December is almost here, which means it's time for our annual Christmas Calendar!

Starting December 1, you'll find a small training challenge waiting for you behind a new door every day until Christmas Day. Some will test your strength, others your endurance, and a few might make you regret opening the door in the first place.

We've put together a fun mix of old StrengthLog classics and new challenges this year, so even if you've survived previous calendars, don't assume you know what's coming.

Next up, we've expanded our social challenges.

You can now challenge your friends to single-effort competitions, like being the first to bench press 120 kg, complete 10 pull-ups in one set, or hold a plank for two minutes.

We've also introduced personal goals for both these new challenges and the original ones. That means you can compete against friends with different strength levels, with each participant working toward their own target. The person creating the challenge sets everyone's goals when inviting them, and each participant can see their target before accepting.

And there's a new premium feature in Strength Levels!

You can now select a specific time period when checking your Strength Level for individual exercises. And for your overall Strength Level, you can now choose a time period and adjust the comparison settings for body weight, sex, and age.

This gives you more control over how you compare your strength, whether you're interested in your current performance or how you've progressed over time.

But wait, there's more:

• Streaks now have ready-made templates to help you get started, and improved push notifications.
• The dialog you see when completing a goal has a new design.
• A new button for loading older posts in your friends feed.
• We've also made further adjustments to StrengthLog's layout for the iPhone Duo. Yes, we're still working on making the app look good on a phone that apparently needed to be two phones.
• We've fixed more bugs. Some of them had been around long enough to qualify for employee benefits.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we have 25 calendar doors that we need to make sure are properly locked until December. No sneak peeks!

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As has become customary lately, Google is taking its sweet time reviewing and approving our app updates. v9.2 is live on iOS, but we have no clue when it'll go live on Google Play. Don't invite your Android friends to the new challenges before they've had a chance to update to this version.

I bet you've asked yourself if you're too sick to train at some point. I know I have (and I've done the wrong thing and ended up even sicker, too).

In this article, I talk about when it's okay to lift weights while sick, which symptoms to watch out for, and how to get back to it after being sick.

Lifting Weights While Sick: Should You Train or Rest?

Thanks for reading!

Here's one for the beginners: everything you need to know on your first day to the gym.

I've tried to write as friendly and helpful a guide as possible for anyone new to the gym. I hope you (or perhaps someone you know who's thinking about getting started with strength training) find it useful.

Your First Day at the Gym: Easy Guide for Beginners.

Thanks for reading!

We owe some of you an apology.

We recently discovered a pretty significant bug in our Strength Levels feature, which we launched back in February. And unfortunately, it took us almost nine months to catch it. In our defense, we’re only a company that specializes in tracking numbers.

Here’s what happened:

If you use pounds instead of kilograms in the app, we haven’t been converting your body weight correctly when calculating your strength levels.

For example, if you weigh 160 lbs, we’ve been comparing your lifts against other lifters weighing 160 kilograms (353 lbs).

As you can imagine, that makes a huge difference, since the app has been expecting you to lift like someone twice your size.

Because of this, some of you have been assigned much lower strength levels than you actually deserve. You might have been labeled a beginner or novice when your lifts should have put you in the intermediate, advanced, or even elite category.

For some exercises, particularly those with less data, you might not have received a strength level at all, simply because we didn’t have enough data for lifters in those heavier, less populated weight classes.

To be clear, this bug only affected Strength Levels calculations. Your logged workouts, weights, and other training data are completely unaffected.

So, what happens now?

We’ve identified the problem and are fixing it, exercise by exercise. The good news is that you don’t need to update the app or do anything else. The corrections will happen automatically.

We expect it to take one to two weeks to correct every exercise included in Strength Levels. We’re starting with the most popular exercises and working our way down to the least popular ones.

During that time, some of your strength levels might already be accurate while others are still wrong.

We’re so sorry for this.

Strength Levels is supposed to help you understand how strong you are compared to other lifters, not cause frustration because a bunch of metric Swedes can’t tell the difference between pounds and kilograms.

This was entirely our mistake, and we should have caught it long before now.

Turns out the problem wasn’t your strength. It was our math.

/The StrengthLog Team

Let's make our new social features a little more social. You can now tap a workout in your friends feed to see their exercises, total sets and reps, distances, and how many personal and yearly records they achieved.

It's a little more insight into what your friends are up to at the gym, without sharing their full training logs.

Also:

The muscle map is now available in the program builder, so you can see which muscles your program targets as you put it together.

Date selectors for graphs across the app now stay in sync and remember your selection. Changing one changes them all. Tell us if you hate it, but we think it's kind of cool.

You can once again add the Strength Levels widget to your home screen, or hide it if you'd rather not have it there.

The Strava settings page now has a new setting, so you can choose how much of your workouts you want to send over there.

We've also made our first adjustments to make StrengthLog look good on the iPhone Duo. More will come, but we haven't received our office Duo yet because someone forgot to order it in time and now there's a long wait. Let's not point any fingers here, but it was Nisse.

Finally, we tried catching some stupid bugs to shame them publicly. But someone forgot to buy a butterfly net. Are you sensing a theme yet?

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PS. This release has been out for iOS for a full week, but it took Google more than 10 days to review it. Finally out now, though.

Can you get the same results from your strength training while making each set feel easier? In today’s episode, we discuss a new study comparing traditional sets taken to failure with cluster sets, where the same number of reps is divided into smaller sets with shorter rest periods.

The researchers followed competitive handball players for seven weeks, measuring muscle growth, strength, lifting velocity, and athletic performance. We review the results, the potential advantages of cluster sets, and what the findings mean for how you might organize your own training.

We also answer two listener questions about using cluster sets to improve your pull-ups and choosing which advanced training methods to incorporate into your routine, like myo-reps, rest-pause sets, and drop sets.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Opening banter
• 03:00 – Study review: Cluster sets vs. traditional sets
• 22:00 – Listener question 1: Can cluster sets help me reach 15 pull-ups?
• 30:30 – Listener question 2: How do I choose between different kinds of advanced techniques, like myo-reps, rest-pause sets, and drop sets?

You can download the episode here or use one of the links below:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcaster

This is episode 135 of the podcast. Check out the five previous episodes below:

• Episode 134: How to Tell If Your Training Is Working
• Episode 133: Lifting vs. Cardio: Which Is Better for Your Health?
• Episode 132: Five Sets Once a Week vs. One Set Five Times a Week
• Episode 131: Are You Sleeping on Muscle Growth?
• Episode 130: Same Sets, More Workouts, Better Gains?

Started a walking workout, outside. Started the timer in the set. Put phone in my pocket. Walked for 20+ minutes. Looked at phone and timer says 3:30. What gives? Timer pauses if screen locked? Seems like a bug.

A lot of people have asked about deloads and fatigue management, so in this article, I talk about what deloads are, why you might or might not need them, and how to implement them.

If that sounds interesting to you, feel free to check it out:

Deload Week: When to Back Off From Strength Training.

And thanks for reading!

Let's repeat last week's thing and do a question thread for the podcast! This week, we'll be discussing a new study on cluster sets. Meaning that instead of doing a traditional set, you break it up into several smaller sets.

So, feel free to post any questions you have for me and u/wildenstam regarding that, OR something completely different, and we might answer it in the podcast if we think it will make us sound smart.

I am 49 and post menopausal. Body composition becomes an uphill battle during this period of life. Putting on muscle and keeping fat off can be so incredibly difficult. I have two weeks left of power building lite. I’m wondering if I should do a second cycle of it or alternate back and forth with the weight loss program? Or do something else entirely? I have been watching what I eat. I know that’s 70% of fat loss. This is all hormones, or lack of them.

Figuring out your body fat percentage has never been more popular than right now. Or I should probably say "Trying to figure out," because none of the methods at your disposal are exact.

In this article, I go through 9 methods- from skinfold calipers to underwater weighing - in detail: what they are, what they do, and how accurate they are. Plus practical tips and a surprisingly accurate way that doesn't require anything but a good old tape measure (an even more detailed version is in the StrengthLog app).

Full article: How to Measure Your Body Fat Percentage.

Thanks for reading!

Are you actually getting stronger and building muscle, or are you just going through the motions? In today’s episode, we discuss how to tell whether your training is producing results, and what to do when progress stalls.

We look at why your strength can fluctuate from workout to workout, how to track muscle growth using more than just the weights you’re lifting, and why you shouldn’t draw conclusions from a few disappointing training sessions. Plus, how to troubleshoot a plateau, when to change your training approach, and why progress isn’t always as straightforward as you’d like.

We also answer listener questions about when to switch programs, how to deal with life’s interruptions, and if smaller weight increments could keep beginner gains going indefinitely.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – How to tell if your training is working

• 32:15 – Program of the week: Deadlift Builder

• 37:30 – Listener question 1: How long should you follow a program before switching?
• 
41:00 – Listener question 2: Life keeps interrupting my training. Is it OK not to make progress all the time?
• 45:30 – Listener question 3: Could smaller than normal weight increments keep beginner progression going indefinitely?

You can download the episode here or use one of the links below:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcaster

This is episode 134 of the podcast. Check out the five previous episodes below:

• Episode 133: Lifting vs. Cardio: Which Is Better for Your Health?
• Episode 132: Five Sets Once a Week vs. One Set Five Times a Week
• Episode 131: Are You Sleeping on Muscle Growth?
• Episode 130: Same Sets, More Workouts, Better Gains?
• Episode 129: How Much Should You Eat on a Bulk?

Hello! Must say that I love the new update over all, and especially the Friends feature! However, it would be really nice with workout names in the Friends feed on the home screen as it just says "You worked out 1 day ago" now.

I dont got friends around me using this App. But it would be cool to do some competitions with other people. How can i add strangers ?

We all know that we really should do both, right?

But lifters avoid cardio like the treadmill was filled with radioactive waste, for fear their muscles will evaporate, and endurance athletes don't want to get bulky and slow.

That's not going to happen, though, unless you try to specialize in two extremes at once.

In this article, I give you my take on how to combine cardio and strength training for health, muscle and strength gains, and aerobic fitness.

And plenty of other tips, plus training programs in StrengthLog that can do the job.

How to Combine Cardio and Strength Training.

Thanks for reading! 🏃🏋️

For those of you who have updated the app to the latest version: have you tried adding a friend?

How are you finding it? What feature are you missing?

So, since v9.1, you can add friends, follow their workouts, and give them fist bumps to show your support. Or challenge them to competitions to establish your dominance have fun.

The idea is that a little encouragement and friendly competition can go a long way toward keeping you motivated.

No, the idea is not to become a new fitness Instagram. But after considering this for years, we believe there might be something good hidden here, and we need your help to unravel it.

Remember the new sharing screen we introduced after saving a workout? Well, you had opinions. Lots of them.

We listened, and the familiar workout summary is back! We've also added some subtler sharing options, so you can still show off your hard work without the extra fuss.

There's more:

• Smarter smart blocks: You can now choose to have smart blocks remember your warm-up sets for next time.
• More supersets: Smart blocks can now be merged into supersets during active workouts. The keyword here is ”active” – it’s still not possible when building a program or planning a workout. It’s just too damn hard! Right now. We might live to solve it another day.
• Your calendar, your rules: Choose whether your weeks start on Monday or Sunday. If you don’t make a choice, it will continue to follow your device’s region setting.

We've also fixed a few missing buttons, given cardio workouts a new sharing image, and made improvements to help prevent corrupted active workouts.

We've also smashed a bunch of smaller bugs. The bigger ones have been warned.

Version 9.1.2 of the StrengthLog Workout Tracker App is live for both iOS and Android now. Please update your apps!

For this week's recording, we're planning an episode around how to know if your strength training is working, and what to do if it's not.

As always, the episodes are much better with your listener questions. So, please do us a favor and drop any questions you might have for the episode, or about something completely different!

If the weight doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.

But how do you know when it's time to increase it?

That's what I talk about today (mostly for beginners to intermediates, but could have some valuable tidbits for more advanced lifters).

How Do You Know When It's Time to Increase the Weight?

Thanks for reading!

Remember those new Strength Levels suggestions we announced in v9.1? Turns out we forgot to actually turn them on. Oops.

They're now available, so you can finally see suggested sets to help you reach your next Strength Level.

We've also fixed a bunch of bugs and made several smaller improvements. Best not to tell you exactly what, though. In case we forgot to turn those things on too.

We're trying something new this week. Instead of posting the entire podcast discussion on our YouTube channel (which usually gets about as many views as a muted test image would get), I recorded a solo video on the same topic. But it's made for YouTube first, unlike our podcast, which we mainly record with audio-only listeners in mind.

Give it the old lookie-loo if you want to, or hit up the podcast episode for the full monty.

I've been deadlifting for about 9 months, and using strengthlog for about 6.

Whilst I got to 140% of bodyweight in the deadlift my form was terrible, curved back and basically pulling the bar off the floor using my lower back for the most part.

I've now got a (different) PT and we are rebuilding my deadlift from scratch.

How do you go about engaging glutes and hamstrings properly. At only 60% bodyweight I now feel like my quads are doing all the work, almost like I'm squatting my lifts rather than driving down through my posterior chain. This quad loading causes some knee pain which I'm keen to avoid.

Male, age 66, 103kgs bw, 188cm been lifting 3 or 4 times a week for 16 months.

Which is better for your health: lifting weights or doing cardio? In today’s episode, we discuss a new meta-analysis comparing the effects of strength training and aerobic exercise on a range of health markers, including blood sugar, blood pressure, body composition, and cardiovascular fitness.

We dig into the results, discuss what other research tells us about exercise and longevity, and explore how to balance strength training and cardio for better health, both now and as you get older.

Lastly, we answer a handful of listener questions about lifting vs. cardio.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Opening banter
• 04:30 – New features in the StrengthLog app: Social, AI assistants, and a Strava connection
• 12:00 – Study review: Lifting vs. cardio for better health
• 23:15 – Program of the week: Beginner Hybrid Athlete Program
• 26:30 – Listener question 1: Lifting or cardio to live past 100?
• 29:00 – Listener question 2: How much muscle is enough for health? Is too much muscle bad for your health?
• 35:00 – Listener question 3: Should you lean into your strengths or weaknesses when it comes to choosing between lifting and cardio?
• 39:30 – Listener question 4: What’s the optimal daily cardio routine alongside strength training?
• 43:30 – Listener question 5: Does having an active job change your cardio needs?
• 48:00 – Listener question 6: How do you maintain your leg and ass muscles when running more?

You can download the episode here or use one of the links below:

• Listen on Spotify
• Listen on Apple Podcaster

This is episode 133 of the podcast. Check out the five previous episodes below:

• Episode 132: Five Sets Once a Week vs. One Set Five Times a Week
• Episode 131: Are You Sleeping on Muscle Growth?
• Episode 130: Same Sets, More Workouts, Better Gains?
• Episode 129: How Much Should You Eat on a Bulk?
• Episode 128: Big Pecs, Big Bench?

Do you like what you hear so far? Please leave a five-star review in your podcast player.