# What format to use for YOLOV8 Pose model training

**URL:** <https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568>\
**Category:** 🤝  Community Help\
**Tags:** formats, export\
**Created:** [July 13, 2025, 11:50pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568 "2025-07-13T23:50:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Noor\_Hashem](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discuss.roboflow.com/noor_hashem/32/7742_2.png) [@Noor\_Hashem](https://discuss.roboflow.com/u/Noor_Hashem)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 11:50pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568/1 "2025-07-13T23:50:08Z")

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Hi there,

I’m trying to work with yolov8 pose in order to train a pose model to detect keypoints on a sports field. I have about 240 images. In my project I only see three options for exporting my data and those are COCO, YOLOv5 PyTorch, YOLOv8.

I use the YOLOV8 one in order to download my keypoint labelled data to train a pose model using this command:

```auto
!yolo task=pose mode=train model=yolov8x-pose.pt data={dataset.location}/data.yaml batch=50 epochs=500 imgsz=640 mosaic=0.0 plots=True

```

However the results I get are very odd. It is able to detect the field but the points are completely off. Here are the results

 ![Screenshot 2025-07-13 at 7.46.45 PM](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/roboflow1/original/2X/b/b78b4eb28cd92241cb5e810b51b4822f48efff52.jpeg)

Note that it also stopped training early:

```auto
EarlyStopping: Training stopped early as no improvement observed in last 100 epochs. Best results observed at epoch 172, best model saved as best.pt.
To update EarlyStopping(patience=100) pass a new patience value, i.e. `patience=300` or use `patience=0` to disable EarlyStopping.

272 epochs completed in 0.335 hours.
Optimizer stripped from runs/pose/train2/weights/last.pt, 152.0MB
Optimizer stripped from runs/pose/train2/weights/best.pt, 152.0MB

Validating runs/pose/train2/weights/best.pt...
Ultralytics 8.3.165 🚀 Python-3.11.13 torch-2.6.0+cu124 CUDA:0 (NVIDIA A100-SXM4-40GB, 40507MiB)
YOLOv8x-pose summary (fused): 121 layers, 75,740,313 parameters, 0 gradients, 293.4 GFLOPs
                 Class Images Instances Box(P R mAP50 mAP50-95) Pose(P R mAP50 mAP50-95): 100% 1/1 [00:00<00:00, 2.32it/s]
                   all 46 46 0.999 1 0.995 0.993 0 0 0 0
Speed: 0.1ms preprocess, 4.2ms inference, 0.0ms loss, 1.1ms postprocess per image

```

Im thinking I either don’t have enough images or something is wrong with the format that it is not picking up the keypoints correctly because there looks to be little to no improvements for the keypoints. Is the format that I’m exporting to correct?

Any help would be appreciated.

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**Author:** ![Ford](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discuss.roboflow.com/ford/32/7747_2.png) [@Ford](https://discuss.roboflow.com/u/Ford)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 8:29pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568/2 "2025-07-14T20:29:13Z")

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Hi @Noor_Hashem!  
Unfortunately I’m unable to support model training outside of the Roboflow app, there are too many potential variables to account for.

Apologies for the inconvenience!

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**Author:** ![Noor\_Hashem](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discuss.roboflow.com/noor_hashem/32/7742_2.png) [@Noor\_Hashem](https://discuss.roboflow.com/u/Noor_Hashem)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 10:40pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568/3 "2025-07-14T22:40:19Z")

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Hey, not a problem at all, for sure get it!

I think it came down to the number of images being too low.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Ford](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discuss.roboflow.com/ford/32/7747_2.png) [@Ford](https://discuss.roboflow.com/u/Ford)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 7:45pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568/4 "2025-07-15T19:45:00Z")

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Hi @Noor_Hashem!  
Glad to hear you were able to identify the issue!

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**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/roboflow1/original/1X/bb6edbfa56d0cf2ee603f061e9e09103502cc8cc.png) [@system](https://discuss.roboflow.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2025, 7:45pm UTC](https://discuss.roboflow.com/t/what-format-to-use-for-yolov8-pose-model-training/10568/5 "2025-07-22T19:45:36Z")

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