The App Store is overflowing with fitness apps and new ones are added every single day. If you’re like me, you already have a bunch of them installed on your phone and use them for different purposes. I have Strava and Garmin for running, CompTrain for my training program, ErgData for connecting with my Concept 2 SkiERG, well, you get the point.
However, when I’m in the gym, I feel like there is still a missing piece. There are plenty of apps that can help me figure out what to do, but very few do a good job of figuring out how well I actually did it. When I go for a run, my apps will tell me not just how far I ran, but which sections were fast and which were slow. They factor in the terrain and wind to let me know if my change in pace was due to something external or just myself getting tired. They tell me my cadence, my heart rate, and compare with previous runs. I have yet to try a workout app that can get anywhere close to this kind of information for my gym workout sessions.
The hard part about tracking gym sessions is that they are so diverse. A running app is concerned only with a single exercise, while a gym app must know hundreds. I personally enjoy doing CrossFit-style workouts, so it’s interesting to me to see how fast I’m progressing through my workout and which parts are slowing me down. However, a bodybuilder might be more interested in knowing how much volume they’ve put on certain muscle groups throughout the week. It’s clear that one size doesn’t fit all, but there are still some fundamentals that everyone can benefit from.
GPS is the secret sauce of tracking distance based sports such as running. For resistance training (gym workouts), I believe the equivalent would be a technology that could recognize exercise types and repetitions. Not just count repetitions, but actually recognize every single repetition and know the force output and time under tension. With technology like that, app developers would be able to build rich experiences targeted at every form of training, just like both kayaking and trail running apps rely on data from the GPS.
At Wodscribe we are building exactly that technology. From smartwatch sensor data we can recognize a large number of exercises and identify every single repetition with very high precision. We are still at the beginning of our journey, and we are making improvements every day. Wodscribe is targeted towards HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and functional fitness (CrossFit-style) workouts, so if that’s your jam and you want to get a sneak peek at the next generation of fitness trackers, download Wodscribe now and start training smarter.
Find us on the App Store, Facebook, Instagram or our website, wodscribe.com.
