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Comment by superhuzza | Hacker News Reader

>People who are into fitness don't need apps to track their fitness. Their fitness routine has nothing to do with technology and they get questionable value out of something they could do much better with a notebook and a spreadsheet.

Doesn't align with my experiences, at all. Every single runner and cyclist I know (including myself) uses apps to track their activities. Notebooks are simply not as convenient as automatic GPS tracking. I understand why notebooks are sufficient for lifting, which has long rest periods to record relatively simple measurements. But it's a different story for lots of other sports.

Strava alone has something like 50 million users, and for good reason - it's an incredibly effective training tool.

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I think the difference is that the OP (and I) are into resistance activities (barbell sports) and you are more into cardio and aerobic exercises.

As a powerlifter, I completely agree with the OP. When I first got into resistance training, as a techie, my inclination was to try all the apps and gadgets. 3 years later and I realised that the old timers had it right, the best tool for resistance training is a pencil and a notebook, maybe backed up by a spreadsheet to track long-term progress.

If you ever want to digitize your training log, I’d love for you to try out my markup language: https://www.traindown.com

Nice. As a potential user I have two questions.

1. As a consumer, I would like to have such an editor / viewer for my phone, is there something alike for traindown?

2. Functionality-wise, wouldn't a nice editor/viewer app necessarily be a subset of spreadsheet-like app and isn't traindown then competing against such a more general app? (Not that I know a single FOSS spreadsheet app, so I'm speaking hypothetically)

Do you have a parser for it, to extract data for progress charts?

Neat!

> 3 years later and I realised that the old timers had it right, the best tool for resistance training is a pencil and a notebook, maybe backed up by a spreadsheet to track long-term progress.

I think the issue here is that you never really stuck to a single app and used it long term. I was in the same boat, I pretty much tried all the apps, bought an Apple Watch, but nothing really satisfied my needs. In the end, I just stuck to one app (Strong), and kept using it. It's not perfect, and there are things that I'm missing, but in the end, it always me to track all my lifts and shows me the progression. It's indeed something that I could quite easily do with a notebook (although I won't have the fancy graphs), but I already have my phone with me to listen to music, so might as well use it to track.

+1 for the notebook. I don't even bother writing how many sets and reps, just the exercise, highest weight, and any notes, e.g. "got it up but almost too much".

Along with rough tracking of calories -- I ignore things like green veggies and coffee -- and weight and I'm golden.

I end up using Strava to track individual runs, but then still store longer term records in an Excel spreadsheet. Before the spreadsheet, it was on paper. This helps me track some of my trends better (miles per run, miles run in a pair of shoes, etc). Things that are possible with Strava, but ridiculously easy with a spreadsheet.

For me, Strava is more about tracking my individual runs and keeping up to date with what friends are doing. Monitoring any actual training, for me at least, is easier with paper and a spreadsheet.

I’m on the complete other end. I don’t pay much attention to my individual performances but I love being able to see how I trend over time on specific segments or training intensity and that’s the main reason I pay for Strava.

I track my shoes with Strava, I'd definitely never do that on paper. In fact, just last week I retired 3 pair of shoes that had all gone over 500 miles. (whether this is a good number is another story, but I had to pick something).

I only wear one set of shoes at a time, so tracking their distance is quite a bit easier. If I needed to track multiple sets at a time, I’d be lost without something like Strava. My last 3 pairs (same brand/style) I’ve retired around the 380-400 mile mark, which is about as far as I trust the treads.

I am very much not OK with strava's data retention and privacy policy, and paying for a service like that. With a basic $60 bike computer you can already track distance per ride, average speed, cumulative distance, max speed, duration of ride, cumulative duration. Go up just a little bit in cost and you can add heart rate functionality.

There's also a number of things you can do with an old Android smartphone and some common apps that create GPX format track files, if you want to import your ride paths into Google Earth pro on a desktop PC, without uploading to a cloud based service.

You don't need some $400 bike computer and a cloud based service to achieve a high level of road cycling fitness. Have a good digital scale at home. Track your cumulative riding distances and average speeds. Eat healthy, etc.

Having an offline log and metrics to compare your own performance against is extremely useful. Data and information can be a powerful motivator to compete against yourself to improve your average speeds, climbing times and so forth. Where I disagree philosophically is whether that data needs to become a subscription you pay forever for, or if your data needs to ever go out to a third party.

Most people don't use strava as the main data aggregator, only as a social platform. Most use Garmin or Polar or similar, and then sync a copy to Strava.

And I really disagree. Maybe one doesn't need a good cycle computer, but the stats and motivation that brings is invaluable. Seeing the actual data instead of just an average/total at the end is very useful.

Just picked up a new pair of running shoes now that I'm back into running. The salesperson at the fancy running store seemed surprised that I don't use an app or some kind of tracker. Why would I need to? I'm not competing. I just want to stay fit. My competition is myself and my goal is to run until I'm satisfied with my workout. Why would I care if I ran X number of miles or what my speed was? How does that help me? It seems like a distraction with no point other than showing off to other people.

I used to track my hiking miles back in the day. All it did was justify poor eating habits or give me a false sense of pride.

For some people completing rings or seeing numbers go up is satisfying. For the same reason completing all quests in an open world game or leveling up a character in an MMO is satisfying and addictive to some people.

This is useful for those who don't find working out in itself to be a rewarding activity and may have a hard time sticking with it otherwise.

I run and cycle, and don't bother tracking. I haven't put much thought in this decision.

I'm just interested in being fit (which I achieve with just shoes, and going for a run every ~3 days), not in achieving peak fitness or optimal training strategies.

I believe others benefit from tracking, which is fine too.

That's not his point. People who are running were running before Strave, MapMyRun or whatever. These apps don't give a lasting motivation for others to run on a large scale. 1 / 100 maybe.

I got into running thanks to an app (N2R). It was incredibly helpful in building up stamina and improving my run with a damper up series of workouts at my level.

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