Hey all, didn't want to pay for Strong or Hevy so I started building my own lifts journal app.

It's free and always will be.

https://stronk.app

Source Code (open to contributions). If you find bugs, add it to the issues. If you don't use it now but plan to after I build out the features, please star the project so I know to keep working on it.

https://github.com/alshdavid/stronk

There a lot to do still, gotta add things like;

- Strava/Facebook Sync

- Import/Export

- Charts

- Set type (warmup/drop)

- Timers

- Online backups (right now it's saved to your phone)

- Programmable custom routines using JavaScript (like 5-3-1, progressive overload)

- A suite of default routines

It's a web app because I'm not paying Apple and Google to publish it on the app store.

This is great. I just need: easy way to track sets/reps, ability to save specific workouts, and charts would be fantastic. I also find the little animations some apps provide to be a helpful reference for form, but that's a nice-to-have.

I'm in the gym 10+ hours a week and still use Apple Notes. My only complaint is Apple Notes becomes buggy when the note gets too long (so I started making a new note for each month of the year).

Feature request: ability to have custom excericse types. E.g. today I did dumbbell incline press and alternated between neutral and pronated grip. Gotta find a way to log that. Also support for super sets.

There are a lot of "features" built in to Apple Notes by virtue of being free form / unstructured. And now with LLMs, the appeal of logging things in a structured way is much less.

I wonder what it would look like to create "Apple notes on steroids" (pun intended) -- log your workout the way you normally do, and at the end of the workout use LLMs to apply structure, see trends, insights, etc. That would be cool.

Full disclosure: I run a competing app [1].

I think this is great, especially because it's OSS.

But if you want to really outshine Strong and Heavy, I'd look into "auto progression" of exercises. Too often, people just... log the same thing for years. Some RIR / RPE / linear progression would keep people motivated.

[1] joyapp.com

This looks nice, but IMO the Hevy lifetime membership (around $70 I think) was a great price for a such a polished app.

It's got a huge library of exercises and more importantly, basic instructions and animations for each. I wouldn't use it to learn the exercises for the first time, but it's the perfect level of information to serve as a reminder for good form during a workout, when I'm doing something that I'm less familiar with.

If you don't want to or can't pay for it, this looks decent. But in terms of functionality and polish, there's definitely a case of "you get what you pay for" going on here, at least at the present level of development.

Have you considered adding more data like animations to the exercises database? I did accidentally come across the database of animations that Hevy uses (I forget the name but it should be easy to find of you search for it) . It can be licensed, not sure how expensive it is though, but if this takes off perhaps you could take donations to pay for it?

Link: https://stronk.app

Dude, this is super neat and is very much in line with what I am looking for to replace my Google sheets. I love my sheets, but they could really stand to benefit from a UI around them. This looks like a great start.

How much help and contributions are you looking for?

Do you come up with which exercises to do on your own? I rely on the app for that.

Nice!

Check out liftosaur as well - comes with a DSL and ability to write programs (pun intended).

Neat, have you considered linking to exrx or anything for the exercises?

Thanks for this, are you able to put a donation button on the app?

I hope more people consider instead of putting their app on gated walled app stores or in app purchases that we have 100% free web apps instead.

kudos!