Hello, I want to subscribe freeletics, but I have some questions in my mind. I am 35 years old, 120 kg, 183 cm tall, and overweight. I have no sports background and cannot perform many of the exercises in the workouts. If I subscribed, can I see suitable alternatives? Are there workout options that overweight people can do or that protect their knees?
Hello! After signing up, you can select āLose Weightā as your goal and pick one of the journeys. There are some beginner journeys available that start easier and build up gradually.
If you get an exercise you canāt perform, thereās no list of alternatives shown, but you can simply reduce reps, substitute with an easier move yourself, or skip it and mark āCouldnāt perform any repetitions.ā The Coach learns from that feedback and will soon adapt - giving fewer reps or easier variations.
Regarding your knees - itās completely fine to replace jumps or runs with lower-impact options at first to protect the joints. There is a setting you can enable to exclude jumps if you like. Over time, though, the goal is to strengthen your legs and hips so your knees become more resilient, so it is actually good to work on your legs. Focus on form, gradual progression, and consistency - thatās what drives safe, lasting results.
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You wonāt be assigned any jumping exercises as long as youāre overweight.
Yes, thatās a good adjustment. What I mean is that even doing a proper squat can cause pain. In that case, chair squats are more suitable for me. Can I replace movements that I canāt do due to my low mobility with easier alternatives like this?
As far as I understand, even if the program doesnāt offer me alternatives, I can find an alternative myself and do it, or I can tell the program that it canāt do it. That was a useful suggestion. Thank you.
By the way, I think my priority in exercise is to gain strength. I plan to achieve weight loss by controlling the calories in my diet.
Yes, you can do an alternative. While there is no way to āaddā it to you workout, you can just do it by yourself and select option āI had to replace at least one exerciseā which gives feedback to Coach so it can adapt in the future. Or tell the app you couldnāt do it.
Great, you absolutely can select the gain strength goal. I typed a longer message initially to account for that, but trimmed it to make it easier to read, and ended up making a bad guess! Lesson learnt 
To be fair, the weight changes are always mainly achieved by the diet. I believe any journey works for increasing strength. But strength journeys would just have fewer jumps and reps (less cardio component).
Thank you for your help. By the way, Iām wondering how I can suggest that Freeletics make changes in this regard. Yes, people who are naturally inclined toward sports may use the program more, but those like me who want to change their lives to be healthier also need guidance. I donāt think there are many apps like this on the market. There are apps with exercises that are too difficult for me to do or boring exercises done while sitting in a chair. If they created content for the intermediate level, I think that would be good.
Anytime! As far as I know, Freeletics team checks the forum.
I agree with you, guidance in the app could be better. I remember when I started the app, it took diligence to understand the flow and options. And also, I had doubts about how thing would work once I pay a subscription.
Showing easier exercise options has been requested on this forum many times, but the team must have been busy with other features. I include some of the links with this request:
While searching for these, Iāve found a table with easier versions that could be helpful, at least for some exercises. Hoping that this could be incorporated in the app soon
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