The AI Revolution: Changing the Fitness Landscape

3 reasons why you need to be experimenting with Artificial Intelligence as a Fitness Professional

As Artificial Intelligence like ChatGPT have risen into our spaces and other platforms begin to incorporate it into their various products, there are a few roads you can choose to be on.

One person stands on the road of resistance, wanting to hold onto the past and the way things were.

Another person dives into it 100% and doesn’t look back.

And yet another person proceeds cautiously, exploring it’s potential while still holding onto a few things from the past that still serve us well.

I’m am in the latter of the three camps, as I’m cautiously optimistic about the potential of AI.

I mean, lets face it… We are gonna screw this thing up. It’s just a matter of how badly we’re going to do it. But to me, this is the natural evolution of humanity. This is what we were by design, meant to do. People will say that the things we’ve created are unnatural and aren’t the way nature intended things to be, but do you really know that?

Nature is not as kind and as gentle as we think.

We came from nature. We are nature and when nature set out on the path to developing a human mind, it opened up a pandora’s box of potential outcomes. We are a part of the process.

Climate Change for example is a natural process caused by humans. The test is what we do with what we know about it, and if we are willing to change our behavior to slow, stall or combat it.

So here we are, at a crossroads of inevitable change and the question is, what are we going to do with this new piece of information.

If you know me, then you know I’m very intrigued by space, space time and all that sort of stuff. I firmly believe that as humans, we cannot move forward technologically in such a way that will sustain the future of humanity without the assistance of technology like Artificial Intelligence. There are just some calculations and things that we have not educated humanity enough to solve, nor can we ever collaboratively come together to solve… especially if we’re defined by race, national borders and more concerned with hoarding resources, rather than raising the bottom of society.

I believe that the implications of these language models will help us become more efficient at our day to day tasks and help us carve out more leisure time… Well, that’s at least until Capitalism pretty much says, yeah well you’re not doing enough to warrant your payment and cuts pay, or makes people work more instead of saying, I’m willing to pay you the same amount for more efficient use of your time.

I think on the Corporate scale, the implications can potentially hurt the workforce, however there are also potential roles to be filled in a new type of workforce.

What about Fitness Professionals?

As a small business owner who works with clients face to face, provides nuanced and highly specialized coaching, I’m not too concerned about that aspect of my life. To be honest, as a 46 year old coach, I’ve been paring down my face to face work anyway and moving towards my role as an educator to other coaches.

However, I do believe that fitness will begin to fundamentally change. You need to be ready for this changing landscape and the only way you can get ready is to get your hands in the mud and see just wtf is going on with these available AI products.

So let’s break down the 3 Reasons you should be experimenting with AI like ChatGPT:

1. Don’t Be Blackberry - Your competitors are messing with it: that’s right… regardless if you join in or not, your competition is tinkering with it and trying to figure out what the best use cases are, how it can make their business better, and just generally figuring out how it works. The thing is, you may be in that resistance camp, refusing to evolve, but we all know what happened to creatures that didn’t evolve and adapt to the times. They went bye bye. Think of Blackberry. Some of you reading this might not even know what a Blackberry is. But here’s the gist of it all. They put keyboards on phones. Apple said… hmm… we gon’ put them bitches in the screen instead. Blackberry was like, nah… people like typing and the click of the keyboard. Here we are in 2023 and no one has a phone that doesn’t have a fully digital screen and keyboard. Don’t be Blackberry.

2. It’s FREE right now: let me tell y’all something. Most technological tools that have come out in the past have been severely inhibitory with massive barriers to entry. Not saying this isn’t. You still need a computer and wifi or data. But look, I didn’t get my first computer in our home until 1995. While other kids in the early 90’s could type their papers at home, I had to hand write and send it to work with my mom and dad so they could type it out on their computer at work. Access to computers for Black and Brown people, who fall in a different socioeconomic category limited our ability to get in early on a lot of tech in those days. For example, my client who’s the same exact age as me, had access to computers since he was a young kid. Both he and I attended UCLA, but he was in computer sciences and is at Google. In other words, there is a direct relationship between early access and the trajectory of your future opportunities. Don’t miss the early learning curve.

3. It’s happening with or without you: Imagine the voice of U2’s Bono from their hit song “With or Without You” and embrace all the emotional feels from that song. That’s how you’re gonna feel 10 years from now when you didn’t experiment with it. At the end of the day, this train has left the station and it’s going at record speeds. You’re either on the train now or figuring out how to get up to speed to get on the train later. But you’re gonna be on the train one way or another, whether you like it or not. You can go to your corner, pack your Doomsday Prepper bag and imagine a dystopian future world and pout… and I’m not saying that you don’t need a bag… What I am saying is that you gotta have one foot in this door just in case because Fitness is going to change and it’ll largely have to do with the things people do with AI.

I’ve been experimenting with AI for a while now and I have a bunch of content that I think will help guide you through some of my early findings and help you discover the full potential and impact to your business.

I will be sharing most of this within the BUILD-U portion of my Substack. Consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the upcoming content on this subject and much more.

I would love to hear from you and what you think on this subject. Please consider leaving a comment and Liking this post.

Move Better | Feel Better | Do More

Rich Thurman is a Strength & Conditioning Coach, with an emphasis on Mobility Training, based in San Francisco, CA. With over 20 years of coaching and education experience, Rich works to improve the lives of both his In Person and Virtual Clients.