The audience
Who is this programme for?
Masters Engine is designed mainly for seasoned functional fitness athletes 45 years old and above. It’s for any and everyone who enjoys training hard but sustainably. It’s for those of us who appreciate consistency and knowing what’s on the agenda when we get to the gym. The app personalises the workouts based on your own results so everyone should get training that adjusts to their level. If you improve, you get a bit harder workouts. If your fitness level declines for one reason or another, you get a little lighter workouts to build from.
Competing
Do I have to be a competitor to follow this programme?
Absolutely not. Many of us enjoy challenging ourselves without a need to compete. I for one am intrinsically motivated by just training and don’t need a specific goal to aim for, even though I love the excitement of a competition weekend.
The app however includes a competition taper mode for those of us who enjoy the atmosphere on the competition floor. I included it because, from my own experience, competition priming guidance has been quite difficult to find and many people seem to intuitively think that they should stop training altogether before a comp. That’s not the case.
Expectations
Will this programme help me qualify to top functional fitness competitions like the Masters CrossFit Games or Hyrox World Championships?
Very probably not.
Masters Engine is designed by keeping in mind that most of us over 45 years old have other time consuming duties in our lives unrelated to training, be it work or domestic duties or taking care of children, grandchildren or elderly parents to name a few.
The author
Do you follow Masters Engine yourself?
Yes. I have followed the programme for five weeks before releasing it to others to test. By experimenting, I’ve been able to fix some flaws regarding the training and make the user interface more friendly. I’ve had fun workouts, been challenged and out of breath and recovered well to the next day while on it. After about 17 years of functional fitness training, I’ve learned new things too. For example, during the erg interval work on easy days, concentration on stroke frequency has helped me improve my technique and efficiency.
How it was built
Is this AI slop?
AI has surely done much of the ‘heavy lifting’ in building Masters Engine. A state-of-the-art LLM did the basic research on training and recovery for the over-45s, and it wrote the code — including the generator that builds the sessions. So the model did write the workouts, but one step removed: it wrote the rules, and the rules write your session when you open the app. There is no model inside the app and no API call. It works offline.
That distance is the whole point. A model improvising a session has nothing counting against your tested maximum; a rule capping you at 2.8 times your unbroken max cannot forget. By experimentation and training experience, I’ve put the human touch to e.g. the rep schemes, movement difficulty and variability and user interface. Therefore, the possible remaining slop is a result of human-artificial cointelligence, or the lack of it.
The social side
Is there a community aspect in Masters Engine?
No, at least not at the moment. Masters Engine is built for people who train outside the gym classes. And it does not follow the often touted phrase of “everyone doing the same workout”. Workout scaling — based on your fitness level — is built into the programme. Because the workouts are personal, they’re not comparable to others.