November 23, 2025 • 19 mins
Someone unfollowed the show after saying they were "grossed out" by AI in fitness. Apparently I'm now part of the evil AI empire. 🤷♂️
But their reaction reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about what AI can actually do when it's built on evidence-based principles rather than generic junk content scraped from the interwebs.
Discover why rejecting AI without understanding it is dogmatism, not skepticism. Learn what AI-powered coaching actually means, why most people aren't getting quality human coaching anyway, and how the right tool can make quality nutrition and training coaching accessible without creating co-dependency.
Try Fitness Lab (20% off through Black Friday) at witsandweights.com/app and get access to my complete evidence-based coaching system that evolves with YOU using proven frameworks for training, nutrition, and lifestyle optimization.
📱 Get Fitness Lab - Philip’s science-based AI app for fat loss, muscle building, and strength training for people over 40. It adapts to your nutrition, recovery, and training to improve body composition without guesswork.
🎓 Try Physique University - Evidence-based nutrition coaching and strength training to help you lose fat, build muscle, and master your metabolism with support and accountability (free custom nutrition plan with code FREEPLAN).
👥 Join our Facebook community - Free fat loss, muscle building, and body recomposition strategies for adults over 40 who want practical, science-backed fitness guidance.
👋 Ask a question or find Philip Pape on Instagram
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
So I got a comment on Spotify after one of my
recent episodes about the newapp, about Fitness Lab.
And the person said, quote, theuse of AI is a hard nope from
me.
Why would anyone wantAI-generated content, especially
in this field?
Unfollowing, not interested, andkind of grossed out TBH, end
quote.
And of course, what did I do?
(00:20):
I clicked publish.
I wanted to publish the quote sopeople can see it and judge for
themselves because I think thisreaction represents something
very important worth addressing,hence today's bonus episode.
And I don't know if thisperson's going to hear it, if
they're still following or not.
They said they weren't.
Maybe they will.
I don't know.
Now it's not because I need todefend myself or the app.
I'm proud of both, to be honest,and I own those things.
(00:43):
But because I think there's afundamental misunderstanding
about what AI can do when it'sused, I'll say the right way for
a meaningful purpose built ontraining and principles in a
methodical, meaningful way,rather than use so-called
(01:04):
off-the-shelf, like Chat GPT,you know, scraped from the
garbage pile that is mostfitness content on the internet
in the way most people use itwith AI.
Does that make sense?
So let me walk you throughwhat's actually happening when
people out and outright rejectthe use of AI at all without
trying it, because I encouragedthat this person at least try
(01:28):
the app.
They could always get the refundwithin the window and then come
back and let me know if youthink differently.
And the first thing is I thinkpeople imagine that AI generated
content is the same as the junk,generic Chat GPT output that you
see all over the internet.
That is somebody went intoChatGPT and said, create a
(01:49):
workout plan or create a mailplan or create a blog article or
even heck, create a podcastepisode.
I mean, that's like sacrilege tome that you wouldn't use your
own ideas.
I use AI all the time as a powerassist, but would never want to
use it to create new content.
Like create content out ofscratch.
And that's the kind of thingthat kind of treats things the
(02:10):
same.
Everyone's the same.
It ignores context, it ignoresnuance, it doesn't have any
constraints, let's say.
And if that's what we're talkingabout, I would unfollow as well.
unknown (02:20):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (02:21):
But that's not at all what Fitness Lab is.
Not even close.
Not even close.
This is this is why I put myblood, sweat, and tears over
months into doing this the rightway and taking a tool, a
technology that exists in theworld and saying, how can I hone
it in and use it in a good waythat can help people, especially
in filling a gap that wouldn'thave been filled otherwise.
(02:43):
You'll you'll know what I meanin a second.
Essentially, Fitness Lab is mycoaching system, the frameworks
I use and I developed since Igot into this, which was in 2021
time frame, 20, yeah, 2021,after I started the podcast, and
then I got my certification andI didn't know anything, right?
(03:04):
But I started to learn, learn,learn and develop frameworks and
systems, use that with people,get feedback, see how the
results turned out, alwaysiterate and improve, right?
So the same frameworks that Italk about on the show that I
use with one-on-one clients, thesame ones I refined over these
years of coaching and 400 plusepisodes of this show, and
talking to a lot of guests whoare experts, and just a ton of
(03:24):
research, self-experimentation,helping others experiment, and
using evidence.
The same thing that guideseverything I do.
And so the AI in my app isn'tdoing what ChatGPT does in that
it generates content fromscratch or from the general
knowledge.
It takes specific principles,guides, resources, frameworks,
(03:49):
you know, plan logic, andapplies it then to your specific
situation in real time.
So it's combining two things.
It's combining an AI backbonethat is constrained to
information that I told it isimportant and not to use all
this other junk that's notimportant.
And then it says, let me takeyou, the user, and everything
(04:12):
you're doing and try to gatherdata, not just the simple
metrics, but qualitative data aswell, and biofeedback and things
like that.
Things that I as a coach wouldnormally ask you in a check-in
form, and combine them together.
It's the difference betweenasking ChatGPT, what should I
eat, versus asking a coach, hey,you know how I am training, when
(04:35):
I eat, what my recovery demandsare, how I've been adapting with
my metabolism, what my stressand sleep and everything else
look like, you know mypersonality, you might my life,
what should I eat?
Those are two differentsituations, aren't they?
And then it's applying thoseprinciples conversationally
based on what you tell it, whichagain is very much like a human
(04:55):
would do.
I'm not saying AI should replacehumans, but I am saying that if
you can't or won't, you know, ifyou can't afford or don't want
to pay for the rather largeexpense of having a human on
call.
And by the way, if you have meon call, it's not like you have
me on call truly 24-7.
You can send me a message at 3a.m., but I'm not going to get
to it till business hours,whereas an AI will never sleep.
(05:18):
That is a powerful thing.
I think the second thinghappening here is that people
love to defend the status quowithout realizing what the
status quo is.
I think most people are notgetting quality human coaching,
even if they have a coach.
They're getting somebody who isdoing the bare minimum with a
cookie cutter, you know, workoutprogram that they have from
(05:40):
their stack of programs.
There's influencers who havevery little actual education,
academics, sometimes experience.
A lot of them are just reallygood marketers, really good
business people.
Some of them are actually quitegood at it.
In fact, I it took me a while toeven get decent at that part of
it.
I was always jealous, thinking,like, wouldn't it be nice if you
(06:00):
could take all the people whoare good coaches and just
automatically funnel clients whoneed help to them, even though
they don't know how to market,and take all the best, slickest
marketers who aren't coaches andhave all their the people that
they reach go to these goodcoaches, right?
Wouldn't that be great?
But it the but real life doesn'twork like that.
You have some good coaches whoare good marketers, you have
(06:21):
some bad coaches who are badmarketers, but then you have a
lot of bad coaches who are goodmarketers, and that's the
problem, right?
That's the problem.
And then they even say and claimthings as influencers that are
just flat out wrong ordangerous.
And so I hear so many people whoget advice from people who are
(06:42):
trying to make as much money asthey can on as little effort as
they can and really don't workto improve or help in the way
that would be necessary to havea truly high quality coach.
And even then, even if you'repaying a decent amount of money
for a decent coach, I've talkedto lots and lots of coaches.
And there's just a tiny slicethat are truly among the elite
who could be super helpful inthe way that I know you want.
(07:04):
And am I saying that I'm in thatgroup?
I'm saying I strive to be.
And if you found working with mehelpful, great.
I'm I'm sure I have clients whowere disappointed.
I'm sure I have clients who arelike, that wasn't exactly the
experience I wanted.
I know I just as a human being,we all do, right?
Like if I claimed that everyexperience I had with a client
was great, that would be lyingbecause nobody in the planet
(07:26):
could say that, even though Istrive to do better.
So when someone says I wouldnever want AI-generated content,
I think what they're reallysaying is I want to keep doing
what I'm doing now.
And I think that's somehowsuperior.
Or they're saying that theythink everyone has access to the
same resources that are superiorto quote unquote AI, which in my
opinion would primarily beworking with human beings and
(07:47):
coaches, but very few, not veryfew people, a lot of people
can't afford that, or you know,don't want to carve out that
much of their budget for that,or the time and hassle, or can't
find a good coach, like I justsaid.
And so what that leaves you withtoday, in in today's world, up
until I created this app atleast, is winging it, following
(08:07):
generic stuff that you download,trying to do it yourself by
piecing together hours and hoursof information from lots of
conflicting sources, includingpodcasts.
And you know what?
That's fine if it's working foryou.
If that's great, if you'regetting exactly the results you
want, beautiful.
(08:28):
But for most people, and youknow who you are, and that's
almost all of you listeningright now, it's not, and you
want more.
You want more.
I know you do.
And for many of you, listeningto this or other similar
podcasts gives you a huge leg upin this morass of information.
And I'm proud of that.
If you could take thisinformation from wits and
(08:48):
weights and take actions and getthe result you want and it all
works for you, awesome.
That would be awesome.
But again, for a lot of people,it's not.
That's why I have coachingservices, right?
Because people will so if Ididn't, what you know what would
happen?
People say, Well, I need helphere.
I have this question, I havethis question.
And all those questions lead tohours and hours and hours of my
(09:08):
time.
And I'm like, oh geez, well, Ionly have so much time to spread
between a hundred differentpeople asking me questions.
Ah, let's let's use our systemof of, let's admit it called
capitalism, to exchange valuefor value.
All right.
And you can tell I'm anengineer, I'm kind of a math
numbers type thinker when itcomes to these things, but
that's how the thing works.
So that's that's the secondpiece.
(09:30):
Okay, it's kind of about thestatus quo and assuming that
something's working for people.
When you say, ugh, AI, that'sgross.
In this field, like, oh, this issuch a this is such an amazing
field, the fitness industry,isn't it?
It works so well for so manypeople.
No.
So the third thing is it assumesthat AI is replacing human
(09:51):
judgment.
So this is a bigmisunderstanding with AI and the
fear around AI, and I jokearound about it all the time
about Skynet from Terminatortaking over the world.
I think we have it backward.
I think that the best coaches,they do not create codependency.
They actually create lots ofskill and competence in their
(10:12):
clients.
And my best clients have beenthe ones that have been curious
and sought to learn, the onesthat actually replied to me and
then reached out proactively asI reached out proactively and to
kind of suck up information andshare information back and forth
so that they leveled up as theypracticed these skills and
falling on their face multipletimes along the way, which is
how it works.
(10:32):
The best coaches teach you tothink for yourself in an area
that you may not be an expert inwhile guiding you through that
process.
And so, guess what?
My goal with creating an app wasto have something that can do
that for you, where you don'thave to rely on me or an
individual human being coach whoonly has limited resources.
You know, a digital product likean app can handle that for
(10:55):
unlimited people, theoretically.
And it is not trying to be yourcoach forever either.
It's trying to teach you tocoach yourself using the same
frameworks that effectivecoaches use, right?
As long as you feed it in theinformation and talk to it and
help it understand what you'redoing and what your goals are,
your recovery state.
I mean, look, right from day oneor two, one of the one of the
(11:17):
activities you're probably gonnasee pop up is called the future
identity vision or future statevision.
I forget, I actually forget whatI called it, but it's basically
a vision of who you are in thefuture, what is your identity,
right?
That's kind of what a humancoach would want to do and
understand, and then have somemeaning behind what you're
doing.
But yes, it also wants tounderstand nuts and bolts, like
how much are you moving, how areyou training, how did it feel,
(11:39):
what are you eating, what's youremotion around eating, what's
your hunger around eating, allof those things.
In many ways, let's be honest,it's better than a human because
a human cannot be there at yourbeck and call 24-7, asking all
the right questions all thetime, having expertise in
multiple areas from psychologyto nutrition to strength, right?
(12:02):
Many coaches are lacking alittle bit in one of those
areas, and being able tosynthesize all of your data in
real time, which even the bestcoaches can ask for data from
you, but it's still you'relimited cognitively as a human
being on how much of that youcan process.
So let's talk about accessbecause honestly, I think this
is where the real issue is.
(12:22):
It was one when I responded arebuttal to the comment and
published that as well.
You can go read it.
This is one of the points that Imade is that good one-on-one
coaching costs anywhere from saytwo to five hundred dollars a
month, maybe six hundred orseven hundred for some of the
elite coaches that I've seen,even eight hundred.
And as you know, the cheapest ofthe cheap coaches may be like
(12:42):
150, but they're probably tryingto get as many clients as they
can to support that price.
That is out of reach for manypeople who need it and want it.
It just is.
That's that's like a small,that's like a car payment,
right?
Even if you can afford it,finding a coach who understands
the principles and apply themand do all the things we already
(13:03):
we already talked about that isis pretty hard.
It's pretty hard.
And the best ones are probablythey probably have a wait list,
you know?
So what are your options?
Well, you can keep trying tofigure it out yourself.
That means lots of trial anderror and experimentation, which
is going to result in somewasted effort and time, or
worse, doing the wrong thingsfor a long time and not really
(13:24):
knowing why or what you shoulddo, which for many of us is what
we've been doing for many, manyyears.
You can follow things that youdownload, you know,
spreadsheets, work out apps thatsuggest different programs, but
again, they don't dynamicallyfigure out who you are and try
to adjust to those.
You kind of have to adjust themyourself.
Same thing with food loggers,you know, and that's that's just
on the tool side.
(13:44):
You can even try to pay forcoaching or join a group
program, and then it may or maynot be worth the investment.
And then I hear from people allthe time like, well, this is the
second, I've already tried, youknow, two coaches.
You're gonna be the third.
Is it worth my while?
Blah, blah, blah.
Now, if you hire me as a coachor come to physique university,
you know what?
We do it everything by monthnow.
I don't do packages anymore.
I do that on purpose to give youan out.
(14:04):
I want you to have an out andhave no risk.
And there's plenty of people whowill cancel after a month or two
in physique university becausethey're not taking advantage of
the platform.
Maybe it's not right for them.
Maybe I need to do a better jobwith the onboarding.
I don't know.
There's plenty of people thatway more people that stay
around, but I want to give youan out.
And so that's the other problemyou got coaches asking for, you
know, six-month packages, lotsand lots of money up front, and
(14:24):
you have no idea if it'sactually gonna be worth it.
Or you can use moderntechnology, AI, in an
innovative, cool new way thatyours truly, Philip Pape of Wits
and Weights, has taken the timeworking with the company behind
the scenes to train it withevidence-based coaching at a
(14:45):
fraction of the cost.
How much of the cost?
Well, the cost is transparent.
It's like one fifth, it's what147 for a quarter or 440 for a
year.
So that's anywhere between like30 something and 50 something a
month.
And then for Black Friday, it's20% less than that.
So you do the math, that's 10%or less of a human coaching
(15:07):
program.
And it's not all about cost, butfor a lot of people, if if that
much of a savings can still giveyou a similar experience as
having a coach, whoa, that ispowerful.
And I think this personcommenting on Spotify,
commenting on Spotify iseffectively canceling, canceling
out all those people, likebasically dismissing all those
(15:27):
people who could benefit fromthis.
I don't know if they think, ifthe person thinks it's superior
to not have a coach, do ityourself, listen to podcasts
because it's free.
And yet that's the thingeverybody's frustrated with to
begin with.
And then I've already mentionedthat there are aspects of this
that are actually superior tohuman coaches.
And I'm sorry to all my fellowhuman coaches who do this for a
living who are listening andpissed that I came out with an
(15:49):
app that does this, but I'msorry.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to getthis out to as many people as I
can.
So the person who left thecomment on Spotify, they
unfollowed maybe, I don't know,maybe they're listening, before
even trying it out, which beforeeven understanding what it does.
They decided based on theirassumption what AI generated
content means.
And you know what?
(16:10):
I respect that.
Everyone gets to make their ownchoices, right?
Free country, free world.
But I'm going to be direct.
I'm going to be direct rightnow.
If you're someone who genuinelycares about evidence-based
training, nutrition, lifestyle,and you reject a tool before
understanding what it does justbecause it uses AI, you're not
(16:30):
being skeptical.
That to me is dogmatic.
Skepticism means evaluatingsomething on its merits, right?
Dogmatism means rejecting it onprinciple.
And in my opinion, the fitnessindustry already has more than
enough dogma to go around withadding without adding, quote, AI
bad to the list, right?
(16:51):
You can't generalize anything.
So let me make this clear.
Fitness Lab, my new app, it'snot replacing human coaching,
but it is making those qualitycoaching principles accessible
to way more people.
Whether it's because ofaffordability or need or they
actually feel like the app issuperior than working with a
(17:12):
coach, I'm okay if that any ofthose are your determination for
the reason why you want to tryit out.
And by the way, you can try itout.
There is a window to get arefund.
So, and I know people askedabout a trial.
There's not a free trial, butthere is a refund window.
So effectively it's like a freetrial.
I don't know if I should besaying that, but that's how it
works, right?
So the app, it's not justgenerating generic content like
(17:33):
a chat bot.
It's applying massive amounts ofpreloaded, pre-trained data to
your situation.
I mean, here's a cool example.
I guarantee, after a few days,you know, within a week or two,
it's gonna pop up an activitythat says, hey, here's a Wits of
Waits podcast episode.
I've been following what you'vebeen doing, and I think this is
perfect for you.
You've been talking you've beentalking about your thyroid
(17:54):
health.
Check this one out.
You've been talking abouthypertrophy a lot, check this
one out.
That's pretty cool.
Talk about a time saver comparedto trying to binge or find from
this huge library of episodes.
So it's not creating dependencyeither, like we talked about.
It's actually going to teach youin a very educational sort of
way.
It tells you the why.
Almost, almost to a fault.
(18:15):
Like I've almost thought, hmm,should I should I update the
next version to like not be soverbose?
But then everybody says, oh,this is so cool because it tells
me what I'm doing well, wherethe opportunities are, and gives
me all these bullet points ofthings to think about.
And I'm really learning a lotabout the why behind this.
Cool, I'm gonna leave it likethat.
And look, if none of thismatters to you because you've
already decided AI has no placein fitness because it's gross
(18:39):
TBH, that's your call.
But at least understand whatyou're rejecting.
For everyone else who's beenwanting something like this,
like human-based, evidence-basedcoaching, but thought it was out
of their reach, or you're tiredof trying to find a good coach,
or you're trying, tired oftrying to piece together all the
information from Instagram andYouTube and have something that
(19:01):
just curates it and feeds it toyou, the stuff that matters, any
of those things, Fitness Labgives you that.
It's available now at the earlylaunch pricing, the Black Friday
sale 20% off through November28th.
Go to wits and weights.com slashapp.
Yes, I am pitching this thing toyou because I think it is
amazing.
I am proud of it, and I want tocounter some of the dogma out
(19:25):
there and help more of you getthe result you want.
Thank you for listening.
Again, go to wits andweights.com, wits and
weights.com slash app if youwant to check out Fitness Lab.
And I'll talk to you next time.
So I got a comment on Spotify after one of my
recent episodes about the newapp, about Fitness Lab.
And the person said, quote, theuse of AI is a hard nope from
me.
Why would anyone wantAI-generated content, especially
in this field?
Unfollowing, not interested, andkind of grossed out TBH, end
quote.
And of course, what did I do?
(00:20):
I clicked publish.
I wanted to publish the quote sopeople can see it and judge for
themselves because I think thisreaction represents something
very important worth addressing,hence today's bonus episode.
And I don't know if thisperson's going to hear it, if
they're still following or not.
They said they weren't.
Maybe they will.
I don't know.
Now it's not because I need todefend myself or the app.
I'm proud of both, to be honest,and I own those things.
(00:43):
But because I think there's afundamental misunderstanding
about what AI can do when it'sused, I'll say the right way for
a meaningful purpose built ontraining and principles in a
methodical, meaningful way,rather than use so-called
(01:04):
off-the-shelf, like Chat GPT,you know, scraped from the
garbage pile that is mostfitness content on the internet
in the way most people use itwith AI.
Does that make sense?
So let me walk you throughwhat's actually happening when
people out and outright rejectthe use of AI at all without
trying it, because I encouragedthat this person at least try
(01:28):
the app.
They could always get the refundwithin the window and then come
back and let me know if youthink differently.
And the first thing is I thinkpeople imagine that AI generated
content is the same as the junk,generic Chat GPT output that you
see all over the internet.
That is somebody went intoChatGPT and said, create a
(01:49):
workout plan or create a mailplan or create a blog article or
even heck, create a podcastepisode.
I mean, that's like sacrilege tome that you wouldn't use your
own ideas.
I use AI all the time as a powerassist, but would never want to
use it to create new content.
Like create content out ofscratch.
And that's the kind of thingthat kind of treats things the
(02:10):
same.
Everyone's the same.
It ignores context, it ignoresnuance, it doesn't have any
constraints, let's say.
And if that's what we're talkingabout, I would unfollow as well.
unknown (02:20):
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (02:21):
But that's not at all what Fitness Lab is.
Not even close.
Not even close.
This is this is why I put myblood, sweat, and tears over
months into doing this the rightway and taking a tool, a
technology that exists in theworld and saying, how can I hone
it in and use it in a good waythat can help people, especially
in filling a gap that wouldn'thave been filled otherwise.
(02:43):
You'll you'll know what I meanin a second.
Essentially, Fitness Lab is mycoaching system, the frameworks
I use and I developed since Igot into this, which was in 2021
time frame, 20, yeah, 2021,after I started the podcast, and
then I got my certification andI didn't know anything, right?
(03:04):
But I started to learn, learn,learn and develop frameworks and
systems, use that with people,get feedback, see how the
results turned out, alwaysiterate and improve, right?
So the same frameworks that Italk about on the show that I
use with one-on-one clients, thesame ones I refined over these
years of coaching and 400 plusepisodes of this show, and
talking to a lot of guests whoare experts, and just a ton of
(03:24):
research, self-experimentation,helping others experiment, and
using evidence.
The same thing that guideseverything I do.
And so the AI in my app isn'tdoing what ChatGPT does in that
it generates content fromscratch or from the general
knowledge.
It takes specific principles,guides, resources, frameworks,
(03:49):
you know, plan logic, andapplies it then to your specific
situation in real time.
So it's combining two things.
It's combining an AI backbonethat is constrained to
information that I told it isimportant and not to use all
this other junk that's notimportant.
And then it says, let me takeyou, the user, and everything
(04:12):
you're doing and try to gatherdata, not just the simple
metrics, but qualitative data aswell, and biofeedback and things
like that.
Things that I as a coach wouldnormally ask you in a check-in
form, and combine them together.
It's the difference betweenasking ChatGPT, what should I
eat, versus asking a coach, hey,you know how I am training, when
(04:35):
I eat, what my recovery demandsare, how I've been adapting with
my metabolism, what my stressand sleep and everything else
look like, you know mypersonality, you might my life,
what should I eat?
Those are two differentsituations, aren't they?
And then it's applying thoseprinciples conversationally
based on what you tell it, whichagain is very much like a human
(04:55):
would do.
I'm not saying AI should replacehumans, but I am saying that if
you can't or won't, you know, ifyou can't afford or don't want
to pay for the rather largeexpense of having a human on
call.
And by the way, if you have meon call, it's not like you have
me on call truly 24-7.
You can send me a message at 3a.m., but I'm not going to get
to it till business hours,whereas an AI will never sleep.
(05:18):
That is a powerful thing.
I think the second thinghappening here is that people
love to defend the status quowithout realizing what the
status quo is.
I think most people are notgetting quality human coaching,
even if they have a coach.
They're getting somebody who isdoing the bare minimum with a
cookie cutter, you know, workoutprogram that they have from
(05:40):
their stack of programs.
There's influencers who havevery little actual education,
academics, sometimes experience.
A lot of them are just reallygood marketers, really good
business people.
Some of them are actually quitegood at it.
In fact, I it took me a while toeven get decent at that part of
it.
I was always jealous, thinking,like, wouldn't it be nice if you
(06:00):
could take all the people whoare good coaches and just
automatically funnel clients whoneed help to them, even though
they don't know how to market,and take all the best, slickest
marketers who aren't coaches andhave all their the people that
they reach go to these goodcoaches, right?
Wouldn't that be great?
But it the but real life doesn'twork like that.
You have some good coaches whoare good marketers, you have
(06:21):
some bad coaches who are badmarketers, but then you have a
lot of bad coaches who are goodmarketers, and that's the
problem, right?
That's the problem.
And then they even say and claimthings as influencers that are
just flat out wrong ordangerous.
And so I hear so many people whoget advice from people who are
(06:42):
trying to make as much money asthey can on as little effort as
they can and really don't workto improve or help in the way
that would be necessary to havea truly high quality coach.
And even then, even if you'repaying a decent amount of money
for a decent coach, I've talkedto lots and lots of coaches.
And there's just a tiny slicethat are truly among the elite
who could be super helpful inthe way that I know you want.
(07:04):
And am I saying that I'm in thatgroup?
I'm saying I strive to be.
And if you found working with mehelpful, great.
I'm I'm sure I have clients whowere disappointed.
I'm sure I have clients who arelike, that wasn't exactly the
experience I wanted.
I know I just as a human being,we all do, right?
Like if I claimed that everyexperience I had with a client
was great, that would be lyingbecause nobody in the planet
(07:26):
could say that, even though Istrive to do better.
So when someone says I wouldnever want AI-generated content,
I think what they're reallysaying is I want to keep doing
what I'm doing now.
And I think that's somehowsuperior.
Or they're saying that theythink everyone has access to the
same resources that are superiorto quote unquote AI, which in my
opinion would primarily beworking with human beings and
(07:47):
coaches, but very few, not veryfew people, a lot of people
can't afford that, or you know,don't want to carve out that
much of their budget for that,or the time and hassle, or can't
find a good coach, like I justsaid.
And so what that leaves you withtoday, in in today's world, up
until I created this app atleast, is winging it, following
(08:07):
generic stuff that you download,trying to do it yourself by
piecing together hours and hoursof information from lots of
conflicting sources, includingpodcasts.
And you know what?
That's fine if it's working foryou.
If that's great, if you'regetting exactly the results you
want, beautiful.
(08:28):
But for most people, and youknow who you are, and that's
almost all of you listeningright now, it's not, and you
want more.
You want more.
I know you do.
And for many of you, listeningto this or other similar
podcasts gives you a huge leg upin this morass of information.
And I'm proud of that.
If you could take thisinformation from wits and
(08:48):
weights and take actions and getthe result you want and it all
works for you, awesome.
That would be awesome.
But again, for a lot of people,it's not.
That's why I have coachingservices, right?
Because people will so if Ididn't, what you know what would
happen?
People say, Well, I need helphere.
I have this question, I havethis question.
And all those questions lead tohours and hours and hours of my
(09:08):
time.
And I'm like, oh geez, well, Ionly have so much time to spread
between a hundred differentpeople asking me questions.
Ah, let's let's use our systemof of, let's admit it called
capitalism, to exchange valuefor value.
All right.
And you can tell I'm anengineer, I'm kind of a math
numbers type thinker when itcomes to these things, but
that's how the thing works.
So that's that's the secondpiece.
(09:30):
Okay, it's kind of about thestatus quo and assuming that
something's working for people.
When you say, ugh, AI, that'sgross.
In this field, like, oh, this issuch a this is such an amazing
field, the fitness industry,isn't it?
It works so well for so manypeople.
No.
So the third thing is it assumesthat AI is replacing human
(09:51):
judgment.
So this is a bigmisunderstanding with AI and the
fear around AI, and I jokearound about it all the time
about Skynet from Terminatortaking over the world.
I think we have it backward.
I think that the best coaches,they do not create codependency.
They actually create lots ofskill and competence in their
(10:12):
clients.
And my best clients have beenthe ones that have been curious
and sought to learn, the onesthat actually replied to me and
then reached out proactively asI reached out proactively and to
kind of suck up information andshare information back and forth
so that they leveled up as theypracticed these skills and
falling on their face multipletimes along the way, which is
how it works.
(10:32):
The best coaches teach you tothink for yourself in an area
that you may not be an expert inwhile guiding you through that
process.
And so, guess what?
My goal with creating an app wasto have something that can do
that for you, where you don'thave to rely on me or an
individual human being coach whoonly has limited resources.
You know, a digital product likean app can handle that for
(10:55):
unlimited people, theoretically.
And it is not trying to be yourcoach forever either.
It's trying to teach you tocoach yourself using the same
frameworks that effectivecoaches use, right?
As long as you feed it in theinformation and talk to it and
help it understand what you'redoing and what your goals are,
your recovery state.
I mean, look, right from day oneor two, one of the one of the
(11:17):
activities you're probably gonnasee pop up is called the future
identity vision or future statevision.
I forget, I actually forget whatI called it, but it's basically
a vision of who you are in thefuture, what is your identity,
right?
That's kind of what a humancoach would want to do and
understand, and then have somemeaning behind what you're
doing.
But yes, it also wants tounderstand nuts and bolts, like
how much are you moving, how areyou training, how did it feel,
(11:39):
what are you eating, what's youremotion around eating, what's
your hunger around eating, allof those things.
In many ways, let's be honest,it's better than a human because
a human cannot be there at yourbeck and call 24-7, asking all
the right questions all thetime, having expertise in
multiple areas from psychologyto nutrition to strength, right?
(12:02):
Many coaches are lacking alittle bit in one of those
areas, and being able tosynthesize all of your data in
real time, which even the bestcoaches can ask for data from
you, but it's still you'relimited cognitively as a human
being on how much of that youcan process.
So let's talk about accessbecause honestly, I think this
is where the real issue is.
(12:22):
It was one when I responded arebuttal to the comment and
published that as well.
You can go read it.
This is one of the points that Imade is that good one-on-one
coaching costs anywhere from saytwo to five hundred dollars a
month, maybe six hundred orseven hundred for some of the
elite coaches that I've seen,even eight hundred.
And as you know, the cheapest ofthe cheap coaches may be like
(12:42):
150, but they're probably tryingto get as many clients as they
can to support that price.
That is out of reach for manypeople who need it and want it.
It just is.
That's that's like a small,that's like a car payment,
right?
Even if you can afford it,finding a coach who understands
the principles and apply themand do all the things we already
(13:03):
we already talked about that isis pretty hard.
It's pretty hard.
And the best ones are probablythey probably have a wait list,
you know?
So what are your options?
Well, you can keep trying tofigure it out yourself.
That means lots of trial anderror and experimentation, which
is going to result in somewasted effort and time, or
worse, doing the wrong thingsfor a long time and not really
(13:24):
knowing why or what you shoulddo, which for many of us is what
we've been doing for many, manyyears.
You can follow things that youdownload, you know,
spreadsheets, work out apps thatsuggest different programs, but
again, they don't dynamicallyfigure out who you are and try
to adjust to those.
You kind of have to adjust themyourself.
Same thing with food loggers,you know, and that's that's just
on the tool side.
(13:44):
You can even try to pay forcoaching or join a group
program, and then it may or maynot be worth the investment.
And then I hear from people allthe time like, well, this is the
second, I've already tried, youknow, two coaches.
You're gonna be the third.
Is it worth my while?
Blah, blah, blah.
Now, if you hire me as a coachor come to physique university,
you know what?
We do it everything by monthnow.
I don't do packages anymore.
I do that on purpose to give youan out.
(14:04):
I want you to have an out andhave no risk.
And there's plenty of people whowill cancel after a month or two
in physique university becausethey're not taking advantage of
the platform.
Maybe it's not right for them.
Maybe I need to do a better jobwith the onboarding.
I don't know.
There's plenty of people thatway more people that stay
around, but I want to give youan out.
And so that's the other problemyou got coaches asking for, you
know, six-month packages, lotsand lots of money up front, and
(14:24):
you have no idea if it'sactually gonna be worth it.
Or you can use moderntechnology, AI, in an
innovative, cool new way thatyours truly, Philip Pape of Wits
and Weights, has taken the timeworking with the company behind
the scenes to train it withevidence-based coaching at a
(14:45):
fraction of the cost.
How much of the cost?
Well, the cost is transparent.
It's like one fifth, it's what147 for a quarter or 440 for a
year.
So that's anywhere between like30 something and 50 something a
month.
And then for Black Friday, it's20% less than that.
So you do the math, that's 10%or less of a human coaching
(15:07):
program.
And it's not all about cost, butfor a lot of people, if if that
much of a savings can still giveyou a similar experience as
having a coach, whoa, that ispowerful.
And I think this personcommenting on Spotify,
commenting on Spotify iseffectively canceling, canceling
out all those people, likebasically dismissing all those
(15:27):
people who could benefit fromthis.
I don't know if they think, ifthe person thinks it's superior
to not have a coach, do ityourself, listen to podcasts
because it's free.
And yet that's the thingeverybody's frustrated with to
begin with.
And then I've already mentionedthat there are aspects of this
that are actually superior tohuman coaches.
And I'm sorry to all my fellowhuman coaches who do this for a
living who are listening andpissed that I came out with an
(15:49):
app that does this, but I'msorry.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to getthis out to as many people as I
can.
So the person who left thecomment on Spotify, they
unfollowed maybe, I don't know,maybe they're listening, before
even trying it out, which beforeeven understanding what it does.
They decided based on theirassumption what AI generated
content means.
And you know what?
(16:10):
I respect that.
Everyone gets to make their ownchoices, right?
Free country, free world.
But I'm going to be direct.
I'm going to be direct rightnow.
If you're someone who genuinelycares about evidence-based
training, nutrition, lifestyle,and you reject a tool before
understanding what it does justbecause it uses AI, you're not
(16:30):
being skeptical.
That to me is dogmatic.
Skepticism means evaluatingsomething on its merits, right?
Dogmatism means rejecting it onprinciple.
And in my opinion, the fitnessindustry already has more than
enough dogma to go around withadding without adding, quote, AI
bad to the list, right?
(16:51):
You can't generalize anything.
So let me make this clear.
Fitness Lab, my new app, it'snot replacing human coaching,
but it is making those qualitycoaching principles accessible
to way more people.
Whether it's because ofaffordability or need or they
actually feel like the app issuperior than working with a
(17:12):
coach, I'm okay if that any ofthose are your determination for
the reason why you want to tryit out.
And by the way, you can try itout.
There is a window to get arefund.
So, and I know people askedabout a trial.
There's not a free trial, butthere is a refund window.
So effectively it's like a freetrial.
I don't know if I should besaying that, but that's how it
works, right?
So the app, it's not justgenerating generic content like
(17:33):
a chat bot.
It's applying massive amounts ofpreloaded, pre-trained data to
your situation.
I mean, here's a cool example.
I guarantee, after a few days,you know, within a week or two,
it's gonna pop up an activitythat says, hey, here's a Wits of
Waits podcast episode.
I've been following what you'vebeen doing, and I think this is
perfect for you.
You've been talking you've beentalking about your thyroid
(17:54):
health.
Check this one out.
You've been talking abouthypertrophy a lot, check this
one out.
That's pretty cool.
Talk about a time saver comparedto trying to binge or find from
this huge library of episodes.
So it's not creating dependencyeither, like we talked about.
It's actually going to teach youin a very educational sort of
way.
It tells you the why.
Almost, almost to a fault.
(18:15):
Like I've almost thought, hmm,should I should I update the
next version to like not be soverbose?
But then everybody says, oh,this is so cool because it tells
me what I'm doing well, wherethe opportunities are, and gives
me all these bullet points ofthings to think about.
And I'm really learning a lotabout the why behind this.
Cool, I'm gonna leave it likethat.
And look, if none of thismatters to you because you've
already decided AI has no placein fitness because it's gross
(18:39):
TBH, that's your call.
But at least understand whatyou're rejecting.
For everyone else who's beenwanting something like this,
like human-based, evidence-basedcoaching, but thought it was out
of their reach, or you're tiredof trying to find a good coach,
or you're trying, tired oftrying to piece together all the
information from Instagram andYouTube and have something that
(19:01):
just curates it and feeds it toyou, the stuff that matters, any
of those things, Fitness Labgives you that.
It's available now at the earlylaunch pricing, the Black Friday
sale 20% off through November28th.
Go to wits and weights.com slashapp.
Yes, I am pitching this thing toyou because I think it is
amazing.
I am proud of it, and I want tocounter some of the dogma out
(19:25):
there and help more of you getthe result you want.
Thank you for listening.
Again, go to wits andweights.com, wits and
weights.com slash app if youwant to check out Fitness Lab.
And I'll talk to you next time.
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