From Tech Nerd to Gym Rat: Using technology to build a weight-lifting routine

How the Strong App gives me the courage and motivation to show up at the gym

Photo by Victor Freitas on Unsplash

This is Not a Paid Product Review and this is NOT an Affiliate Link.

Strong App

It’s just a really good app, and I wanted to share my experience.

I started weight training almost one year ago in my fifties and let me tell you how much I felt like a fish out of water in those early days. My husband I went on this mission together after a couple of health scares. Now in full transparency, we went ahead and signed up for a gym and invested in a personal trainer for the first few months since we had no clue what we were doing. My husband is pretty athletic in sports but never stepped foot in a weight room so this was new territory for us both.

Being the tech nerds that we are, we were rather stunned when our respective personal trainers each got out a notebook and a pencil and started writing out our plans, “gasp” by hand. They didn’t even have a copy for us. They said we could get our own notebook and write it down. My husband’s trainer at least had a spreadsheet he was willing to share with my husband. Don’t get me wrong, our trainers were awesome and have taught us so much. I just don’t know how people function who do not track and log everything digitally.

We quickly got home that first day at the gym, reviewed each other’s plans, looked at our chicken scratch of notes for which machines and free weights exercises we were expected to do at our next visit, by ourselves, without our trainers to show us. Yikes. This was going to be overwhelming. We just spent a lot of money and have no idea what we are doing. No wonder people join gyms for two weeks and never show up again.

But we were not going to be those people. We were determined to see this through. So naturally, the first thing we did was consult the internet for help. Youtube videos of the exercises and machines we were tasked with were helpful. But what we really needed was a better way to track sets and reps and how much weight we used on each exercise.

So we went down a rabbit hole on the internet, searching for apps that track weight lifting. There are a bunch of them but with varying capabilities. Since we are Apple Watch users, we definitely wanted to be able to track our calories burned and other stats on our watches, in addition to building our workout programs in the app.

After looking at a few top competitors like GymBuddy, BodySpace and StrongLifts 5x5, we landed on the Strong App. It has been a lifesaver and the more we use it, the more we love it.

We kept meeting with our trainers once a week and we were so proud to be able to show them, in the app, what we had done in our previous sessions, all by ourselves! I’m sure they have seen it all with clients, but I think they may have gotten a laugh or two at our expense - their two mid-fifties, tech-obsessed clients rushing to show them on our gadgets that we can now deadlift 20 pounds!

The one thing no app can do is give you one-on-one guidance and make sure your form is good and that you are 1. Not injuring yourself, and 2. Getting the maximum benefit by doing the exercises correctly. I highly recommend getting a trainer if you can afford it. They were incredibly helpful in getting us on the right path with our fitness journey.

Now that I no longer have a trainer, I am so glad I had set all my routines up in the app and have all that data saved in it. I now check my app before going to the gym to know exactly which muscle groups I am scheduled to workout that day, which exercises to do, and how much weight I lifted last time. After turning on the workout on my watch, I can also see how many calories I burned and how long it took me. It also tells me if I improved over the last time I did that workout, whether I had a PRs (personal records), and some other cool stats.

The Strong app offers several features and benefits that are particularly helpful for beginning weight lifters: