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Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

127 pointsby DrPhish5 months ago
After decades of tracking my exercise programs in progressively more complex spreadsheets I eventually burned out on metrics and complicated periodization programs to the point where I had almost stopped exercising.<p>I am now at a place where I simply want the minimal amount of structure and tracking to make sure I can maintain my fitness, so I boiled the entire concept down to what I felt was its essence: enough information and structure to remind you of what is needed today, and how it went on the same exercises last week.<p>To reduce friction, the interface is kept as simple as possible. Simple to the point where all setup is done by editing the html source file and there is only one freeform &quot;weight&quot; textbox per exercise to manipulate. Data is autosaved as it is entered. It never nags or judges you except by showing the last date you entered data in for that day-of-the-week&#x27;s exercises. The only quality-of-life feature is a super-simple rest period timer in the footer.<p>It has no external dependencies and only uses browser local storage. There is no possibility of monetizing it.<p>I was on the fence about sharing since it is such a small and simple project, but decided I would share here in case anyone is looking to make a fresh start in the new year and finds the philosophy appealing.

15 comments

xnx5 months ago
I love the idea of this type of app, but feel like local storage is too fragile to be the system of record. Any way to backup to disk or cloud storage?
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bityard5 months ago
I like simple, but this looks almost _too_ simple. You say you got burned out on metrics, but where you see clutter and distraction, I see data for identifying patterns. I track my measurements and like to see how much weight I&#x27;m lifting and how far I&#x27;m running over time. IME, it&#x27;s easy to get stuck on a plateau and not really notice it when life gets busy and &quot;get the workout over with&quot; starts to become the only goal.<p>Right now, I&#x27;m following established programs and tracking what I do in a Google spreadsheet. I certainly don&#x27;t love relying on Google but I need to be able to edit and view my workouts from both my computer at home (for planning) and on my phone at the gym (for entering data).
Avfrosta5 months ago
There&#x27;s something beautiful about creating software in the absolute simplest possible way there is, html.<p>Good job, will definitely try it. But I know myself, will end up looking for something just a <i>little</i> more advanced. And before I know it I end up staring at graphs trying to figure out what my hours&#x2F;day solving JS bugs has to do with my weight...
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triyambakam5 months ago
The demo link is to the raw HTML rather than rendered. I am on mobile so maybe that&#x27;s why? I&#x27;m not sure what headers are being sent. A demo or screenshot would be great.
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inezk5 months ago
Very cool! I like the simplicity of it. Right now I&#x27;m working on something similar for myself (and some of my family), but maybe other people find it potentially interesting too? Essentially I&#x27;m building a webapp that each time I use it will arrange random ~5-7 lower back exercises from a list of ~25 for a total of 10 minutes session. Then it will guide me (only time and name of exercise) through the workout session (counting down the exercise time, and pause&#x2F;break time). The problem I&#x27;m solving is to not have to think too much about what exercise I should&#x2F;want to do next, make it a little bit more fun&#x2F;interesting (due to randomness aspect) and free my hands from operating a timer to time myself (also less likely to drift to social media or youtube videos). Thoguhts?
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cj5 months ago
Nice work. Any recommendations for folks looking for an app that suggests workouts and routines based on prior workout history? (E.g. identifying muscle groups not being hit by historical routines)<p>I’ve just been keeping a running workout log in Apple Notes for the past couple of months.<p>I’ve had a lot of success just copy&#x2F;pasting my workout log into ChatGPT and it’s surprisingly good at making recommendations, but I’m scared that by using an app I’ll loose access to the raw data unless it’s somehow exportable.
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faangguyindia5 months ago
As someone who exercised for the long time but never made much progress (even under IFBB pro coaches in bayarea)<p>When i started taking growth hormone (10IUs a day), I got bulked and cut in a few months<p>I suggest not to follow influencers, most of them are not really natural and even if they are, they are probably genetic luck draw (which most like you&#x27;ll not be)<p>My uncle is one such genetic freak, he barely works out still he&#x27;s more buff than you average gym guy without even setting foot anywhere in the gym.
knighthack5 months ago
Love it! I have my own minimal system for tracking my fitness, which I came to after that typical track of forgetting YAGNI implementing all sorts of features...that never got used, because of how complicated it got.<p>Simple systems are the best; go only for complicated systems if you&#x27;re a professional and _need_ complicated tracking features. (And if that&#x27;s needed, you might be better off hiring a manager to do the tracking anyway.)
binarydreamer5 months ago
Congrats. How did you decide the amount of exercises and when do you log it? How much do your exercise file grow?<p>I can&#x27;t count how many times I have thought about something like this and have decided to build one for myself which includes my liquid, meals, workout, and fun cardio habits. I will be using indexDB for when I&#x27;m offline and just a small database.
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reynaldi5 months ago
Thanks for making it, I love the idea of more and more apps being built using web technologies. I currently use Caliber app (IOS), and it’s robust enough for me, while not too overwhelming and limiting as Strong and Hevy.<p>Since Minimal is a static website maybe it can be a PWA?
robdar5 months ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Five-Star-Notebook-Amethyst-840029CF1-ECM&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0CWS1R8JT" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Five-Star-Notebook-Amethyst-840029CF1...</a>?
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djokester5 months ago
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strong.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strong.app&#x2F;</a><p>For folks looking for something more robust to track their workouts.
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foxhunt5 months ago
I loved how you minimized functionality in your project! It&#x27;s inspiring.<p>Over the holidays, I built a simple habit tracker that lets you track any event&#x27;s start and end time.<p>In the process, I upgraded my personal homepage to Next.js 15, added Payload CMS and NextUI, and experimented with React Server Components and Actions.<p>Check it out: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mojica.de&#x2F;tracker" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mojica.de&#x2F;tracker</a><p>You can create new event types by entering activities in the top text field. Events are automatically started for new types.<p>There are a few minor bugs to fix in the new year:<p><pre><code> - Event cards don&#x27;t display correctly on iOS. - Using no email during registration doesn&#x27;t work (someone registered without an email, and the field is unique).</code></pre>
moon825 months ago
Thanks for sharing, interesting...
pranshuchittora5 months ago
We are building something similar and more intuitive at hitt AI <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitt.ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hitt.ai&#x2F;</a><p>... Launching soon