Show HN: Workout planner

http://intro.thryv.com/home.html

by mkeung • 13 years ago

40 51 13 years ago

intro.thryv.com

mkeung17• 13 years ago

We’ve been working off personal assumptions and need to get external feedback, so we appreciate any comments on everything from the landing page to the tools themselves.

I found that when it comes to workouts I have a set plan that I follow, but other trackers are limited to tracking <= today and don’t handle > today very well, so my friends and I are building this web workout planner, with mobile apps to come.

The way it works is you create a workout plan, with however many days you want, then put it on your calendar (ex: recurring weekly). Each day, all the scheduled exercises are given to you in a list that you check off. It lets you change fields if you deviate (or add stuff if you’re ambitious), but for the most part when we’re in the gym we just focus on completing the workout.

In the backend, activities are isolated from their plan as soon as you start tracking so you can deviate from the plan without affecting goals or update the plan without affecting history.

We also gave the workout planner Google doc like collaboration / sharing capabilities, although right now you won’t see changes made by others at the same time until you refresh.

Thanks in advance.

d0m• 13 years ago

This clearly started from procrastination instead of getting out to work out!! Just kidding, congrats on the launch : )

mkeung17• 13 years ago

It's funny because I haven't been able to workout this week because of server prep to handle HN traffic

zrail• 13 years ago

Congrats on the launch! A few notes:

* Let me export my historical data as a CSV file. The data I record in your app is too important to me to lock up in a single app.

* Let me link to Runkeeper so that my daily aerobic exercise gets crossed off the list automatically.

* Let me link to LoseIt! so that when I check off an exercise LoseIt! learns about it and adjusts my daily calorie budget accordingly.

* Let me link to Withings so that when I step on the scale Thryv automatically learns my weight for the day.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

1. In the plans 2. we haven't decided how to interact with other services yet, but we def want to 3. I actually haven't looked at LoseIt! myself, i'll do that

The problem with #2 is that we don't want to start having to juggle multiple APIs. There are so many fitness services out there, so we might start with the most popular such as Runkeeper

psycr• 13 years ago

Signed up.

I'm working on something in the 'quantified self' space, so I love seeing projects like this launch.

As someone who has lost > 100 lbs through completely obsessive data tracking, I'd be happy to give you some feedback over the next few weeks. Feel free to reach out via the contact in my profile.

Initial impressions: good job on launching! Next, I'd say that the initial page could be improved by drawing focus to the center in the headline area. Right now, it feels a bit out of balance with both the left and right sides competing for attention. Instead, try using the 5-6 word version of Thryv in big, bold, centered text. Maybe: "Plan your fitness lifestyle in one place. Use Thryv."

Concerning the product itself, I'll have to use it for a bit.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

Thanks! (and big congrats on losing 100+ lbs)

co-founder here, i'll def get in touch with you after the craziness of the launch settles.

donniefitz2• 13 years ago

This looks like a good idea. When I actually used to work out, I used a notebook to track everything and it was pretty annoying.

The one thing about your site, the landing page in particular, that stood out to me is how there's no strong statement on the page, so my eyes just wondered around.

I would recommend making the "Learn to Thryv" bold as well as the bullet points below to guide the user to your message quickly.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

Will do, thanks!

bvsatyaram• 13 years ago

I'm CTO of Thryv. It is so exciting to finally launch! :-)

The last few days have been really hectic, trying to make the servers strong enough to handle the heavy anticipated traffic from HN.

Now we have 250 active visitors our website, yet the apdex score is 0.98!

To put in a nutshell, we did all that is needed to handle heavy traffic - from caching to moving static assets to CDN.

I will write a detailed post later on what we did and how we did!

pkfrank• 13 years ago

This is really cool. I'd recommend seeding Thryv with some "curated" workouts such as StrongLifts and/or Starting Strength. I'm not sure if those plans are copyrighted, but that would be an easy way to onboard folks with a ready-to-go plan waiting for them.

Maybe your plan is to have users create these "workout plans" and then share them, which would be pretty solid and might simplify matters.

Promoting a ready-to-use SL/SS plan on /r/fitness would be a great way to build an immediate audience. You'd be removing all of the friction, enabling beginners to move directly into the workouts without worrying about setting up their routines or tracking their progress.

Quick note: I found the "birthdate" field in the sign-up flow to be a bit annoying. In this day and age, just have me type mm/dd/yyyy instead of going back through a calendar widget.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

noted, thanks for the marketing + date tip

mkeung17• 13 years ago

bvsatyaram and kbouw are my fellow co founders.

mping2• 13 years ago

Like pkfrank said, make some "curated" workouts, and make the mobile apps FAST. I wrote https://routinetap.com, which is in a similar space, albeit different enough, and those two problems were the biggest ones. Then there's social, marketing, etc but I'm pretty sure you got that covered.

Happy workouts!

mkeung17• 13 years ago

For the mobile apps we agree that speed is important. We actually debated using phonegap or titanium studio but after playing with apps built on those platforms we decided to go with the native routes for both.

edit: i'm taking a look at RoutineTap, i'll give you some feedback once I get more time (olark + comments here are blowing us up)

mping2• 13 years ago

You guys are on a different league, I made routinetap in spare time and I just don't have the time to spend on it as I want to. So much to do, so little time... In fact, I'm so cheap that I have a jvm running on the same linode for other stuff, I couldn't get enough traction to invest more time on it. Only now I found a guy to help me out with the android app, because I was so disappointed with phonegap-like solutions (tried trigger.io but performance is still lousy comparing to native, nevermind the css3 hw transition quirks...).

Anyway, I hope you guys can get things going, I think there's some things to be done in that area, specially in combination with statistics and social/gamification.

The best of luck!

estsauver• 13 years ago

You may want to eyeball RubyMotion. I don't know what y'all made thryv in, but as a webdev I was a lot more comfortable working in rubymotion then stock objective-c.

gailwinds• 13 years ago

The site (for now) caters too much to those who already have a set routine. I would develop standard plans that users can pivot from. (Those standard plans should based at minimum on gender, weight, and current fitness to be usable.)

Personally, I would love to use something like this since I find myself floundering at the gym and picking random exercises when I am not on the treadmill. But as a woman, I don't want a suggested routine of 100 x 50 lb bicep curls.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

We don't currently have a database of plans to choose from.

We did enable google doc sharing and collaboration capabilities for workouts so those who did not have a set plan could use plans shared to them by friends or access a publicly created plan to try.

Feel free to customize your own workout and share it :)

mkeung17• 13 years ago

ty gailwinds, we'll add your ideas to our discussions on how to handle public workout plans

gurden• 13 years ago

Looks really good. But, when I create a workout routine in the Workout Planner, I would want to edit the names of the Rounds and add more information like number of reps and not just number of sets. It'll also be cool, if I could log the amount of weight I'm using for the Round in the Journal and you can do some analytics on that as well.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

You're still able to input the number of reps per exercise within a round. The reason why only sets is included in the Round header is because a round is considered as a collection of exercises (i.e., circuit training). So 1 set would equal completing all the exercises within a round (where you set the reps you want to complete for each exercise).

mkeung17• 13 years ago

The additional description is feasible it's just a matter of time really. As far as number of reps, it's by each exercise within it so we can account for more scenarios.

As far as analytics...i'm excited with the ideas we have for that, we just couldn't make them happen for this launch

silentpost2• 13 years ago

I saw this the last time it was (briefly) posted here. A couple of things I noticed:

* It'd be nice to have some sort of search feature for adding activities (incremental search or otherwise)

* On a similar note: if you don't see the exercise you're looking for on the exercise database, it'd be nice to be able to add the exercise from the same modal.

* it seems like there are a lot of missing workouts for strength. I know it's not easy to find a centralized database for exercise listings, but common things like 'squats' shouldn't be too hard to add in.

Definitely would like to see some sort of FitBit/Withings/Myfitnesspal/LoseIt! integration. It'd also be lovely to have charts documenting progress, and an ability to export to csv.

I think once the mobile apps come, this could be fantastic--I always have my phone at the gym for music, but will occasionally forget to bring a journal for tracking.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

yes, our servers were not ready then so we deleted the post within 10 minutes to not waste people's time.

Thanks for the suggestions, one idea with the exercise db we had is to allow users to submit new ones / update existing ones. We would have to approve it, so our db would stay clean. Thoughts?

silentpost2• 13 years ago

I think an admin approval would be a nightmare in terms of scalability. Why not crowdsource the approval system, with some sort of voting feature for user-submitted exercises?

check out myfitnesspal; they have user-submitted recipes. the recipes can either be private, or public with user-submitted confirmation on the ingredients/accuracy.

trueluk• 13 years ago

* Add activity could use a text input search box that filters the activities.

+ If you're going to show Exercise + Variation, it might simplify things to not include the variations in the Exercises column.

- For example, Barbell Shoulder Press (4), Barbell Close-Grip Shoulder Press(1), Barbell Wide-Grip Shoulder Press(1), and Barbell Reverse-Grip Shoulder Press(1) are all listed under exercise. No matter which I choose, I have to choose it again in the variation. Seems to me like you shouldn't include a variation in the exercises list if it's a variation of an exercise already in the list.

* Add Exercise through Journal>History: I should be able to tab between lbs, sets, reps, mins. I have to click each to edit.

* Let's say I want to add my workout history to this. Adding my historical data is difficult. I have to go day by day in the journal and then click Add Day from Plan or Add Exercise. Can you handled any kind of CSV import?

* I see I can track my body weight, but can I track my weight gain/progress per exercise? How many lbs have I added to my squat this year? What did I bench press during my last workout? Similarly, when I lift weights I look back at my previous workouts in my workout log (which is currently a thread of emails) to know how much weight I should be lifting for my workout.

* I added individual exercises to my journal for yesterday, but they don't show up on the calendar. Only activities show up on the calendar.

* When I click the activity on the calendar view, I'd like to be able to see what I did. It doesn't show me the exercises in the popup.

* There's not great support for me missing a rep. Let's say I'm squatting 3 sets, 5 reps each. That's easy enough to plan, but what happens if I miss a rep on the last set? For me to enter that data I have to change the exercise to 2 sets, 5 reps each, and then add a new exercise with 1 set, 4 reps. But that doesn't seem right because I didn't plan to do 4 reps on that third set. I planned to do 5 and I failed.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! Most of what you shared is in the pipeline for development.

We're in the process of redesigning the exercise search experience. We'll be adding in more granular analytics over time (i.e, measuring your performance over time tied to a specific exercise). Selecting a day in the calendar and viewing the exercises completed for the day is also planned. We understand this is incredibly helpful when viewing your exercise history too.

To your last point, this issue is solved by making a round of the exercise and treating each round as a set. When you get to round 3 (aka set 3) of your exercise, you can change the # of reps from 5 to 4, specific to set 3.

eitally• 13 years ago

I'm curious to learn what drove you to do this, when it seems much more convenient and conducive for people to take advantage of services like several others have mentioned (Runkeeper, Runtastic, MyFitnessPal, even Nike+) that combine a web app with a mobile app. You get largely the same functionality on the web that you provide, plus social options (sharing workout plans & achievements, etc) and curated regimens put together by experts/professionals, _and_ you get the convenience of a mobile app with an ultra-simple touch UI to carry around in the gym for guiding you through each exercise & recording the results.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

We do plan on making a mobile app. We just didn't agree with the direction the existing services were headed, we have a bigger vision for Thryv..this is just our initial release. One hint at where we are headed is the support for connecting with personal trainers that we're working on.

neilk2• 13 years ago

There's a definite need for this, but what's the business model? I'm wary of ad-supported services, because they tend not to last.

kbouw9• 13 years ago

We found this workflow fits really well with personal trainers, so they'll receive the same tools with some added PT powers for a fee (SaaS).

Ads aren't our focus for making money and we feel it ruins the experience.

neilk2• 13 years ago

Good. If you make it clear that the business plan is to sell it to PTs then it's a selling point for me. I admit I am in a very weird Hacker News type demographic though, maybe normal people are just like "free is good".

paulbennett• 13 years ago

I'd love to use this, looks like something that'd suit me. Unfortunately I'm getting

"We're sorry, but something went wrong.

We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly."

when I try and sign up.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

Fixed

RossM• 13 years ago

It certainly looks nice from the outside; I'm getting rails errors when I sign up however :)

mkeung17• 13 years ago

we're looking into this

mkeung17• 13 years ago

We think we fixed it

ericjeepn• 13 years ago

How about some standardized workout routines such as the wendler 5/3/1 or a form of the conjugate system. Also since you can share workouts can you share results? Can you share workouts with entire groups?

kbouw9• 13 years ago

We don't have a public database of plans yet, but we do allow plans to be shared publicly. I'd be more than happy to create a wendler 5/3/1, SS/SL and send you the workout URL if you'd like.

Sharing workout results and sharing workouts with groups are in the pipeline.

You can share a workout to a group currently but you have to add each individual person to the workout.

richardv• 13 years ago

Looks good. You should think about adding Facebook Connect for registrations... especially with how much a lot of people like to announce how motivated they are to look after their health, and after all, "it's a good thing that you told everyone you went to the Gym, otherwise that session would have been totally pointless".

You should also make it clearly what your business model/pricing/fees/plans/what to expect once you sign up. This information is really difficult to discover without subscription.

mkeung17• 13 years ago

So it's free for personal use, with the paid accounts in the works.

As far as FB connect, it's in the plans.

BTW, hijacking this post to say we're having sign up issues right now.

dave1619• 13 years ago

Just curious what's your monetization plan? (I noticed it's free right now.)

mkeung17• 13 years ago

We plan to charge professional services you connect to. It will be always be free for personal use.

jonespen• 13 years ago

Congratulations!

Is there any way to change lbs to kg?

mkeung17• 13 years ago

Not yet but it's in the plans.

mandlar• 13 years ago

The site looks beautiful. I'm a runner so I would like to see some sort of Runkeeper integration.

My only complaint would be the name. What does it mean? How do I pronounce it? Is it supposed to be "thrive"? because it took me a good 5 minutes to guess at that. Maybe some caption should be added "We help you thryv at your workout goals" to give better context?

kbouw9• 13 years ago

Thanks! We plan to integrate with other services in the future.

Noted and yes, "thrive" would be correct :)

Show HN: Workout planner

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