One month, solo: building an AI trainer to break my own plateau

Editor's note: Maxxd is now Ollim. The product and team are the same; only the brand has changed.

I hit a plateau.

Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind — showing up, doing the same lifts at the same weights, week after week. I was putting in the work, but I couldn't tell if I was getting stronger or just going through the motions. And somewhere in there I'd lost momentum: without a clear next goal, motivation leaks away. You need a reason to reach for the next rep, the next plate.

A coach would have caught that in one session. But personal training is expensive, and the apps I tried only logged what I'd already done — they never told me what to do next. Numbers in a spreadsheet aren't a plan, and they don't keep you going.

So I decided to build the coach I wanted.

The rule I gave it was simple: read my week, then set the target. It looks at what I actually logged — my recent sets, weights, reps — and adjusts the weight and intensity for the next session, the way a real trainer would. Not a generic template: a plan tuned to where I actually am, with a goal in front of me every time I show up. Progress you can see, not just feel.

I built it solo, in a month. I use an iPhone, so I went fully native — iOS and Apple Watch — because a trainer should feel like it belongs on the device, not bolted on. The watch mattered most: your coach should be on your wrist between sets, not in your pocket.

A month isn't long, and Maxxd isn't a big team. It's one person who got tired of not knowing, and decided the fix was to build the thing.

It's now in front of App Store review — the last door before launch. I'm opening this devlog to walk the rest of the way in public: the calls I make, what works, what I get wrong.

Ollim is now on the App Store. Give it a try — and tell me what works and what doesn't. Feedback is genuinely welcome, and it'll shape what comes next.

More soon.