I’ve got a question and would love your expertise regarding exercise variations and the AI Coach.
I prefer doing dips and pushups with my gym rings. The challenge is I can do significantly fewer ring dips than parallel dips, and fewer ring pushups than normal pushups.
Since the app doesn’t offer “ring pushups” or “ring dips,” I’ve been doing the ring versions when the Coach prescribes the standard ones, and then simply logging the lower number of reps I achieved.
My question is: Will this negatively influence the AI, potentially causing it to manipulate other exercises in a bad way? Or do you think this approach is fine for the AI’s adaptation?
I assume you mean you’re changing the rep count (the adapt exercise option available in Ultimate Strength) during the interval?
These are good questions And to be honest I think the answer is yes to both.
It could well do. Let’s say for example, you can do a maximum of 20 reps of Ring Pushups at any one time and indicate this to the Coach by changing the rep count during a UStrength interval. Now you might be able to do, to keep it simple, let’s say double that amount of normal pushups, but the Coach is not going to learn that.
Now on UStrength, the Coach does take in to account your performance on exercises like Pushups when assigning other exercises if there’s no previous training data-for example Barbell Bench Press.
I think it’s absolutely fine to adapt your training to continue doing this-you absolutely should feel empowered to do so. It’s definitely easier to manage if you are doing this consistently i.e. using the rings every time you get assigned these exercises rather than one time using, the next not and so on.
I think the main thing is for you to be aware of potentially what impact doing this might have, and how you can mitigate this-hopefully the increased control you have over sessions in Ultimate Strength helps here.
And to be honest I think the answer is yes to both.