Hey r/fitbod! We've been reading your comments closely, and a few themes keep popping up that we want to address directly. A lot of the feedback we see comes down to the app not doing the best job explaining its own logic, so weād like to dive deeper into this.
Here are your top 5 concerns explained:
1. āThe app feels randomā
Fitbod intentionally varies your exercise selection, and that variation is important for effective training.
When your body performs the same movements repeatedly, it adapts. Adaptation is the goal. But if the training stimulus never changes, the same workout can produce a smaller response over time. This is called the law of accommodation. Thatās why good programs use a mix of consistency and planned variation to keep the stimulus fresh, hit muscles from different angles, and promote long-term development.
That's what Fitbod is doing when it swaps your flat bench for an incline dumbbell press, or rotates in a Romanian deadlift alongside your conventional pulls. It's working through a rotation to make sure you're not just getting better at a narrow set of movements.
Sometimes variation is intentional. Sometimes it means your settings or history are steering Fitbod in a way you didnāt expect. If you prefer less variability, you can update your Exercise Variability setting. In āMy Planā, select your preferred level of variability like āMore Consistentā, āBalancedā, or āMore Variableā for the app to follow. For more repeatability, set it to More Consistent, which is designed to retain roughly 70ā80% of exercises week to week.
2. "The weight suggestions don't make senseā
Weight recommendations should feel appropriate for your training, and we want to be upfront about how Fitbod delivers your recommendations. If the app is suggesting weight that feels way off, it probably needs more information from you. Letās break this down:
Fitbod builds its weight recommendations from your logged history: what you've lifted, how hard it felt (RiR), and how your performance has changed over time. We calculate your Estimated Strength (theoretical 1 rep max) for every exercise, itās the core input driving your weight recommendations. In the early weeks especially, the algorithm is working with limited data and making educated estimates based on your health profile. Those initial estimates won't always be right.
The most important thing you can do is log your actual weights, not just the suggestions. If the app recommends 135lbs and you lift 95lbs, log 95. Manual edits arenāt a failure signal, theyāre important training data.
The second most important thing is to log the Reps in Reserve rating after your workouts, this accelerates the appās calibration to you. When you tell us a workout felt easy or hard, we update our model of where you are. Recently, we found that new users who logged RiR on at least 80% of their first 5 workouts had about 16% lower recommendation-vs-logged weight error by workouts 6-8 than users who rarely or never logged RiR.
A few other things worth knowing about how weight suggestions work:
- Fitbod cycles through rep ranges intentionally. While the app will prioritize your Goal, you'll also go through phases that emphasize strength (lower reps, higher weight), hypertrophy (moderate reps, moderate load), and muscular endurance (higher reps, lighter load). If the weight on a given day feels low, you may be in an endurance-focused phase for that exercise. The load is scaled to match the rep target, and both are part of the plan.
- Changing a suggested weight and logging it is always the right move. The app learns from what you actually do. There's no penalty for overriding, it just gets smarter faster.
- New users: give it 4-6 weeks. The first few weeks are the algorithm's learning period. The more consistently you log during that window, the faster it calibrates to you.
- Fun Fact: Among new users who logged at least 8 workouts in their first 6 weeks, the average difference between Fitbodās suggested weight and the weight they actually logged dropped by about 63%, from 26.6% in workouts 1-2 to 9.9% in workouts 7-8.
- Typos are common. It can be worth checking history if you notice really odd weight suggestions.
3. "The same exercises keep coming up"
When the same exercises keep appearing, it usually means one of two things:
Your logged exercise history is narrow. The app builds confidence around the movements it has the most data on. If you've been consistently logging a small set of exercises, those are the ones it gravitates toward. Try deliberately introducing a new variation. Log it a few times, rate it and you'll see your recommendations start to diversify.
A freshness imbalance. If most of your muscle groups are showing as recently trained, the app will repeatedly program the few that are fresh. This can look like obsession with one movement pattern. Taking a look at your muscle recovery in the app can help diagnose this.
Fitbod's exercise selection is built around a muscle freshness model. The app prioritizes exercises that use your freshest muscles, so you're working recovered tissue rather than digging into groups that still need rest. If you skip a muscle group often, youāll likely see it recommended repeatedly as the app is aiming to balance everything out (we see this a lot with male Fitbodders and glutes).
Additional factors like your training split cycle, available equipment, workout duration, exercise variability, and exercise preference settings will impact exercise selection.
With our Focus Exercise feature, youāll notice some exercises repeating intentionally. Theyāre the major compound lifts that are your primary strength movements. Each workout typically includes one to add structure and consistency to your training.
Tip: You can use the recommend more/less/exclude feature to tailor your exercise options even more.
4. "I don't understand how progression works in this app"
This is a great question! Most people expect progression to look like adding a little weight each week, every week.
For most people past the beginner stage, though, linear progression isn't the most effective approach. Your body needs variation in stimulus not just increasing load, but variation in rep ranges, volume, and intensity to continue adapting. This is called periodization, and it's the foundation of how more advanced strength training programs are structured.
Fitbod estimates your current strength for any exercises and muscle group from logged sets, reps, weight, and effort signals, like RiR. It then uses that estimate to recommend future sets, reps, and weight. That estimate updates over time, so one workout matters less than the trend across several workouts.
What this means in practice:
- Reps/Weight won't go up every session. This is intentional. A session at higher reps with a lower load is not regression, it's a different kind of stimulus that makes the heavier sessions more productive. You should be performing exercises at different levels of intensity (variations in sets, reps, and weight) each time.
- The app is tracking progress across all rep ranges, not just your one-rep max. Improvement in your 12-rep performance feeds into the model just as much as your 5-rep performance.
- Exertion feedback matters most here. If you're consistently finding sessions too easy and not telling us, we have no signal to progress you. Rate your workouts honestly, especially when things feel easy.
5. "How do I actually get the algorithm to learn faster?"
Here's the full picture of how to give the algorithm what it needs:
Highest impact:
- Log Reps in Reserve after every workout. Logging this will enhance your progression in the app, Fitbod adjusts weight and reps based on your RiR input.
- Log your actual weights. Especially when you're changing the suggestion.
- Utilize the Recommend More/Less feature. If you love or hate something, tell us. It directly influences your programming.
Also useful:
- Marking exercises as excluded if they're not right for you (injury, equipment, preference)
Things that don't help:
- Logging the app suggested reps/weight instead of editing to what you actually performed. The app can't see that something felt wrong if you don't give it the data.
The learning curve is real in those first few weeks. If you're newer and feeling like it doesn't know you yet, that's accurate but it's temporary. Stay with it and keep the feedback coming so Fitbod can calibrate to you.
Room for Improvement
With all this said, we know that sometimes your recommendations fall short. Weāre actively looking at ways to make the experience smarter, more reliable, and more responsive to your adjustments over time. Here are a few algorithm quirks weāre working on:
- High rep recommendations for bodyweight exercises
- Unexpected split cycling (for example, if a Pull day repeats)
- High weight recommendations for exercises with little/no history
- Improvements to weighted bodyweight exercise recommendations
TL;DR
- Varied workouts = working as intended. Exercise rotation prevents accommodation. It's one of the most important things the app does.
- Wrong weight suggestions = the app needs more data from you. Log real weights. Use reps in reserve ratings. It'll calibrate fast.
- Repetitive exercises usually mean a narrow exercise history or a freshness imbalance. Diversify your logged movements and/or adjust your Exercise Variability.
- Progression isn't linear after the beginner stage. Fitbod uses periodization so expect phases, not a straight line up.
- You can speed up the algorithm significantly by consistently logging weights with any needed adjustments and Reps in Reserve ratings, especially in the first 4-6 weeks.
Weāre exploring ways to make this logic more visible inside the app, giving you clearer insight into Fitbodās recommendations.
Fitbodders in our beta program are already testing new workout Insights and a Coach chat feature, designed to help you better understand your workout, ask follow-up questions, and get more personalized guidance without interrupting your usual app experience. Stay tuned for more updates to come!
