Here’s the full transcript of this episode.

00:00

Hello everybody and welcome to Relentless Radio first episode where we’re going to introduce ourselves and our product. With me today is Marcus Herou CEO and founder & Sofie Thune. Is that how you say it or is it tune, Tune, Tune. Sofie Thune is our social media manager and also media creator for relentless.

With these people it is also myself for some reason. I am the media manager and one of the founders of the relentless trainer.

How is everybody doing this morning?
– very exhausted
– exhausted yeah
We’re probably exhausted at least me and Marcus because we were at the Berlin semi finals this past week and weekend and we blew our gaskets so to speak. Completely trying to record as good media as you possibly could without media creditation.

Fun fun fun. And Sofie was on a vacation so she’s sparkling. So she’s probably gonna do all the talking here maybe. Yeah I’m all good. I’m good to go yeah.

We’re not good to go but we’re gonna do it anyways. The reason for this episode is to introduce our product basically our trainer and we’re going to talk about it
because there’s some people who don’t really get what we’re doing and we want to clear that up as soon as possible always so basically, Marcus founder what is the relentless trainer?

Well first of all it’s a coach, right so we’ve created something that acts as as I as how I would act as a coach so we’re asking the same kind of questions we’re creating a training plan the same way as a coach would so then that’s why it’s called relentless trainer so we’ve created a coach that creates training plans
based on ai and smart algorithms and that uses all kind of training history
or training data to update to instantly update your training plan so so to speak.

The more recent the data is the more we prioritize it and creating the upcoming training plan for you basically like a good coach should handle their clients
exactly so we are trying to act just like you know if a client would send a text to the coach.

“Hey my wrists are sore.”

The coach would respond within a minute which they obviously cannot and adjust the training plan okay so we’re gonna reduce the amount of power caves today or hands down walking or whatever that is we’re gonna push it one day ahead or some some such yeah so yeah so we are trying to adjust the training plan as soon as we are able as soon as we get a piece of data we are adjusting today and future training for you.

So it’s basically that’s the main thing that is different from this and predetermined training plans where you get the PDF for the week basically in the mail or some such adjustment is one thing of course that’s how you like navigate through your fitness but also that one difference is that we are one key difference is that we are able to get smarter and smarter by every piece of
you know rep you do. 

Yeah so because it’s like it’s instantly we know when you PR it’s like the system knows immediately when you PR and you know we can get feedback even during your squatting sets it’s okay so so you’re I know which is like a way for us to measure has reached 2.0 okay you are reaching the level of insane volume.please back off

Yeah this is exactly like you know the old Bulgarian weightlifting system. How they would do how they would do it yeah so what kind of knowledge is behind all the decisions and all the this information that the ai takes into consideration what is it that makes the the computer or the ai decide what’s best for you.

How does it work?
Well it’s the sum of all coaches that we are collaborating with and I would say me being like a spider in the web, trying to gather knowledge from you know olympian weightlifters, world class CrossFitters, world class CrossFit coaches,
sprinters you name it. I would say it’s like you know in close relation to what we do it’s close to now 20 years of you know experience that is put into this ai
is basically applying these methods on everyone that is that is a user of the app
so to speak or you’re tired today You’ve done this and that in the past history.

05:09

We would always do this. This is our method so that’s why it’s the company is called the relentless method? Basically yeah it’s like um you could call flavors as well because it’s like you could ask chatGPT to write you a glute program
and it would come up with something that is not too far off but it’s like hmm
glute bridges combined with hip thrusts,  no it doesn’t make sense they’re both glute exercises. But should they really be combined in the same you know in the same superset. Probably not, because that’s sort of the same exercise. Stuff like that is you know what requires some knowledge on what to combine
in a workout. 

That’s why the training session sometimes is incredibly nasty because it always finds these antagonists there’s always a very complete session you always feel extremely trained after a second is never there always like if there’s a gap they fill it.

Basically so, so what is it really that makes this this trainer better for you than a regular training program that you can find anywhere it adapts to you instead of you adapting to the plan.

Yeah that’s the thing. That’s like a big. That’s like a big thing and the things that we are adapting to is like you know one crucial thing is time right so something that no training plan can adjust to,  because like you create a training plan for an avatar right and by creating a plan towards an avatar or a group of people like the intersection of abilities, time, genders, age all these kinds of things.

You are making a compromise that is like that is the essence of an avatar
and that’s like sort of the reason of creating an avatar. Isn’t that always the case
when it’s a non individual training plan even if it’s for two people you know it has to work for both basically that’s that’s totally the case and that’s why I’m get like
mind blown when people are sharing actually people are using the same subscription in Relentless Trainer.

Yeah so it’s like, it blows my mind so okay so using it individualized training plan for two people not only individuals. Highly individualized. It’s not even written for you weekly. It’s today. How do you feel? nd that is exactly they’re in users data say step the person who is you know following your training session.

It’s like no, it’s crazy they could easily avoid that sorry they could easily avoid that by simply well simply having two users and sharing their sessions if they want to train together or whatever because then then the session would be adapted to each of them.

While making the compromise that like okay it’s a metcon for both of you today
because that suits both of you the most and so on, What were you saying Sofie?

Yeah no I mean when I was just thinking that when in essence if you share your training with someone else your training that is highly individualized for you
personalized like the person that you’re sharing it with is not getting the full benefit of the trainer as they could. Yeah yeah that’s the essence of it yeah.

I have another question something that I think is very important for people to understand is like when you when you go into the trainer for the first time, it’s like is everything gonna be totally random. How like from the beginning when the trainer doesn’t know anything about you, How does it start? How does the trainer start getting to know you? 

Yeah so we’re trying to create a baseline based on so when you go through the onboarding process you drag some sliders you know because you want the onboarding process to be quick. So you’re like you’re gouging your fitness level in various areas, like upper body pulling. I can do like five straight pull ups so I’m like, I don’t know level 47 but you’re dragging sliders that by doing that we create a baseline but still the system is not smart yet.

Which is sort of our curse. which we are like addressing trying to adjust you know because we want to dumb it down as well in the beginning to not like you know we want the people to go through testing even though they don’t understand they are doing testing we are good you know you’re in a learning period

10:00

So we want to throw back squats at them to know their backsquat. What we want to throw: pull-ups, want push-ups, and we want to do aerobic capacity tests, etc. Stuff like that. But to answer your question, is like the first session. We don’t know if we should do upper body pressing or push or pulling. You know what we do know, however, because you have gouged your levels, and we would know that your pulling is maybe weaker than your pushing, and we would like to prioritize that the lower part of those, your potential, and it would be more highly likely that you get the things that you suck at from the get-go. 

But session two, we know that you did deadlifts yesterday, right? We know that you did, I don’t know, metcon or 25 minutes with rowing, burpees, and stuff. So we will obviously not program those this session, too. So it is automatically periodized between, you know, squatting, lower body, hip pinching, upper body pulling, upper body pushing, weightlifting, all kinds of hanging rings and bar handstand walking, you know, has the push-ups, etc. It is automatically periodized no matter how often you train, so even though you train 7 days a week, it will get spread out. 

If you train twice a week, okay, then we will, okay so you didn’t train yesterday or two days ago, okay we will still prioritize the things that you suck the most at, so we try to make a best effort always to, you know, level out your weaknesses and make you improve as fast as possible, you know the low hanging fruits, that’s where we like, try to address as fast as possible, so you’re gonna get exposed to some of those pet peeves that you’re like, for me for instance, any kind of vertical press is horrible, like it’s not fun because it’s so tough, but I have never trained so much on my weaknesses as I have started with the app, so if I have a one week break, I know that my worst exercises will come up, but you can mess with this, you can block things, and you can also, you can force prioritization right? 

So another thing, what kind of like different programs or training tracks do we offer? Because some people absolutely do not want to do any kind of weightlifting, or some people don’t want to do any kind of gymnastics, some people just want to do, you know, squats, deadlifts, press, um, like low skill stuff. Yeah, we do have like BB Fit Track, functional fitness track, and we do have something that’s really similar to that, which is a GPP track, and we just plainly call it strength and conditioning, which is sort of the same thing but with no kipping, no weightlifting, clean and simple movements, pulling upper body pushing, pulling, you know. 

Explaining GPP real quick, so people are all sort of general, to seek preparation, which is sort of where CrossFit started out as, you know, being able to drag a soldier through the desert in Iraq, like you know, that was like the ability to drag a fallen comrade for a few kilometers through the desert, that can save your kids from a fire, and carrying the grocery, exactly, you know, being able to go downhill on, you know, on skis or whatever, so you know, kettlebell swinging, snatching burpees, rowing push-ups, bench press, you know, it’s a big bunch of things, not kipping pull-ups and not muscle ups.

And just like so functional movements is what you can call it yeah so strength and conditioning and that’s that that’s a track that I would say that to be honest I would say that most people benefit the most from doing doing that and get a solid base and also it’s like a benefit from by choosing that track is like you you you need less preparation time you need less warm up mobility etc you know being a 40 46 year old soon you know doing a squat snatch is pretty tough but yeah but many people want to do that of course. 

The majority of our producers want to do the CrossFit track so obviously that’s like a main focus so that’s that’s two we do have a sole weightlifting track which is created in partnership with Patricia Strenius came forth at the Olympics a few years ago in Tokyo and so that was sort of like the first thing we created which had an automatic periodization towards a set event so you can set a goal date and the system would you know the ai would automatically repeat for that weightlifting competition that’s that and we do have okay so let’s say you don’t want to do any cardio at all we have something called functional strength which is sort which is you know functional movements with barbells kettlebells dumbbells all kinds of things.

15:35

I would argue that this is probably the program that most they would not admit it but the most you know fitness influencers are using in in their functional fitness gear gyms you know it’s like the actual thing they’re doing yeah it’s the actual thing and then we have yeah powerlifting yeah yeah so it’s sort of like a subset of the functional strength track which is sort of it’s geared it’s prioritizing the barbell so and it’s like the big compound movements so it’s a lot less of unilateral stuff it’s more of improving the you know the bench squat and then if which is the competition movements but obviously you cannot get strong in bench without doing upper body rowing etc so there’s a push pull component there so it’s going to be equal seal rowing or barbell rowing as close with grip bench press a decline bench press of you’re not only getting those big lifts you getting anything else. 

Yeah um so how calisthenics yes oh yeah yeah we yeah for sure the program my fault yeah so I’m a handstand geek you know found the passion for a few years ago chasing the one arm one arm chin up and you know press the handstand stuff from various difficult positions so upper body strength mainly and know I would say it’s like you know 90% upper body strength and then some some pistols if you wanted that want that so I think that was our last track at the moment right hmm sounds complete like that so we haven’t we haven’t talked about the topic about recovery and readiness right no no that is also a major. 

I have I have another question before we move on to that.

Cool so you’re gonna have your program right you’re gonna get get training as many days per week as you want but what if what if I do a session outside of the run the relentless trainer say I go out for a 90 minute run how is the trainer gonna take that strain into consideration for my session later that day or the next day yeah so we’re gonna if you’re using a heart rate monitor like this or whoop or whatever and you’re connected it to the to the app we’re gonna suck that data and we’re gonna we’re gonna know you know we’re gonna know if we’ve been doing a Zone 5 for plus 30 minutes we’re gonna know that and we’re gonna adjust tomorrows training no doubt about that but what if you don’t have a heart rate monitor. 

Yeah so how to register an external session in cardio is at the moment a challenge for us we are improving a bad area at the moment we do have it’s pretty easy to add strength components like if it did a back squat session or stuff like that that’s pretty pretty easy we’re improving in the cardio piece because it’s so difficult you know what is the difference if you ran or if you did burpees yeah it’s for sure and how do you measure measure the volume you know every piece created by the trainer is you know we know exactly the volume and we know if the difference between if you did it in a chipper style you know 50 reps in a row of squatting which is different if you versus we did 10 rounds of five reps of back squats that’s another kind of stimuli but we are addressing it we want to make it easy for people to like get all all data into into the ai of course you know people want to feed ai which as much data as possible because this is the exact use case you’re addressing here. 

19:50

People want all training you know to be taken into account when creating the training plan which is obviously a curse from you know all kinds of predetermined training plans what if I did a crazy built a 50 workout with my buddies on Saturday how is that gonna affect Monday the training plan does not know and we want to take this into acccount so the best way for us at the moment to know intensity is by heart rate monitors so get hooked up and if you’d have a if you have one we do know how much you know how much your nervous system got stressed by this yeah so we can act on that okay good the answer to my question so we started talking a bit about how the trainer takes into consideration how you slept your readiness how your body feels yeah

continue so we’re using the scientific method in Relentless Trainer so we are using subjective measuring so we are giving you the opportunity to rate how you feel on a on a scale of 1 to 5 in three different areas it’s like are you you know sort of based on the three things hungry horny happy you know so do you want to work out that’s like your redness your eagerness to train how your mood so you can be sore as hell but you are like on fire in the brain you want to do it so you rate that 1 to 5 then you’re gonna be able to rate your sleep so obviously we we can we could use your sleep duration as an input but we actually only use that as an input for you to be able to rate your sleep because some people like me I do not sleep eight hours I do not even though I should and I can still improve science is one thing you should sleep at an amount but how you actually feel is what you’re gonna be able to put into the session yeah so we’re looking at patterns so let’s say if I sleep in average for seven hours and I suddenly have two days of six hours.

Hmm that’s going to be like a big trigger for the system and we’re gonna steer on that I know we have soreness as the third parameter it’s like yeah but how does your body actually feel you know you can be eager to train you have slept a ton but you did 100 backsquats yesterday you are sore as hell so we obviously need to steer on that but do we need to steer on that on like a single piece of input no we are using a trend line based on the the last two the last two sessions you know steer training because if we would act on every short on two short intervals this would be could be like a self swinging pendulum thing and your training would go like up and down up and down up and down.

And you know so we want to even out in the system because one night one night of bad sleep for instance might not wreck you as much as two in a row and so on yeah and it’s also like a psychological thing it’s like it’s also like we want to teach people you know how to actually get better and one thing I’ve Learned through the years is that you know your attitude prior to the session it’s maybe not the same as the outcome so you can go into session feeling you know you know you have worked for 12 hours you feel you don’t feel good at all but mid session you know you have have atmosphere change you met friends etc

You got revived and you had a good session and also you won’t we want to teach people that it’s actually a good thing to harden the fuck up at once you know don’t not two days in a row but one one day yeah like it’s it’s a component in getting better and getting we want to make people relentless right yeah so it’s a component of that it’s a core value and it’s not it’s not like putting people into you know we want to get you injured no it’s like we want to teach you stuff so you strive you know we want to give you the ability to get better at move getting to the gym we want to enable you to pack your bag that’s what we’re trying to do you know it’s always like that I always feel so much better after warming up and getting on with it like I could be all this is not gonna be a good one it was a good one well look at that you know I think that’s for that’s the same for most people.

25:00

Yeah it’s like my old national coach in karate said when it was we were sitting in the locker room afterwards you know endorphin is the best drug yeah how does it handle equipment and locations yeah well not everyone has jokes right so un click it or add it if you if you have a joke you won’t get training with a joke right so if you don’t have heavy sandbags heavy medballs or I don’t land mine or whatever you shouldn’t get training given that.

When I did like these generic training plans one of the biggest pushbacks was whenever I added sleds which is like you know the greatest piece of equipment so we coached want to use it all the time it was so great for GPP it’s like you you know yes push it you know just fast push it push it for long durations yes you know push sleds we want at is and so I got in so many texts and emails is like I don’t have a sled what should I do since that and I’m like make one make one by adding you know a weight plate on a box and okay but but next week I’m I’m going to add like two plates what happens if it you know flipped it’s like the stimulus it’s not the same so yeah we are optimizing the training it’s like the stimulus it’s not the same so yeah we are optimizing the training based on what you have so I would say well I would say though that we are the best in creating training plans at gyms where there are equipment you know we are not, 

we are not the best at doing home training and that’s not like our aim either it’s but like behind me here I have you know I have a bench and I have some kettlebells this door frame pull up I do a lot of sessions at home but it’s like if you don’t have even a kettlebell or stuff like that the training you’re gonna get it’s not like super optimal as of June 23 basically because this keeps getting better so to make it simple the way it works is that you put in a location in the app and you can put in several different locations and then you tell the app that at this specific location at this gym I have this equipment and there’s a whole list of every equipment that you could possibly think of and you get to click the equipment that you actually have at that location and you save it and you never have to touch that again, so the trainer knows that when you’re at this location you have this equipment available and you’re only going to get training that you can actually do at that location.

Yeah totally true so an addition to that is we are able to do a custom preset as well so you can let’s say I want to do up in my winter cabin I for some reason have a rower and an airbike but I don’t want to do a lot of squat I never want to do a lot of squatting but so I’m like I’m I’m de prioritizing squatting category at my winter cabin because it’s cold you know I don’t want a squad but I want to do a lot of stuff I can do burpees and rowing and pushing etc so I can like add my equipment I have there and create rowing and burpees presets sort of stuff like that it’s really easy to do in the trainer I have I think I have like six presets it’s like upper body pull push something rowing at the winter cabin it’s actually a preset stuff. 

Like any trainer like you can come with certain requests because if you have a personal training you say today it’s benching and I’m paying you so it’s gonna be bench and the training will go all right all right we’re gonna get you benching not what I would have wanted but it’s gonna happen and this can happen still yeah I know you have like a location you’re calling like back injury yeah cause I have a back injury at this point so the only thing I can do I think is benching so I get that only yeah but in my dev environment I have like unblocked push pull on you because I’m like using you as a test person so I want to see what kind of exercise you get prescribed and I would argue that you’re in the face that you could do some pushing at least with bodyweight at least but I’m probably I I’m I have to call my physio basically I haven’t done it I’ve been busy doing this you should get my physio you would like prescribe crazy things for you no it’s a good one it’s a good one my wife prohibits good physios I need a bad physio. 

So that’s that’s another thing actually I want to just brush off at even though you can like train around your limitations in in the app which is like a big thing you know you can block stuff or prioritize stuff so boost and boost and limits we are not a rehab engine you know I would more say that we are like you’re going our aim is to may enable you to train through and with injuries like njuries like my right knee it’s it’s not gonna you know it’s I have double knee surgeries it’s not ever gonna be good so but I want to train of course but I know that I need to like decrease the volume of squatting and no barefoot marathons, no barefoot marathons Vivo 5 foot or what it’s called we would have people barefoot so for instance for me with I would like decrease squatting squatting once a week that would be like a thing for me and the trainer would know but it’s like okay combining jumps and with squatting like or jumps equals actually running as well impact so trying to spread out impact with squatting is good for people who has knee issues

30:49

And this is an area where we are putting effort actually on the design phase you’re actually gonna be able to click on your bodies like knee shoulder lumbar you know okay do you still wanna you have a weak shoulder do you still wanna train pressing yes I do can you do horizontal pushing yes I can can you do vertical pushing I cannot cool you’re gonna do push ups yeah you know we want to enable people to train it can still be done though but you have to sort of know the settings pretty well I’ve done it like I said I have a back injury at this point so I have simply made this feature manually in the app so it’s possible if you like it’s already possible the data model it is possible it’s just a set you need to be you need to be a settings you need to be good at man maneuvering your settings you have to know how you have to know how a bit but it’s all there yeah but you can also in the same manner you can also set your preferred type of training.

Basically if you love the bench press which I can’t understand but if you love that stuff then you can actually de prioritize a lot of things manually you will tell your trainer I love bench press I want to do the other stuff but I want to do bench press the most you can tell the trainer that you pull that category up and decrease some other things and you would get more bench press for sure so it’s an incredibly powerful once you’ve gone there yeah and just like you can do that with for example you can also take a step back and like I know for example that I need to get stronger so I can tell my trainer that I want to prioritize strength over everything else because I need it and yeah you can do all those things manually also you can set variation levels you can set how varied you want your training to be true Crossfit you know complete randomness all the way down to Russian for a year we will do one you know and there will also be things like you can set how much you want to do conditioning versus strength like Sofie said and many many other variables you can mess around with hypertrophy versus true strength gain and all kinds of things.

And an important thing here to remember is that you can tell the trainer that you want to prioritize something but it’s still not like you cannot decide 100% what it is that you’re going to train because this trainer is still going to decide for you what you need to train but you can tell the trainer that okay I want to prioritize this thing so I think that’s something that’s important to remember also and push comes to shove you can edit your session right before you start right this still in there so you can be like nope somebody went and took the only skierg or I’m gonna have to do some editing here and you can do that so you’re not stuck or you don’t stand there in the gym being like oh no I don’t know what to do and I can’t use this just the way yeah actually that’s a feature which we we have been working a lot on it’s I would say it’s in the no you’re able to like replace that kind of stuff you’re not able to replace particular exercises inside the cardio session but since I know that we have developed this piece for six weeks now it’s gonna be released very soon so even though it’s like a future thing when this video comes out it’s already probably gonna be be released.

It’s like a big thing like y’all mentioned so so I want to do bar facing burpees but hey it’s no way there’s no way I’m gonna be able to do bar facing burpees there’s no piece of floor left in the gym because everyone just showed up you’re gonna be very inpopular yeah or I can’t do you know the sessions you know the trainer wanted me to do air squats and I okay hmm I do have a knee tweak or like you know daily tantrum in my knee a little Bobo as we say yeah so I you know so I started doing a few air squats I was like hmm nah I’m not gonna do air squats so I’m gonna replace that with something else obviously if you’re doing this you’re steering away from what we the trainer wanted you to do but it is the exact same thing as that would happen if you would like ask a trainer so we’re gonna like suggest similar things that would like give the same kind of stimulate that’s things we’re gonna do.

Yeah if you hit change exercise you get a list of things that we think you should do and then you can search for something completely different if you want to and then you get weights and reps and sets yeah if you change a setup to an you know it’s a thruster that’s good that’s not gonna be the same kind of thing right so but it’s it’s gonna be way worse yes well we are in future episodes we are gonna go over all of these things more in detail how it works and also I’m gonna show you yeah we’re gonna show you and we are going to talk about what’s coming things that we’re working on and what the future holds yeah. 

All right everybody thank you for listening in I hope you got your curiosity up and got some questions answered and we’ll see you in the next episode!