I Was Tracking My Workouts on Paper. In 2024.
I had a notebook. A ruled notebook from the stationery shop, ₹40. Every workout — the exercises, the sets, the reps, how I felt — all written down in slightly illegible handwriting. I'd been doing this for years.
The nutrition was worse. I'd try to mentally calculate my protein intake. "Okay, 3 eggs in the morning, that's about 18g... chicken at lunch, maybe 30g... dal at dinner..." By evening I'd have no idea if I hit my target or missed it by 40 grams.
I tried fitness apps. Every single popular one. They all had the same problem: they treated me like a generic user. A 37-year-old calisthenics athlete who trains in handstands and levers doesn't fit into the "Week 1: Learn to do a push-up" template. The apps were either too basic or too rigid. None of them could understand what I actually needed.
So I built my own.
What Avya Actually Is
Avya is an AI fitness coach — named after my son Avyaansh. It's not a workout logger. It's not a calorie counter. It's a system that knows my training history, my goals, my body, and my patterns — and gives me actual coaching based on all of that context.
Here's what makes Avya different from every fitness app I've tried:
1. It Has My Complete Training Memory
Avya knows every workout I've done since I started using it. It knows that my front lever hold time dropped last week, that my handstand endurance peaks on Tuesdays, that I tend to skip leg work on Fridays. It uses this history to suggest what I should train today — not a generic "Push Day" but an actual recommendation based on what my body needs right now.
2. It Understands Calisthenics Progressions
Most fitness apps think in terms of weight × reps. Calisthenics doesn't work that way. Progression in calisthenics means moving to a harder variation — from tuck front lever to advanced tuck to straddle to full. Avya understands this. It tracks which progression level I'm at for each skill and tells me when I'm ready to attempt the next one.
3. It Adapts to How I'm Feeling
Some days I walk in feeling like I can conquer the world. Other days, my shoulders are tight and I slept 5 hours. Avya asks me a few simple questions before each session and adjusts the workout intensity accordingly. Bad sleep? It dials back the volume and focuses on skill work. Feeling great? It pushes me toward new personal bests.
4. Nutrition That Knows My Kitchen
I don't eat chicken breast and broccoli every meal. I eat Indian food — roti, dal, sabzi, eggs, paneer, rice. Avya has been trained on common Indian foods and their macros. When I tell it what I ate, it gives me accurate tracking without making me search through a database of 10,000 Western foods to find "paneer bhurji."
The Technology Behind It
Avya is built on large language models — specifically, Anthropic's Claude. The AI doesn't just store data; it reasons about it. When it sees that my pull-up performance has plateaued for 3 weeks, it doesn't just flag it — it suggests specific deload protocols or variation changes to break through.
The architecture is straightforward:
- Input layer: I log workouts and meals through a simple interface (voice or text).
- Memory layer: All historical data stored in a structured database with vector embeddings for context retrieval.
- Reasoning layer: Claude analyzes patterns, compares to training science principles, and generates personalized recommendations.
- Output layer: Daily workout suggestions, nutrition adjustments, weekly progress summaries, and periodic program changes.
Why Personal Data + AI = Better Results Than Any Human Trainer
A good personal trainer sees you 3-4 hours per week. They remember some of your history but not all of it. They're human — they forget that your left shoulder was bothering you two weeks ago, or that you PR'd your muscle-up last Thursday.
Avya remembers everything. Every session. Every meal. Every note about how I felt. And it processes all of that every single time it makes a recommendation. No human trainer can hold that much context simultaneously.
I'm not saying AI replaces human coaching entirely. A great coach brings experience, intuition, and accountability that AI can't fully replicate. But for someone like me — self-motivated, data-driven, training alone in a park at 6 AM — an AI coach that has perfect memory and infinite patience is exactly what I needed.
"I named it Avya because the best things I build, I build for the people I love."
What's Next for Avya
Right now, Avya is my personal tool. I'm the only user. But the goal is bigger — I want to make it available to anyone who trains seriously and wants coaching that actually understands them.
The vision: you feed Avya your training history, your goals, your food preferences, and your constraints. It builds a living, adaptive program that evolves with you. Not a static 12-week plan. A lifelong training partner that gets smarter the more you use it.
I built Avya because no fitness app understood me. If you've ever felt the same frustration — a dozen apps on your phone and none of them actually helpful — then you understand why this matters.
More details coming soon. If you want early access, join the newsletter. I'll share the build process, the architecture decisions, and eventually, the app itself.