Instead of Fitbit’s AI Health Coach, You Could Just Have Friends

someone needs Say this. Someone has to speak in defense of being in the middle. I am a middle runner. Most of us are, because that’s the definition of being in the middle. I work out every day, but I have a full-time job, two kids, a dog, and a spouse. I volunteer and have dinner with my parents. I am getting older. I’m not going to bother anyone with 100-mile madness in the near future.

So what do you do if you don’t want to fall into the dust bag, but don’t have the time or incentive to work with a personal trainer? One option is to do what Atlantic CEO and incredibly fast runner Nicholas Thompson does and use a custom GPT. Or, you can use Google’s new AI Health Coach in the Fitbit app, which is part of the $10/month Fitbit Premium service.

According to Google’s instructions, I used Coach (which is in public preview – a kind of beta) for three weeks. I coach Girls on the Run at my daughter’s school, where she has become friends with a kid competing in the Junior Olympics. I made it my mission to beat the two kids at a 7:30 mile pace on November 5th. I was feeling pretty good about it, actually, until several people told me that I should stop talking to computers and that I needed to talk to people in real life.

first things first

You can access Fitbit’s public preview if you meet certain requirements – you must be an active Fitbit Premium customer, have an Android phone running Android 11 or higher, be located in the US, and use English for both the Fitbit app and your phone. (You can see the full list of requirements here.)

You can also switch back and forth between the public preview and the regular app version, which you may want to do since several important features are currently missing from the app version with coaches. For example, menstrual health logging and blood glucose logging are unavailable, as are cardio fitness scores and advanced running metrics for Pixel Watch 3 and 4 users.

I used the service on a Pixel 9 with a Pixel Watch 4. (Fitbit plans to make the experience available to iOS users soon.) My experience with the Running Coach launched by Fitbit last year was great, but I was more optimistic about the Health Coach because it promises to be more comprehensive and more flexible.

Many runners who are much smarter and more experienced than me (please see middle comment above) have noted that running requires being able to answer a lot of binary yes/no questions correctly. Can I do a long run on Saturday if I’m busy on Sunday? Should I sniffle and run, or wait until I recover? A little more guidance is always helpful. I answered a 10-minute questionnaire about my goals and what devices I had available (Fitbit hopes to eventually be able to incorporate multimodal functions, like taking video of gym equipment and using AI to make suggestions) and waited for the results.

bumps in the road

Via Adrienne So

Via Adrienne So

My first impression was not promising. The coach seemed to think I was at a work conference, which I wasn’t, and I told him so. However, I didn’t mind, because it was quite easy to adjust the treadmill runs and hotel room workouts to outdoor runs and easy weight-lifting sessions in front of the TV.

You can track live metrics through the Fitbit app, or you can simply use your watch to track your workouts and sync completed workouts to your program later. I really like this feature. Many people love live-tracking workouts; I find this stressful and not very accurate, especially because I don’t run on a track and it’s difficult for me to get accurate time/distance intervals when running around my neighborhood.