Flex— Review (With a focus on its AI Features)
Don’t play games when it comes to your gym time this year. The best digital fitness app on the market can now do that for you.
Digital fitness frontrunner, Flex, is redefining the world of AI fitness with new social features and leaderboards that let you turn even your toughest workouts into a game.
Using artificial intelligence, the platform has recently announced a new global leaderboard feature as well as social sharing functionality.
The ambitious leap by this innovator in the digital fitness space has defined a new standard for competitor apps with its focus on interactive gaming and building a social community.
GamificationGameplay elements are becoming a staple that any modern fitness tracker will need to stay competitive in 2024. Flex has one of the best gaming interfaces on the market to date.
Whether your fitness goal is to tone up, lose weight, or get big, this app has integrations to keep track of your athletic data to make informed guesses about your weightlifting potential, calories burned per day, one-rep maxes and more.
Similar to how Duolingo has revolutionized the digital education space or Strava, with its route-tracking game interface, Flex carries this principle over to its dynamic in-gym or at-home workout catalogue.
Flex grows as you do. The calendar features allow the app to track your workouts over time, providing comparative data to let you know how you are advancing in your fitness goals over time.
If your habits change, the app learns your behavior to be able to revamp your workout plan to something more suitable to your regular daily needs.
This feature is a key highlight that stands out. Although many of us become ambitious about our workouts, especially around the new year, most don’t take the time to map out what a fitness routine overhaul really entails.
Whether you’re looking to completely transform your body in the new year or simply make some small adjustments to your routine over time, the key to staying on track is understanding what habits you’ll repeat enough to see different results.
Habit analysisThe superpower of a great AI fitness app is being able to understand repetitive patterns and how to break or enhance them, depending on what you need as a user.
Flex can accurately track your usage data to see which components of your fitness routine you stick with, rush through, forget or omit.
It can then make suggestions for what would be most beneficial to you in terms of weight to lift, workout length or exercises to swap out based on how you actually use the app— not how you wish you did.
Coming face to face with the raw data forces you as a user to confront your bad habits so you can change them as well as celebrate your wins. This holistic view of your fitness habits will give you a real glimpse at how well you’re holding yourself to account when it comes to making positive changes.
LeaderboardsCompete with friends and users around the world. If competition is your motivation, Flex offers leaderboards to let you see how you stack up against other users of similar fitness levels, weights, ages and genders.
By making fitness competitive you hold yourself accountable for the goals you set. Letting other people in on the competition can be beneficial in helping you hit targets.
In fact, research suggests that friendly competition and a social component can have a positive impact on both physical and cognitive goal achievement.
Real-time trackingOne of the superpowers of using AI in the fitness app world is its implementation in real-time workout tracking.
Flex can adapt as you do, no matter what equipment or time constraints you’re up against. For example, if you hit the gym and notice every squat rack is taken, the app has the power to redirect you to alternate equipment types that can stand in and work the same muscle groups.
This alleviates the “gym jitters” that come along with looking around lost, desperately trying to find a piece of equipment to cram in your workout when the gym is packed.
Flex saves you that moment when your heart drops from stress by letting you adapt plan A to plan B on the fly if something doesn’t go according to plan.
If you need to speed your workout along too, the app can help you reduce the time of a long workout to an alternate shortened version, so you don’t sacrifice on a quality workout.
Plate calculatorSay goodbye to wasting time leafing through an old workout notebook to try and pull up your one-rep max or know what weight to start with for a given exercise.
If you’re not math-minded, there’s a simpler way to track how much weight you’re lifting and what you’ll need to stack onto your barbell to improve your lifts over time and maybe even hit a PR.
The Flex app optimizes your weight for you, based on your health and fitness goals.
Based on previously logged numbers, the algorithm is built to design future workouts for you and optimize the amount you lift to help you crush targets and soar past goals more easily.
It’s anyone’s guess how AI will continue to shape the future of fitness communities around the globe in the near future.
Educated guesses involve technologies like more uptake of robot trainers or VR helmets. But on the human side of the equation, what’s most important is that our digital tools are in place to help us succeed and maintain positive habits.
In the realm of currently available technologies, Flex has gamified the system in the most optimal way to allow users to do this. The app and its companion fitness blog keep you accountable each step of the way.