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Hey AI Breakers 👋
Most workout plans assume you have the same free hour five days a week. Then Tuesday happens, you miss a session, and the whole plan quietly dies. 😅
Today, you’ll build Pocket Coach: a Claude Skill that knows your body, your goals, and your calendar, and rebuilds your training every time life gets in the way.
✅ An Athlete Profile with your goals, equipment, limits, and schedule
✅ A 15-minute Baseline Test so every plan starts from your real numbers
✅ An installable pocket-coach skill that plans your week around the exact slots you have
✅ Automatic adjustments when you miss a session, sleep badly, or travel
✅ A “Right Now” mode for “I have 25 minutes and a hotel gym, go”
✅ A Monthly Review that tracks progress and levels up the plan
Let’s build it 👇
🧠 Why a Claude Skill Beats a Workout App (and a One-Off Prompt)
Ask any AI for “a workout plan” and you get a generic 5-day split. It doesn’t know about your knee, your 7am school run, or the fact that you hate burpees.
A skill is a small file Claude loads on its own whenever you talk about training. So it always knows:
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🎯 Your goal: lose 5kg, run a 10K, get strong, or just stop feeling stiff
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🏠 Your setup: full gym, two dumbbells, or a living room floor
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🩹 Your limits: old injuries and moves to avoid
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📅 Your week: it plans around the slots you actually have, not an ideal week
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📈 Your progress: it adds weight or reps when you’re ready, and backs off when you’re not
The old way: pay $100 to $300 a month for online coaching, or $60+ per in-person session, and still get a plan that breaks the first busy week.
The Pocket Coach way: about 45 minutes to set up, then a fresh plan every Sunday in 2 minutes, adjusted any time in 30 seconds.
📋 Prompt #1 → The Intake (your Athlete Profile)
A good trainer’s first session is all questions. This prompt does that interview and turns it into a profile your skill reads every time.
The goal:
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A clear goal with a reason and a timeframe
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Your real schedule, equipment, and experience level
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Every injury, limit, and “please never make me do that”
✅ Use this to create the ATHLETE PROFILE block you’ll paste into the skill.
Prompt:
You are an experienced personal trainer running a first consultation with a new client. Interview me to build my ATHLETE PROFILE. Ask these 10 questions ONE AT A TIME. Wait for my answer before asking the next. Keep each question short and friendly. If an answer is vague, ask one follow-up before moving on. 1. What's your main goal, and why does it matter to you right now? (Examples: lose fat, build strength, run a 10K, move without pain, have more energy.) 2. Is there a date or event attached to it? 3. What's your training experience? (Never trained / on and off / consistent for 1+ year) 4. What do you currently do in a normal week for exercise, if anything? 5. Realistically, how many days a week can you train, and how long per session? 6. Where will you train, and what equipment do you have? (Full gym, home dumbbells, bands, bodyweight only, pool, running routes) 7. Any injuries, pain, medical conditions, or moves a doctor or physio told you to avoid? 8. Which types of exercise do you enjoy, and which do you hate? 9. What made you stop the last time you quit a fitness plan? 10. Your age range, and anything else about your life that affects training? (Shift work, kids, travel, sleep) After my last answer, output one block titled "ATHLETE PROFILE" with: - Goal: one line, plus the why - Target date: or "none" - Level: beginner / returning / intermediate - Weekly reality: typical days available and session length - Equipment: exact list - Limits: every injury, condition, and move to avoid - Enjoys / Hates: short lists - Quit risk: the main reason I might stop, plus one rule to prevent it - Life factors: anything that affects recovery or scheduling - Safety flags: anything suggesting I should check with a doctor before starting. If there is nothing, write "none reported". Keep it under 300 words. Write it so any coach could read it and train me well.
🧠 Tip: be brutally honest on question 5. “Three 30-minute sessions I’ll actually do” beats “five hours I wish I had” every single time.
📏 Prompt #2 → The Baseline Test (your real starting numbers)
Plans fail when they start too hard or too easy. A 15-minute test fixes that, and gives you numbers to beat next month.
✅ Use this to create the STARTING NUMBERS block your skill builds from.
Prompt:
You are a strength and conditioning coach who designs safe fitness assessments for everyday people. Here is my ATHLETE PROFILE: [paste your ATHLETE PROFILE from Prompt #1] STEP 1. Design a baseline test I can finish in 15 to 20 minutes with my equipment. - Include 4 to 6 tests covering: upper body strength, lower body strength, core, cardio endurance, and mobility. - Respect every item in my Limits. Swap out any test that could aggravate them and tell me what you swapped. - For each test, explain exactly how to do it, what counts as a rep, and when to stop (stop at good form, not at collapse). - Include a 5-minute warm-up before the tests. - If my Safety flags are not "none reported", tell me to check with a doctor before doing the test, and stop there. Then STOP and wait for me to paste my results. STEP 2. When I paste my results, output one block titled "STARTING NUMBERS" with: - Each test and my result - What each result means in plain English (not a grade, just where I'm starting) - Starting level for each main movement pattern: squat, hinge, push, pull, carry, cardio - Suggested starting weights or variations for weeks 1 and 2, set on the easy side - 3 realistic 4-week targets based on my goal Keep the block under 250 words.
💡 Tip: write your results down right after each test, not at the end. Tired brains round numbers up. 😉
🏋️ Skill → Pocket Coach (the skill that runs your training)
This is the $150-a-month part. One skill with four modes: plan the week, adapt when things go sideways, right now for spontaneous sessions, and check-in to log what you did.
The goal:
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A plan that fits the exact slots you have this week
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Progress that happens automatically, without guesswork
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Safety rules it never breaks
✅ Use this as your trainer every week, from now on.
Prompt: paste in your Claude session and tell him to create a skill named as pocket-coach/SKILL.md
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