Instead of an AI Health Coach, You Could Just Have Friends

Someone needs to say it. Someone has to speak up in defense of being mid. I am a mid runner. Most of us are, as that is the definition of being mid. I work out every day, but I have a full-time job, two kids, a dog, and a spouse. I volunteer, and I have dinner with my parents. I’m aging. I’m not going to knock anyone’s socks off with a crazy 100-miler anytime soon.

So what do you do if you don’t want to collapse into a bag of dust, but you have no 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 a part of the $10/month Fitbit Premium service.

Per Google’s instructions, I used Coach (which is in public preview—a beta, of sorts) for three weeks. I’m a coach for Girls on the Run at my daughter’s school, where she has become running friends with a kid competing in the Junior Olympics. I made it my mission to beat two children in the November 5K—so, a 7:30 mile pace. I was feeling pretty good about it, actually, until multiple people told me that I should stop talking to a computer and that I need to talk to people in real life.

First Things First

You can access Fitbit’s Public Preview if you meet a few requirements—you have to be an active Fitbit Premium subscriber, 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 check the full list of requirements here.)

You can also switch back and forth between Public Preview and the regular app version, which you might want to do because several important features are currently missing from the app version with Coach. 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 with the Pixel Watch 4 on a Pixel 9. (Fitbit wants to make the experience available for iOS users soon.) I had a so-so experience with the Running Coach that Fitbit launched last year, but I was more optimistic about the health coach because it promises to be both more comprehensive and more flexible.

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

Bumps in the Road

My first impressions were not promising. Coach seemed to think that I was at a work conference, which I was not, and I told it so. I didn’t mind, though, as it was easy enough to adjust treadmill runs and hotel room workouts to outdoor runs and easy weight-lifting sessions in front of the TV.

You can track live metrics via the Fitbit app, or you can just use your watch to track your workout and sync the completed workout to your program later. I really like this feature. A lot of people like live-tracking workouts; I find it stressful and not terribly accurate, especially since I do not run on a track and find getting exact time/distance intervals to be difficult while running around my neighborhood.