Part 1. Setting strength goals and nutritional strategies using ChatGPT

Before starting any training plan, we need to first set goals. There’s plenty of articles written about what makes a good goal, so I won’t get into that here, but rather share the process we went through to set our goals using ChatGPT.

First, let’s add a little context to our journey so you can know how and where to make adaptations to your own plan.

Since I’ve stopped training as a professional track & field athlete almost a decade ago, I’ve struggled to gain and maintain weight. Not the worst problem for cycling, but I didn’t feel my body was healthy and vital. It felt under my ‘natural’ weight. So with the general goal of gaining weight, I asked ChatGPT some questions to help set a realistic, measurable target.



When creating your own plan, you should do the same: assess your current fitness level, training experience, and where you would like to be.

According to ChatGPT, we need to also account for cardiovascular exercise, strength training, and healthy eating to accomplish our goal. Your cardio should be covered with your cycling plan. My intention was to develop a strength plan. That leaves healthy eating to be addressed, so that’s what we asked next.

Based on the information that ChatGPT provided, we needed to do a couple things:

1. Perform a diet evaluation to understand calorie and macro-nutrient intake.
2. Time our meals and supplementation post-workout.
3. Drink enough fluids to stay hydrated.

Regarding the last point, we needed to clarify how much water is enough? If you weren’t already aware, ChatGPT remembers the history in a single chat thread. Therefore, as we continue to develop our plan, ChatGPT can keep new responses in the context of our goal.

There a few things missing that we could prompt further:

• How to measure your current diet to know what to adjust
• Other important nutrient timing recommendations
• Supplements to support our goal and a healthy diet
• Elaborating on different fluids, rather than just water

However, based on my education and experience, we didn’t feel it was necessary, but it could easily be done.

Most of us already have a general idea of what could be improved in our diets. I already knew I’d have to make a couple adjustments, but since I really enjoy those things, wanted to know for sure before making changes. So we asked about coffee and beer.

There you have it. We have a realistic, measurable goal for our strength plan – gain 10kg in one year. We also addressed other factors which may affect our ability to achieve our goal and have a few follow-up steps to further dial in our diet.

It goes without saying, but before performing any exercises or making changes to your diet, consult with a professional.

Continue to Part 2. Creating the strength training plan with our ChatGPT ‘physical trainer’