Your Personal Trainer

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  Cover photo

Inspiration

I still remember the times when I went to the gym solely to use the cardio machines, not because I didn't want to do resistance training, but because I didn't know what those other machines were for or how to use them. I spent a considerable amount of money on personal training sessions, relying entirely on my trainers to set up the plan and provide instructions. To save money long-term, I became a personal trainer myself, and that's when I learned the foundation of training plan development and how straightforward it could be as long as you have the knowledge of the structure. Yet, there's a steep learning curve, and beginners often don't know where to start. I had several friends who shared the same struggle that I used to have, and after I obtained my personal training certification, they all came to me for training plans. That's when I realized that there's always a demand; it's just a matter of how far the individual has to go to get it fulfilled. So, I aspired to develop this virtual personal trainer that handles the most challenging aspect of a personal trainer's job – developing a personalized training plan, along with instructions and video tutorials, to help individuals kick-start their fitness journey.

What it does

This virtual personal trainer helps develop a personalized training plan based on the user's fitness goal, desired workout duration, and target muscle groups. There is also a live chat to address users' questions or concerns regarding the training plan and make adjustments if needed.

How we built it

Technically, I just used PartyRock to enter prompts. Content-wise, I reflected on my experience with personal training and identified the necessary information to craft a training plan (fitness goal, duration, and target group). Then, I decided which information I wanted to include in the training plan (reps, sets, instructions, video tutorials, and equipment used) and considered how to best present them. When I put together the blocks, I put myself in the user's role and tested it several times to think about different scenarios and other needs. That's when I came up with the live chat box and the equipment list section. And that's the end product.

Challenges we ran into

I encountered a few challenges. First, I initially wanted to embed video tutorials into the output box, so users didn't have to be redirected, but I couldn't find a way to do it. Luckily, I found a workaround, which was to attach the link to the text and make it clickable. Another challenge I encountered was the nuanced differences between word choices. For example, "present in four sections" would show a different layout from "format in four sections"; these differences took multiple tries to figure out and could also be affected by other changes made to the prompt, so it took me a long time to determine the words to use to achieve the layout I had in mind.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I played with all the input and output options of PartyRock and developed my first app with its help!

What we learned

I learned how to write prompts to achieve my desired output, essentially how to communicate with the tool to make it return the result as I want it. I also learned about the tool's limitations (that I can't have an image input or video output) and how to work around or tackle challenges when encountering them.

What's next for Your Personal Trainer

I want to see if I can add more features to it. For example, ask for height and weight to provide quantitative goals and come up with a nutrition plan alongside the training plan (because we know food intake is as important, and even more important than workout for certain fitness goals). I also want to see if it can be linked to an information management system (Notion, Google Drive, or others) so that the training plans can be saved and stored in the system, and users can keep track of their progress.

Built With

• claude
• partyrock