Getting Started: Set Up Your Coach in 8 Minutes
Getting Started: Set Up Your Coach in 8 Minutes
Most fitness apps ask three questions and hand you a plan they wrote for somebody else.
This one asks eleven.
Those eleven answers are why your program looks different from your friend's. Different goal. Different schedule. Different bad shoulder. Different coach voice in your ear at 6am.
The next 8 minutes decide what your training and nutrition look like for the next 12 weeks. You can finish onboarding in one sitting on a phone. Everything you enter is editable later, so don't agonize. But every input changes something downstream, so be honest.
Here is exactly what happens, step by step.
What you need before you start
You need three things. That's it.
- An email or social login (Google or Apple).
- Your approximate height and weight. Rough numbers are fine.
- About 8 minutes uninterrupted.
Optional but recommended: an iPhone with Apple Health, or an Android with Health Connect. Connecting it lets the app pull in sleep, steps, and recovery data automatically. Skip it now if you want. You can connect later.
The 11 questions that build your plan
Each step asks one specific thing. None require guessing. All of them are editable later from your profile.
1. Your goal
You pick one outcome: fat loss, muscle gain, body recomposition, strength, powerbuilding, general fitness, or athletic performance.
This is the single most important answer in onboarding. Everything downstream (calorie target, rep ranges, rest periods, cardio dose, weekly split) branches from this one choice.
Pick the outcome you actually care about right now. Not the one that sounds impressive. You can change it later if your priorities shift.
2. Experience level
You pick one of four: brand new, getting back into it, consistent for a year or more, or advanced.
When in doubt, pick the lower one. The app monitors your performance and adds volume as you demonstrate capacity. Starting under-volumed and ramping up beats starting over-volumed and breaking down.
3. Body basics
Name, age, sex, height, weight. Metric or imperial toggle is built in.
These feed your calorie and macro math directly. Round weight to the nearest pound. Don't lie to the scale. The math doesn't punish you, but it does need accuracy to work.
4. Activity and injuries
Your non-training activity level sets the baseline. Sedentary desk worker burns differently than a contractor on his feet eight hours a day.
Then you flag any joint that needs accommodation: lower back, shoulder, knee, hip, wrist, ankle.
This flag is load-bearing. Marking "shoulder" pulls overhead pressing out of your program and substitutes safer variations from day one. The app does not coach around an injury you didn't disclose, so disclose it.
5. Schedule and equipment
How many days a week you can train. What equipment you have access to.
This is where most people lie to themselves. Pick the number you'll actually hit, not the number you wish you'd hit. Three real days a week beats five planned days that turn into two.
6. Health platform (iOS and Android only)
On iPhone, the app asks to connect Apple Health. On Android, Health Connect.
Granting access lets the app see your steps, sleep, heart rate, HRV, and any nutrition or weight data you log to other apps. Your coach uses this to make smarter day-to-day calls. Bad sleep last night? The coach may suggest a lighter session.
Skip it if you don't want to. Connect from your profile later.
7. Coach selection
You pick a coach profile from a short carousel.
Each coach has a distinct voice. Some are direct. Some are warmer. Some lean toward strength and powerlifting. Some lean toward physique work.
This is style, not science. Every coach pulls from the same training engine. Pick the voice you'll actually want to hear when you're tired on a Tuesday night.
8. Plan selection
Two paid tiers. Standard or Concierge.
Standard unlocks the coach chat, meal plans, voice features, peptides tab, and the full adaptive program engine. Concierge adds priority support and deeper personalization on top.
Pick what you can afford. The app does not gate the core training program behind paid tiers. The high-leverage features (chat with your coach, personalized meal plans) live behind the paywall because that is where the LLM costs sit.
9. Commitment and notifications
You set how aggressively the coach should follow up: gentle, moderate, or direct.
Gentle sends light reminders. Direct will call out a missed workout by name. Pick the one that matches how you respond to accountability.
You also toggle the notification types you want: workout reminders, nutrition check-ins, weekly summaries, proactive coach messages. Turn on what helps. Turn off what becomes noise.
10. Medical disclaimer
You confirm in writing that this is AI programming, not medical advice.
Read it. The app accounts for the injuries you flagged in step four, but it cannot replace your doctor. If you have a heart condition, a recent surgery, or any medical reason a doctor told you to be careful with exercise, get cleared before you start.
11. The reveal
Submit, and the app builds your plan.
The training engine designs your weekly split, picks your exercises, and assigns starting loads. The nutrition engine calculates your daily calorie target and macro split (Mifflin-St Jeor for BMR, multiplied by your activity level, adjusted for your goal).
Generation usually finishes in 30 to 60 seconds. Your dashboard loads with your full program ready to start.
What happens the second onboarding ends
The Program tab populates with your first week of training.
The Stats tab seeds with your starting metrics and shows zero progress so far (this is intentional, you'll watch it fill in over time).
If you connected a health platform, recent steps and sleep data start flowing in automatically.
If you picked Standard or Concierge, your Coach Chat and Meal Plan tabs unlock immediately. The first proactive message from your coach lands within 24 hours.
Most people screw up these three things
They lie about training days. They check five days because they want to be the kind of person who trains five days. They train two. Then they feel bad about a program they designed to fail. Be honest. The app builds a great three-day program. It will not build a great five-day program that you only run twice.
They skip the injury flags. They think the flag is for serious injuries. It's for any joint that complains during exercise. Flag the cranky shoulder. Flag the iffy knee. The substitution logic is what keeps you training while your friends are deloading after pushing through pain.
They pick the inspirational goal. They want both fat loss AND muscle gain AND a 405 bench. The app makes you pick one because trying to do all three at once is how you end up doing none. Pick the one that wins this quarter. Pick the next one next quarter.
What to do next
Open the app. Start onboarding. Eight minutes from now your program will be live.
If you've already done onboarding and your plan doesn't feel right, open your Profile tab and edit the answer that's off. The program will regenerate within minutes.