Chat GPT is an AI system made public that allows you to ask any question, simple or complex, and have this robot browse data bases to give you the best answer, or make you gain time by doing simple tasks, as preparing texts or speeches for you. Another function is the creation of drawing, pictures or painting from simple key words and ideas. For many workers, it is apparently a death sentence since this Chat GPT can basically do their work faster, better or as good, and for free. Copyrighters, salemen, graphists, even sport and health professionals are apparently doomed to lose their job and income.

Or are they ?

As a sport professional (certified fitness and bodybuilding personal trainer and sport nutritionist), I investigated.

AI Introduction

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. It is a member of the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) family of language models and was fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) over an improved version of OpenAI’s GPT-3 known as “GPT 3.5”.

It basically use data bases of informations to generate answers to your questions or demands. As for the time I write this, it can’t have access to infos that are from after 2021, and has an API moderator to avoid considered discriminatory and/or sexists.

It will generate answers as best as it can but obviously still has limitations; still, a lot of workers and companies are already seeing it’s usefulness at the dawn of the 3.0 internet/web, and it’s ability to gain time or simplify a lot of tasks that to this day were own by humans.

So of course, you can ask it to make you a training program, a diet regiment, and technically, get a great answer for free without paying or waiting for a personal trainer to do it for you.

Or does it ?

Reviewing AI Chat GPT Training Programs

If you want to watch the videos versions, you can here and here.

First, I asked the AI to make me a bodybuilding program. Very simple, generic and maybe short minded way to ask, but still. Here is what it gave me :

The first thing we can notice is that this is a body part split, and that any program it will generate by default will be the same. No Full Body, Half Body, PPL, Push/Pull or else. That alone is a big red flag in my book since this is the most inferior type of training split you can do, whatever if in term of frequency, intensity, volume or recovery. Let’s have a closer look.

Warm-up : 5-10mn of cardio and stretching. Why would you do cardio training ? What intensity ? We saw in my warm-up guide what we needed and why, but there is no guidelines here. What about stretching ? How long ? Which ones ? Static, dynamic ? It isn’t vague, it is just incomplete.

Chest and Biceps : bench press, flyes, curls and hammer curls. All of them for 3×8-12. Several issues here. First, doing bench and flyes at same bench angle is just redondant. Pectorals are all about angles of work, alike lats. You can’t just do flat and get a great chest except if you are a lucky genetic lottery specimen, or just incline, or decline. You will need at least two angles of work.

Doing a compound and isolation exercise is decent, but that way, it’s redondant. For biceps, what could have been smarter is to do hammer curl first, since you can go heavier and hit every elbow flexors, including biceps, brachalis, brachoradialis and some wrist flexor muscles with the grip demand. This would have also warm up the elbow good to then trash the biceps entirely. But no, the reverse is presented here, which can only feel sub optimal when it’s so easy to set up.

Legs : squat, deadlift, leg curl, calves, done. Really ? Squat and deadlift back to back will trash anyone core and low back if they are strong enough, you literally can’t couple them together and be intense and effective on both if you do not manage the spine fatigue aspect.

Doing RDL and Hack Squat for example, or Smith Squat and then Stiff Legged Pull with as much quad bias and upright torso as possible on the squat can work, but even then, if most top athletes in strength training chose to do them on separate days, that should tell you something. And for the powerlifting fans that would say “well X dude does both in same session”, I would like you to ask him/her about how his/her back/hip/knees are feeling and how often they get injured/feel bad.

As for the leg curl and calves, in itself, nothing wrong with that, but why no supplementary work for the quadriceps with Leg Press or Leg Extension ? Why again the 3×8-12 on everything ? Why squat before deadlift ?

If there is a logic here, I don’t see it. If it would be a Half Body Split, you could hit them again and differently on another day, but what about a bro split ?

Back and Triceps : lat pulldown, dumbbell row, close grip bench press and triceps extension. That must be the least worst of them all. First, lat pulldown is a good staple and easy exercise to do, and to work your back with. However, just doing 3 sets of this and 3 sets of row is insufficient for the whole back musculature.

Remember, if we talk about the trapezius, the muscle goes from your mouth to your upper abs, while going on each side of your clavicles. Lats are going from your shoulder all the way down to your posterior pelvic bones, and covering the whole mid and low back surface starting under your shoulder blades. Just these two are huge, and we didn’t address rhomboids, teres majors or the erector spinae. Six sets once a week for all of this. No.

As for triceps, the close grip bench press must have come out since it must be everywhere in the data base for “best triceps exercises”, and is indeed one, but we got no details or guidelines for the triceps extension one. Where, how, why ? Just check in any good book about training the number of variation we can have for triceps isolation work.

Shoulder and Abs : shoulder press, lateral and front raise with some ab work. A miracle happened, and we see some 3×12-15 ! So this AI does know something else than 3×8-12. This begs the question : why not have it on others exercises such as calves ? As for the training itself, the front raise are in most case totally useless and should be swapped for rear delt isolation, since that’s THE muscle group most lifter will struggle with to maintain shoulder balance, health and longevity.

For the abs, why do crunches before the leg raises when the later is way harder than the other ? It should have been reversed.

Conclusion : repetitive rep range for no good reasons, not enough volume, weird selection of exercises, no guidelines about them, no indication on rest periods and the worst part is that you are supposed to do all these training back to back, then take a day off, and get back to it again.

On the muscle frequency part, we could say it’s decent since we get every muscle worked twice in about 9-10 days, but the truth is that you are overworking the upper body and underworking the lower body. Think about it in volume terms : how many sets for upper, how many sets for lower, how many compounds for each, how many isolation work for each ? I feel like I am getting tendinitis just looking at this training program honestly.

Moving on, second one is for people that experience back pain, I wrote “bodybuilding program but my back hurts”

This hurts my eyes for many reasons, but again, let’s go point by point :

Consulting a doctor or physical therapist : obviously this is going to be important if your back is hurting, but most doctors would just tell you to not do anything for 1-3 weeks and get on pain killers. Some might be smart enough to recommend physical care, but it doesn’t seem to be that often you get those. As for a physical therapist, if the pain is from a lack of muscle strength or light injury, go for it, but if it’s something else altogether ?

And the AI doesn’t help here, it is referring you to sport and health professional, meaning, you can’t escape real human diagnostic.

Exercises for mobility like yoga, light cardio and pilates : doesn’t say what type of exercises, yoga in itself as we think of it is nowhere near real yoga, it’s barely the warm-up of real yogist. Light cardio ? Tell me how an elliptic bike or a seated bicycle cardio session could strengthen the back ? As for pilates, it’s not something you should think more effective than proper strength progression on basic bodybuilding exercises and some specific low back prehab work.

Prioritize core strength exercises : literally any exercise heavy enough can be a core exercise. What does it mean by that ? Anti spine flexion exercise ? Anti lateral flexion ? Anti extension ? Ab work ? Squat, standing press, deadlift and standing curls are all core exercises, but so are crunches, back extension, weighted carries and so on and so forth.

Totally impractical advice here.

Limit high low back stress exercises like squats, standing press and deadlift : aaah there we go, finally something a bit more specific. This is a decent advice considering these exercises do work hard the core region and are demanding on the spine, so, if spine injury there is, those should be the last incorporated in your training to ensure you can do lower stress variations first; but, at some point, they will have to be around, since the best way to prevent injuries and pain is to actually keep a joint or region strong and mobile.

What better exercises to bulletproof the posterior chain and the hips while maintaining great muscle mass, strength and mobility than deadlift and squats variations ? As for presses, we can do them seated to preserve low back and spine.

Use proper form to avoid unnecessary stress : yes, of course. Why isn’t it higher up on the list ? This should be mentioned first, or not at all, since it isn’t supposed to even be discussed !

Gradually increases intensity and weights : yes of course too. You need to slowly dive in to make sure you have proper form, good muscle engagement and good range of motion before going for heavier and closer to failure set.

Foam rolling : pretty controversial, for some, it’s a miracle, for others, totally useless. Not enough science data, empirism seems to be very split on the subject, such as for others things like massage gun and even stretches. If it helps you, do it, if it doesn’t, don’t do it.

Very odd that the AI would choose to speak about it and not others recovery methods/tools that have real solid back-up and evidence to support them, like proper joint support supplementation, spinal decompression, heat/cold treatment, massages etc. Why speak about a very controversial one ?

Here is the third and last question I asked : short bodybuilding program in 30mn session.

So much to say, but we will keep it as synthetic and short as possible.

Warm-up : nothing much to say, always good to warm-up, and what is described can be part of a warm-up routine. Five minutes is on a short side of a warm-up length if we include the weight ramp-up, but we aren’t going for high intensity loads when time restricted.

Compounds exercises : OK here we go. Fifteen minutes to do big basic compounds like bench press, squats, deadlift, chin-up ? When do we warm-up ? 3×8-12 with a minute of rest ?

Let say I do 3 plates squats for that rep scheme, do you really believe you are good to go for another proper productive set only a minute later ?

No, of course not.

Your whole body is tired, since squats, as a compound exercise, induce a lot of systemic fatigue : the leg muscles worked hard, the heart is pumping a lot of blood while regulating the blood pressure as best as it can when the body is literally squashed under iron, your lungs are hanging in there to have enough oxygen brought in and exhaling the carbon dioxide in a stretched, restricted thorax position, and your nerves are sending huge hertz signals to contract and use about 70% of your whole body’s muscle mass.

And that’s one set.

Three, with one minute rest ? No. Same for deadlift. Same for bench press, even if in a lesser measure. As for Pull-Up, it isn’t an intensity exercise, most get better off real volume work instead of hard sets with brief rest in between. Also, are we supposed to do all these exercises ? Pick one ? Two ?

Isolation exercises : a little better, but barely. Choosing single-joint movements for what we worked prior or around to bring synergistic assistance can be smart, but let’s see the details. 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps with 30-60s rest. Oh really ?

Let say you do whole cable stack triceps extension like me. Let say again you do a hard, close to failure, set. Same question as above, are you up for it again half a minute later ? If you did it properly, no, you aren’t. Meaning except if you do bi-sets or even tri-set work, you have no choice but to rest to get another effective set in. And that won’t get done in 10 short minutes if you need 3-4 exercises. So you are either intensity or volume restricted, which isn’t a good idea if you can’t have frequent workouts.

So, either you go the intensity road, 2 hard sets of each, or, you go the volume road, but in that case, you go for real volume, like asian weightlifters do, 6×8-12 with 45s rest, as pump work, or something like the 8×8 protocol of Vince Gironda. You increase density of training.

Cool-Down : 5mn for a full cooldown and stretches isn’t long enough in most case, to get back to baseline BPM and state of mind (calm, relaxed, collected). You need often about double, and that also depend of how intense and how long you just trained. I see again no real details about what is better between light jogging or stretches.

And it also says to aim for proper recovery and nutrition, but this doesn’t mean and can greatly vary depending of the context of a person in his/her lifestyle, or from one person to another. Hard miss again.

Conclusion

All in all, this AI just kinda make you gain time to get on very generic and simplified answer. But none of them was judged enough in my books to replace my work, or the work of any good health or sport professional. If you type on Google the same kind of key words, you get the same results, but can actually choose what to read or watch. This AI just pick what seems to come back the most in it’s database and throw it at you without anything more.

So if that’s supposed to steal my job, I am not worried. Having data base of raw generic knowledge don’t be raw academic knowledge coupled with enough empiricism, method and ever improving mindset that can actually be selected and synthesized as tools who are then chosen for which one can fit in the best for the job at hand.

That’s why you will always need guys like me and others that love their job, and make sure to make a fine damn one every single day.

 

Hersovyac.