period can feel frustrating.
This frustration also points to a larger issue with the promise of AI-powered workouts in general: If you're experienced enough to complete and customize these programs, aren't you experienced enough to design one for yourself? For anyone beyond a beginner level, an app like Fitbod could feel like an expensive workout journal.
When it comes to getting basic workouts done, this app works. It's easy to use, and the programming is smart, at least for beginner-to-intermediate users like me. But is it worth $95.99 annually? If you're choosing between a more affordable, non-AI option and Fitbod, I vote you go with the former. If you're dead-set on the appeal of AI personalization, let's see how Fitbod stacks up against its competitors. I haven't personally tested any of these alternatives, so this is more of a broad overview at the AI-fitness app landscape:
I should also mention that Fitbod's free trial is pretty pointless. You get three free workouts available before a subscription is required, but since this app is designed to calibrate around and adapt to your workouts, you won't get any of the main benefits without paying for those very workouts.
