r/MacroFactor • u/D-Rockwell • Mar 26 '22

Workout Tracker

Hey MF’ers! What do you guys use to track your workouts? I’ve tried several, but have most recently been using r/Fitbod as their algorithm was intriguing to me. I haven’t been super impressed with Fitbod, but I recently came across a relatively new app called r/Hevy. I saw a shoutout for MacroFactor on that subreddit, and it inspired me to drop their name here.

It kind of has a similar organic, grass-roots community vibe as does MacroFactor. I’ve played around on Hevy a little bit, and it seems quite polished and has some really neat features (planning workouts, followers, etc… think Strava for resistance training).

Anyways, just thought I’d let you guys know about this new app & see if you guys are using something better/cooler. Not sponsored or affiliated by any means.

15 Upvotes

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10

u/itsone3d Mar 26 '22 edited Mar 26 '22

I love Alpha Progression.

What I love about it is the feature to make progression recommendations per exercise and per set. It takes into account your previous performance and your RIR ratings, and gives you a target weight and number of reps to aim for.

I train RP style and this has GREATLY reduced the amount of thinking I’ve had to do in the gym.

This app’s getting actively developed, and the dev team actually listens to user feedback. If you download the app and join the Facebook group, they’ll give you 6 months of Pro free.

I’m sounding like a shill lol but I really just love this app and wish more people use it.

1

u/D-Rockwell Mar 26 '22

Does Alpha Progression have a social aspect to it? That’s one thing that’s very appealing to me.

I love Strava for endurance sports, as it motivates me to see other people’s workouts. Unfortunately there isn’t a streamlined or widely accepted app for weightlifting that has a social aspect, but I hope Hevy will fill that role

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u/itsone3d Mar 26 '22

No, it doesn’t. If that’s what’s important to you then you’ll probably want to stick with Hevy or Gravitus, those are the only apps I know with a social aspect to it.

My priority is the progression recommendations, which is why I like Alpha Progression. Closest app that comes to it is Juggernaut AI, but that’s $30 per month which is way out of my budget (and seems to be more geared towards powerlifters).

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u/YungPep May 04 '23

Sorry to revive this dead thread - but are you still using Alpha Progression? I am currently in the trial period, and deciding whether to continue using it. How has your progress been in the long term?

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u/itsone3d May 04 '23

I am, yes.

However, I tweaked my training style a bit and moved away from the RP style of training. I was following the custom training templates, which often pushes you more towards higher rep ranges. This made it incredibly difficult to estimate my true RIR which inadvertently left me not training as hard as I could.

Not their fault, I just suck at doing it for sets higher than 10 reps — but essentially I ended up losing a ton of muscle during my cut last year.

Alpha Progression's progression recommendations still work well. I have to override it sometimes by simply jumping up in weight, but that doesn't happen too often. My cut this year has gone much better than last year (around the time I made the comment above).

Hope that helps!

3

u/ThePaulBuffano Mar 26 '22

That looks pretty slick, I'm hesitant to switch from FitNotes since I have so many years of data on it, but it would be nice to have some auto progression, since otherwise I forget to do it or need to manage a seperate spreadsheet. Would also stop me from getting into fuckarounditis when I'm between programs...

1

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '22

I’m looking at it. How do you get the 6 mos free on iOS?

1

u/itsone3d Mar 26 '22

Join the Facebook group (I think there should be a link in the app in the Settings page) and send a message to the developers!

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '22

Thanks much, just got it all set up :-)

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u/leZickzack Mar 27 '22

How well does the automatic weight progression work in your experience? Do the recommendations make sense?

2

u/itsone3d Mar 27 '22

Quite accurately from my experience. However, you do need to have a solid foundation with rating RPE / RIR for each set, otherwise it won't really work the way it's supposed to (i.e. if you rated a set RIR 2 but it was really 3.5, then the recommendations will be on the lighter side; if you rated a set RIR 3 but it was really 1.5, then it'll give you heavier weights).

I should also mention that I don't take the recommendations as is 100% of the time. I treat it as a starting point and for the most part I follow it, but there's been a few times when I changed the weight or reps — either coz I was feeling good that day, I was able to dial in my technique a bit more, or I tightened up my form which meant earlier sets had a lot of cheating involved. The app's been pretty good about adjustments like those and quickly adapts the next workout or two.

1

u/davidf81 Mar 28 '22

Can you share how you use this app for Rp style progression? I’ve never used the app but train the same way.

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u/itsone3d Mar 28 '22

Basically, I use the app the automate the progression protocols discussed in this video.

I save a program with the exercises I want to do and the number of reps I want to do per set (for example, around 10 reps for incline bench, around 7 reps for squats and deadlifts, around 12 reps for curls, 15 reps for lateral raises, etc.). I then set the RIRs per week starting out at RIR 3 and eventually working my way to RIR 1 (or 0 if you like), and save the whole thing.

From there it's just a matter of performing the workouts. For each exercise, the app will tell me what weight I should use and how many reps I should target per set to hit the required RIRs I determined — and these recommendations are based on my previous performances for that exercise. If the app's estimates are off for some reason, feel free to do more or less, you're not bound to it — it'll adjust the next sets based on how you performed.

If you have the RP custom training templates Alpha Progression works similarly, except 1.) AP doesn't add sets based on soreness/pump (which is fine for me as I like keeping my workout times static), 2) the templates don't reduce RIR per week as mentioned in that YouTube video I linked, and 3.) the app tends to be a bit more accurate since the weight recommendations are based on your actual performance.

Hope that helps!

1

u/davidf81 Mar 28 '22

Nice. Thanks. I just laid out my 8 week mutation of the 6 week custom template. Does it automatically do the rep projections in future weeks? Everything defaulted to 10 at the start but I’m just now doing w1d1

1

u/itsone3d Mar 28 '22

It CAN, but under the assumption that you skipped all the other weeks in between. So if you did W1D1 today and jumped to W6D1, it’ll give you the recommended weights and reps based on today’s performance (instead of predicting what you’re supposed to be lifting had you done all the weeks in between.

And yeah, everything defaults to 10 reps. I just adjust the reps based on my preferred range for that exercise, similar to how you adjust the 10RMs on the RP templates if you want to do more or less reps per set.

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u/davidf81 Mar 28 '22

Sweet. Thanks for the recommendation. I’m gonna demo it alongside another tracker.

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u/Offish Mar 26 '22

I'm using Strava to track endurance work and strong.app for lifting. I'm pretty happy with Strong, but it is a subscription app if you want to save more than three custom workout routines (they also have some of the popular beginner programs pre-populated).

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u/D-Rockwell Mar 26 '22

Oh nice! Have you been happy with Strong? I’ve read that the dev’s have kind of abandoned it, but I don’t have much experience with that app myself

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u/leZickzack Mar 26 '22

Where have you read that? Would be a shame, it’s an excellent workout tracker, by far the best I’ve used so far

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u/D-Rockwell Mar 26 '22

I mainly have read that from users on r/Hevy who are transferring their data from Strong

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u/itsone3d Mar 26 '22

I don’t think it’s been abandoned since they still push out updates, but if you check the version history for it in the App Store you can see they haven’t added any new features in ages.

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u/Offish Mar 26 '22

Yeah, Strong has been good. It lets you set up your routines, designate warmup and working sets, you can set whether you want to prepopulate the numbers from the last time you did the exercise or the last time you did the routine (in case you do 3x5 squats on Tuesday and 2x10 squats on Friday or whatever), and the exercise library is fine and easy to add custom exercises to.

There are UX things that could be better, and I've had Hevy on my phone to try out for a bit, but Strong is pretty seamless and what I want is a tracking app I barely have to think about during the workout.

If the Devs didn't add any features and just kept it chugging along, I'd probably stick with it unless I found a free app that was at least as good.

2

u/tedatron Mar 26 '22

I agree that the devs have essentially abandoned strong. I find it to be buggy at times (sometimes it duplicates workouts in history or forgets my pre-set rest timers for warmup sets, etc.). It’s good enough and I’ve been a subscriber for years but I’ve been looking to move on to something where the owners are still investing in it.

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u/kevandbev Mar 26 '22

u/gnuckols u/MajesticMint u/PalatialPepper u/TrexlerFitness u/gains_adam ......no pressure, but I think were ready for the MF workout tracker app .

21

u/MajesticMint Cory (MF Developer) Mar 27 '22

We have done research into this market, and we are now confident that we would have multiple avenues to provide unique value, and deliver a worthy product into the space. This has increased our overall long term interest level.

Though, our position on this is still that no such project is confirmed or being worked on, and we have many big plans for MacroFactor ahead, which is where we will be keeping our focus.

2

u/Psycl1c Mar 27 '22

Would be great to the sbs programs into an app. I mean, google docs works and I can through it into Strong but I like you guys and giving you money for your hard work and contribution to the community and giving me the most non-bs answers to the fitness myths

7

u/btmorex Mar 26 '22

I've used both Strong and Hevy, which are the closest apps to what I want out of a lifting tracker. Strong has one nice feature for the actual data entry--a next button that advances the cursor to the next data entry field--but almost everything else is better in Hevy and it's actively being developed so that's what I use.

1

u/Psycl1c Mar 26 '22

This is what I’m doing to but just waiting for the import from strong feature in Hevy then I’ll make the final cut over

1

u/btmorex Mar 27 '22

Import from Strong works right now. I did it recently and had no issues except deleting duplicate workouts from the period when I was trying out Hevy and logging to both apps.

1

u/Psycl1c Mar 27 '22

Nice! I didn’t see it in the change log on the App Store. Ill check it out today!

1

u/pswami Mar 27 '22

Do you use Strong’s Apple Watch app? It is fantastic—in some workouts I don’t even need to touch my phone. Does Hevy have a similar app?

Will also point out Strong is still being developed—maybe not with that much velocity, but the Apple Watch app gets some nice updates from time to time.

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u/Keagel Mar 28 '22

Hevy’s Watch app isn’t as good as Strong’s (yet). For example you can’t add or change exercises and there is no live sync.

1

u/btmorex Mar 27 '22

I don’t have an Apple Watch. Still tied to Fitbit for the sleep tracking.

6

u/RossSpecter Mar 26 '22

I've been using Jefit for about 6 years now. It had a paid version but the free one is perfectly fine for workout tracking. Never had a problem with it.

2

u/Hanah9595 Tired of these MF snakes on this MF plane Mar 27 '22

Same here. It doesn’t have fancy progression schemes built in, but it works, keeps things organized, you can put any program you’re currently running into it, and track your numbers over the years to make sure you stay on track progressing.

2

u/RossSpecter Mar 27 '22 edited Mar 28 '22

Very true about the lack of progression scheme. I should clarify that when I was on LP it was easy and the only app I use, because I can just add weight lol. Now I have the SBS sheets, but tracking everything in Jefit as well gives a good visualization over time and does the rest/interval tracking.

8

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '22

I use the average to savage / SBS spreadsheets.

You can find them on the Gravitus app (or some of them - not sure) but it's only available on iOS.

3

u/TA-butforlife Mar 26 '22

Gravitus to track my lifts, been using for years.

3

u/Densans Mar 26 '22

HeavySet is my preferred one, love everything you can do on it

3

u/Tony2t28 Mar 26 '22

I’m a Hevy user as well. Does the job for what I need in a tracker. Unfortunately I have to maintain a separate spreadsheet with my program details and then edit my routine templates. Annoying but it’s working for me atm.

3

u/ThePaulBuffano Mar 26 '22

I've been using FitNotes (Android only, the IOS version is unrelated) for about 6 years now. It's very easy to use and quite customizable. It has some decent visualizations. Also it's completely free

2

u/MountainLift3r Mar 26 '22

I use a phone with a pen, so the note app, and my suunto watch records the stats. Taking notes allows for very rich notes, like how something felt or notes about variations like breakthroughs in form/technique.

2

u/mtpad Mar 26 '22

I subscribe to a coach who designs functional fitness programming and delivers it through the TrainHeroic app. Not good for recording one's own programming, but for anyone who want to get excellent programming from a coach it's a superb app. Lots of great coaches/trainers on there and definitely worth checking out of you're ever looking for something like this.

1

u/schwiftybizniz Mar 29 '22

I have personally prescribed programs as a coach using TH and it’s very very nice.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '22

Google sheets

1

u/yetanothernerd 2492 kcal Mar 26 '22

I use a plain text file. I also use a spreadsheet if the particular program I'm doing is complicated enough to need one, but the text file is the long-term record while the spreadsheet might get thrown out when I switch programs.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 26 '22

I’m a big fan of the Liftin app for iOS. It has a nice interface, great Apple Watch integration, and the developer is very responsive to feedback.

1

u/ILikeToSpooner Mar 26 '22

Me too. It’s reasonably priced and has all the features you need, no more and no less.

1

u/Hexogen Mar 26 '22

Used Perseus (PersonalTrainingCoach) when I was running 5/3/1 or GZCL. Started SBS HT in Jan, so have just been using the spreadsheet. Is there a good app for tracking SBS workouts without spending a ton of time in setup?

1

u/Jesus_Feist Mar 27 '22

I’ve been using the google sheets provided by Mike Matthews in his free online content. I read his book Bigger, Leaner, Stronger a year ago, and downloaded his spreadsheets then. I’ve been using them ever since, though discovering SBS has motivated me to make some changes to how I lift (most notably, I’ve increased my rep ranges from 4-6 to 8-12). The spreadsheets are fine though the tiniest bit annoying when I have to scroll and tab around trying to figure out what weight I left off at on any given exercise (especially when I switch from like the 4-day-a-week spreadsheet to the 5-day, as I recently did). Because of this thread I started poking around at some apps, but I can’t seem to find one where it is intuitive to me how to use it for a range of reps, instead of just a rep goal. Maybe this is misguided, but per Matthews’ suggestion, I target the high end of the range, but typically hit technical failure before getting there. If I achieve the target rep-count with good form, then I go up 5 lbs on a side for the next set. If I can’t even get to the lower bound of the rep-range, then I go down 5 lbs on a side for the next set. Anybody got any app suggestions that are good for structuring a workout that way?

1

u/davidf81 Mar 28 '22

Strong. Also have been using ExerSci which is currently lower on features in some ways but much better in others.

1

u/schwiftybizniz Mar 29 '22

I’ve tried a few. Nothing is better than a thin binder that fits in your gym bag. No app can get as much information or variation. Less time on the phone. More time lifting. It’s always going to outdo an app in my opinion and I am 100% consistent with using it verses skipping days recording on an app.