I’ve been trying for a while to get stronger, to pack on more muscle mass, little by little. In some ways I’ve been quite successful. Sometimes, you get to the gym and just do not have the right mindset to lift heavy things. After going to the gym with this thought a few times in a row, I knew that if I wanted to achieve any of my weight lifting aims, I’d have to come up with some sort of a solution.
That’s when I found the Strong app. It’s great for tracking workouts and keeping motivation high (even though motivation is a total myth – and here’s why).
Here’s my quick review of how it works, how it’s made me stronger, and why you need to start incorporating it into your workouts.
How Strong works
Strong comes with a few pre-made routines that you can use as they are, or modify them to your heart’s content. I’ve mainly stuck with the pre-made ones. They’re split into various muscle groups (like chest and triceps or back and biceps) or simple ‘strong 5×5’ workouts.
Recently I started toying with custom workouts and have really enjoyed putting together my own programme. You can filter them by muscle group or look alphabetically for each workout. So far, I’ve only made a routine for chest, shoulders and core, but look forward to seeing the effect that this customisation has on my continued progress.
What really impressed me was the app’s ability to track your reps and weight lifted on each exercise. This way, regardless of how long it’s been since you last lifted, you’ll know what you were on last time. It’s for this reason that I know that I’ve lost a little strength, since I had to drop my dumbbell chest press by 2 kg per side when I lifted the other day. In the past, I’d attempted to track this all on a spreadsheet, but this quickly became cumbersome. It interrupted the flow of the workout and was tough to scroll through once I’d added enough different weight lifting techniques and strategies.
Strong, on the other hand, keeps all of the workouts that are relevant to your current routine on the screen, making it incredibly simple to scroll between them. Plus, there are images depicting nearly every workout type, so I always know what to lift next.
Keeping Strong
Strong is great for keeping everything workout-related in one place. If you wish, you can track your calorie intake, body fat percentage and measurements – such as the size of your biceps and triceps. Personally, this part of the app isn’t for me. Maybe it should be; I’ve not felt the need to count calories for a while, since I have a vague awareness of what I’m putting into my body during each meal.
Likewise, I’d never seen a huge difference in my body measurements until recent months. My body fat percentage is also stored in a different app that connects to my bathroom scales, so I’ve got little need to make use of this – but would be interested in trying it for a month or so to see if it helps to increase my presence in the gym.
Isn’t that what it’s all about? I’m trying to do everything that I can to ensure that I stay in the gym enough every single week. Amongst all your other commitments, the gym is so easy to leave by the wayside. It’s for this reason that I’ve also started to employ my calendar more effectively, and have my watch flash at me 3 times a week, reminding me to go and workout.
That’s another reason for liking Strong – the motivational aspect. Whenever you finish a workout, it celebrates your achievements, whether it’s for the amount lifted or the length of time in the gym – or even if you’ve reached a personal best. As well as that, you can set a timer to sound off in your headphones whenever you’ve reached the end of your rest period, which is really effective for getting you off social media and back on the bench.
How do you track your fitness progress? I’d love to read any of your tips in the comments below.
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6 thoughts on “How the Strong app made me stronger”