

Show HN: Workout planner - mkeung
http://intro.thryv.com/home.html

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trueluk
* 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.

~~~
kbouw
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.

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gailwinds
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.

~~~
kbouw
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 :)

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

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richardv
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.

~~~
mkeung
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.

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bvsatyaram
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!

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mkeung
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.

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silentpost
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.

~~~
mkeung
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?

~~~
silentpost
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.

~~~
squizzi
Howdy, Kyle here (4th co-founder, designer on the team). Just to add to this,
initially the Plans page was intended to be a Plans database with differing
tabs of Plan related content and I think your comment solidifies the need for
it. I love the idea of user-submitted voting and I think that would fit the
bill for a tab within the 'Plans' page that shows publicly shared plans. Thank
you for the feedback.

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pkfrank
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.

~~~
mkeung
noted, thanks for the marketing + date tip

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psycr
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.

~~~
kbouw
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.

------
eitally
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.

~~~
mkeung
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.

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zrail
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.

~~~
mkeung
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

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donniefitz2
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.

~~~
kbouw
Will do, thanks!

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mandlar
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?

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

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

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mping
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!

~~~
mkeung
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)

~~~
mping
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!

~~~
mkeung
Playing with it now, it's simple and straight forward. I'll see if it'll
convince me to get more sleep. A couple things that I found odd: 1\. What does
the password color rectangle thing on signup mean? I know it had to do with
password strength but the colors didn't make any sense.

2\. I am doing a simple yes no question, it wasn't clear that checking the box
= yes, and unchecked = no. I thought it was just missing a yes checkbox at
first.

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gurden
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.

~~~
kbouw
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).

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paulbennett
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.

~~~
mkeung
Fixed

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dave1619
Just curious what's your monetization plan? (I noticed it's free right now.)

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

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ericjeepn
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?

~~~
kbouw
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.

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jonespen
Congratulations!

Is there any way to change lbs to kg?

~~~
mkeung
Not yet but it's in the plans.

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neilk
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.

~~~
kbouw
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.

~~~
neilk
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".

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d0m
This clearly started from procrastination instead of getting out to work out!!
Just kidding, congrats on the launch : )

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

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

~~~
mkeung
We think we fixed it

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mkeung
bvsatyaram and kbouw are my fellow co founders.

