Comment by roganartu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by roganartu | Hacker News Reader

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This looks really cool. I currently track my workouts with the Strong ios app but I’ve been thinking lately about a few things it lacks. One example is missed reps (which Traindown looks like it supports!)

I’m a weightlifter that used to be a powerlifter and have also done more bodybuilding-style programs previously too. One thing common in weightlifting programs that I’m yet to find any tools that support natively are complexes. These are typically notated like “Exercise+Exercise” or “Exercise Exercise”, with the set/rep notation normally being “3x2+1”.

For a concrete example, a program might have a complex like “Snatch Deadlift + Hang Snatch + Snatch” for “3x2+1+1”, which translates to “perform 3 sets, where one set is 2x deadlifts, 1x hang snatch, and 1x snatch”. I suppose from a data perspective it’s like nesting sets within a set.

I looked through the guide and the spec, but couldn’t figure out how I would represent complexes in this notation. Any ideas?

Thanks for the kind words!

I also have a background in Olympic weightlifting and know exactly how convoluted complexes can get.

Currently, I model those as either supersets (when it fits) or I name the complex as the movement and then use the metadata to get at a data shape that mostly fits.

Example of supersets would be something like

Clean: 150 2r 5s + Jerk: 150 5s

For a clean double, single jerk. The named complex just captures the reps and weights per submovment in the metadata.

I suppose the perfectionist in me just doesn't like having N different combinations of exercises saved. I do currently follow a similar model to what you describe when recording complexes in Strong, using the name to hold the rep data, it just feels like "Clean + Clean and Jerk" for "2+1" is nicer than "Clean + Clean + Clean and Jerk" or "Clean double + Clean and Jerk" etc.

It feels like using supersets for these would make tracking data over time difficult. eg given your clean clean jerk example, if one wants to track volume of a particular exercise it's not clear what the volume for each of those should be applied to, and it could get rather messy (is it 2x cleans + a jerk, or 1x clean + a clean and jerk?). Everyone probably has different preferences there, but my point is that native support for complexes would probably make stuff like this easier by providing a way to properly define/separate each component of the performance at data entry time.

I don't mean to only talk about things it doesn't support, though. I honestly think this looks great even without support for complexes (it's just long been the top of my wishlist for exercise tracking tools!) and am going to try it out next week!

Totally get it and I agree there should be a more intuitive handling of complexes that aligns with the goal of being able to convey the “training story.”

I will do some noodling on this. If you have ideas, I’d love to dialog on them. I hadn’t implemented anything beyond the basics just because I hadn’t been doing them lately. I definitely want to support your use case as a first class language feature.

Doh! Bad formatting. This is what I meant

    Clean: 150 2r 5s
    + Jerk: 150 5s

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