Why AI Fitness Reports Are Useless Most of the Time
As with every other aspect of our lives , artificial intelligence (AI) has permeated popular fitness apps and wearables. From Strava’s Athlete Intelligence to Garmin’s underwhelming Connect+ subscription to Whoop’s recovery recommendations, these AI-powered features claim to transform raw data into actionable advice. The reality? Most of these AI reviews are expensive digital predictions that tell you what you already know, but often miss what’s really important.
This is important not only because I’m a hater, but because users are losing money. Many of these AI features are only available via premium subscriptions, creating an artificial shortage of basic data interpretation. This is why most AI fitness reviews are complete crap, and which ones can be trusted.
Lack of context
Fitness systems powered by artificial intelligence operate in an information vacuum. They can tell you that your heart rate variability is down, but they can’t explain why you were kept awake by a presentation at work, an argument with your partner, or a glass of wine with dinner. There are countless variables that affect human performance that these systems simply don’t have access to or can’t interpret.
I’m not saying I want these tools to have access to my calendar and lifestyle, but a more useful system would note, “Your productivity was likely reduced by three consecutive days of poor sleep that coincided with your business trip.”
General advice disguised as personalization
This is what makes me goggle-eyed. These systems are great at repackaging your existing data to offer generic health advice, giving the illusion of personalized coaching while offering generic platitudes. Strava’s AI is notorious for paraphrasing data from run descriptions. Take one of my runs this week, for example: Strava’s AI is clearly just taking what I’ve already written about my experience and running it through a thesaurus. Plus, “various elevation changes” sounds good, but it describes… running on most roads.
And that’s not even mentioning how inaccurate this calorie counting is.
True personalization requires an understanding of your specific goals, training history, injury patterns, and lifestyle limitations—information these systems rarely have access to. Instead, most AI-powered fitness reviews rely on the same conventional wisdom about fitness. My colleague Beth Squareschi shares some amusing examples of Garmin’s AI being wildly inaccurate in her article here , and she sent me a few more below. Watch out for the nonsensical platitudes and outright inaccuracies.
Useful AI would be predictive analysis rather than reactive summaries. I would be interested in tracking when I am approaching overtraining, identifying optimal training windows based on recovery patterns, or suggesting specific adjustments to prevent injury.
Overconfidence in incomplete data
Fitness trackers are notoriously inaccurate on many metrics, especially calories burned, sleep patterns, and stress levels. AI summaries compound this problem by presenting conclusions that don’t necessarily match reality. This week, I went on an incredibly challenging run in 85% humidity, dealing with sore feet. Imagine my disappointment when Strava interpreted my experience as follows:
How to Get the Most Out of AI Fitness Reviews
Strava is my favorite fitness app, and Garmin is my favorite watch . But when it comes to Strava and Garmin Connect+’s “Athlete Intelligence, ” user reactions are mixed at best. Personally, I’ve gotten summaries like “Your heart rate was elevated during your run” or “You ran further than your last workout.” These are all immediately visible in the raw data and don’t require any AI processing. Again, the big question here is cost.
As one r/Garmin user put it, these “detailed insights” are just “the most condensed summary of your workouts… I was really hoping this would be an actual chatbot that you could talk to about workouts, etc. to make plans.” In this regard, the best options on the market right now are Whoop and Oura. Their AI-powered insights have received positive reviews, although their value proposition is increasingly questionable . Compared to the general summaries in other apps, these insights act like chatbots. So by asking specific questions (already using your brain more than just reading a summary), you’ll get articles that contain more detailed (human-written) insights.
Runna is another app that does a great job of adding some much-needed context. Its analytics actually pull data from the weather forecast and your training calendar. Here’s another screenshot from Beth, showing that Runna does more than just retell the data you’ve personally entered.
Additionally, with Runna, you don’t have access to the information until you rate your workout, and you can skip the rating without affecting how the app works. This brings me to one of my main takeaways : AI doesn’t have to be optional. If you’re already paying for a subscription that includes AI-powered fitness reviews, here are a few options.
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Ignore the summaries entirely . For most users, the smartest approach is to turn off the AI summaries entirely and focus on the raw data. Your training load, sleep duration, and heart rate dynamics provide absolutely useful information.
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Select only useful data . If you decide to use AI summaries, consider them as a starting point for your own analysis, not as a definitive guide. Look for patterns and trends, and ignore individual recommendations.
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Turn off summaries entirely. In Garmin Connect+ and Strava, you can go into settings and simply turn off AI summaries. In Oura and Whoop, you won’t get AI summaries unless you initiate a conversation with a bot.
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Instead, invest in human expertise . Perhaps the cost of a subscription to a few AI-powered fitness platforms could pay for periodic consultations with qualified sports scientists, nutritionists, or trainers. These experts can provide truly personalized recommendations based on your specific situation and goals.
Bottom line
If you want my opinion, your fitness tracker already provides the data you need to make informed decisions about training and recovery. Learning to interpret that data yourself is far more useful than waiting for an AI to do it, and it doesn’t require you to pay an extra monthly subscription fee. The technology exists to create truly useful fitness AIs, but for now, my fitness reviews are just expensive digital noise.