The programming problem isn’t one workout
Writing one good session is not hard for a working trainer. Writing this week’s sessions for every client who trains on their own, after the last in-person client has left, is the hard part. It is repetitive, it happens at night, and every “got anything for me?” text is another draft on the pile.
That is the job Spotter takes: the first pass. Not the judgment, not the relationship, not the decision about what a client needs. The typing.
What an AI draft is, and what it isn’t
A draft in Spotter is a proposal. It sits in your workouts list as a draft until you open it, read it, change what you want to change, and assign it. Three things are true of every draft:
- Nothing moves without you. A client sees a session only after you assign it. Spotter has no way to send a workout, a message, or a reminder on its own.
- It says why. Every draft carries a summary line explaining what it chose and why, so you can answer the question a client will eventually ask.
- Your rules are hard edges. Exercises you have excluded for a client stay excluded. Substitution rules you have written stay in force. A draft cannot reason its way past them.
Where the draft comes from
Most workout generators start from a template and a goal. Spotter starts from you. When you join, you fill in a programming profile once: your split, how you progress people, what you exclude, how you warm clients up. That profile is the source for every draft.
- Your programming profile. Split, progression rules, exclusions, warm-up habits. The draft is built inside these, not around them.
- This client’s history. Every “Last:” line under a lift comes from what they actually logged: load, reps and RPE, set by set. See RPE-based programming for how those numbers get in.
- Your exercise library. The starter library plus any exercise you add yourself. If you coach a movement nobody else calls by that name, add it and the drafts will use it.
- The session brief. Length, date and anything you type when you book the session. Booking an empty slot and asking Spotter to draft it fills that same slot.
Approving is the work. Typing was the chore.
Open a draft and you get an editor, not a wall. Change a rep scheme, drop a set, reorder the exercises. If an exercise is wrong for this client, tap it and say why; Spotter returns three ranked alternatives with the reason each one fits. That flow is the part trainers reach for most, and it has its own page: exercise substitution with a reason.
When it reads right, assign it. The client opens it on their phone wherever they train, logs each set, and those logs land back on your dashboard and feed next week’s draft.
Why the site never says “AI writes your programs”. Trainers are right to be suspicious of that pitch. A program you cannot explain is a program you cannot coach. Spotter’s answer is to show the reason behind every choice and to keep you as the arbitrator of what goes out. If that is not how you want to work, it is not the tool for you.
Who it is for right now
Working personal trainers with clients who train without them some of the week: gym-employed, independent, or in a small studio. It runs as an installable web app on iPhone and Android, no app store. It is in a closed beta, a few trainers at a time, and it is free while that lasts.
If you want to see what it drafts for one of your own clients, request an invite and tell us how you program. We read every answer and reply by email.