Stronk.app – open-source gym lifts journal
21 comments
·December 24, 2025cj
I'm in the gym 10+ hours a week and still use Apple Notes. My only complaint is Apple Notes becomes buggy when the note gets too long (so I started making a new note for each month of the year).
Feature request: ability to have custom excericse types. E.g. today I did dumbbell incline press and alternated between neutral and pronated grip. Gotta find a way to log that. Also support for super sets.
There are a lot of "features" built in to Apple Notes by virtue of being free form / unstructured. And now with LLMs, the appeal of logging things in a structured way is much less.
I wonder what it would look like to create "Apple notes on steroids" (pun intended) -- log your workout the way you normally do, and at the end of the workout use LLMs to apply structure, see trends, insights, etc. That would be cool.
apatheticonion
Noted. Good thoughts here.
As an aside, the coolest benefit I've gotten from gym logging apps is charts. It's interesting to see my session volume, 1RM and heaviest lifts go up over time. It helps me plan my progressive overload schedule and notice when I'm plateauing/have to up the calories.
Plus it's super rewarding looking at the chart from 4 years ago and seeing how far I've come.
But you're completely right about notes on finding ways to ergonomically record variation.
tummler
This is great. I just need: easy way to track sets/reps, ability to save specific workouts, and charts would be fantastic. I also find the little animations some apps provide to be a helpful reference for form, but that's a nice-to-have.
silviogutierrez
Full disclosure: I run a competing app [1].
I think this is great, especially because it's OSS.
But if you want to really outshine Strong and Heavy, I'd look into "auto progression" of exercises. Too often, people just... log the same thing for years. Some RIR / RPE / linear progression would keep people motivated.
[1] joyapp.com
apatheticonion
Hey this is interesting! Thanks for sharing.
I was thinking of adding in workout templates and maybe even figure out progressive overload or routines like 5-3-1.
Someone earlier made a reference to another app that lets you write/share scripts that can be used to design custom programs - which is very interesting. Being web based, custom programs could be written in JavaScript and `eval`'d in a sandbox - allowing for a similar experience.
esperent
This looks nice, but IMO the Hevy lifetime membership (around $70 I think) was a great price for a such a polished app.
It's got a huge library of exercises and more importantly, basic instructions and animations for each. I wouldn't use it to learn the exercises for the first time, but it's the perfect level of information to serve as a reminder for good form during a workout, when I'm doing something that I'm less familiar with.
If you don't want to or can't pay for it, this looks decent. But in terms of functionality and polish, there's definitely a case of "you get what you pay for" going on here, at least at the present level of development.
Have you considered adding more data like animations to the exercises database? I did accidentally come across the database of animations that Hevy uses (I forget the name but it should be easy to find of you search for it) . It can be licensed, not sure how expensive it is though, but if this takes off perhaps you could take donations to pay for it?
apatheticonion
Hevy is honestly great and good value. For something polished and feature complete, you can't go wrong with it.
I started building this app out initially to see how far I could get in a short space of time. It's still quite bare but it shouldn't be difficult to flesh out from here.
For me, it's more about the fun of making a working thing and then sharing that with others. If people contribute that would make my year, but it's rewarding enough to know that people are using it.
I'd like to expand on the exercise details page, but not looking to profit so licensing resources is off the table. Cloud sync is an interesting one because I'm trying to keep this free. I was hoping to offer users the choice of sync solutions (Google Drive, for instance).
xnx
Link: https://stronk.app
koakuma-chan
Do you come up with which exercises to do on your own? I rely on the app for that.
apatheticonion
Right now the exercise movements are listed (e.g. shoulder press), which you can add to, but the routines themselves are manually entered.
I'm going to be adding in workout templates and maybe even auto-workouts (like auto progressive overload or routines like 5-3-1).
Another commenter mentioned an app that lets people write scripts to program custom routines. That sounds super interesting and a great way to share routines. I'm thinking of writing an engine for custom routines then use that to program some default ones.
koakuma-chan
Sounds great. I am also tired of paying for Fitbod and it seems to only get worse over the years.
freedomben
Dude, this is super neat and is very much in line with what I am looking for to replace my Google sheets. I love my sheets, but they could really stand to benefit from a UI around them. This looks like a great start.
How much help and contributions are you looking for?
apatheticonion
Hey thanks! I've got a few issues in the repo to get started. https://github.com/alshdavid/stronk/issues
If you have any ideas, drop them in the issues
CI/CD is all set up so anything merged to `main` get published straight away, happy to include PRs - doesn't have to be perfect, can always fix it up after.
A few low hanging fruit pieces would be a "details" page for exercises (e.g. "/exercises/Bench Press").
I've also gotta set up the "measure" page for tracking bodyweight - but I am working on adding sqlite to the client so this sort of stuff (like charts) is easier to do.
smenyp
Nice!
Check out liftosaur as well - comes with a DSL and ability to write programs (pun intended).
apatheticonion
That's pretty incredible. Looking into it
b450
Neat, have you considered linking to exrx or anything for the exercises?
null
apatheticonion
Looks like a great source for an exercise list and technique information. I might be able to integrate it via iframe for technique information.
Not sure it's above board to scrape the site for workouts though - plus I wouldn't want to take away from their ad revenue.
null
colesantiago
Thanks for this, are you able to put a donation button on the app?
I hope more people consider instead of putting their app on gated walled app stores or in app purchases that we have 100% free web apps instead.
kudos!
apatheticonion
Thanks! That's really kind of you and I appreciate the support.
Honestly I've never created a donation button before, haha - I've just added a donation link (via wise) to the README and to the settings page in the app.
Again, appreciate the support!
Hey all, didn't want to pay for Strong or Hevy so I started building my own lifts journal app.
It's free and always will be.
https://stronk.app
Source Code (open to contributions). If you find bugs, add it to the issues. If you don't use it now but plan to after I build out the features, please star the project so I know to keep working on it.
https://github.com/alshdavid/stronk
There a lot to do still, gotta add things like;
- Strava/Facebook Sync
- Import/Export
- Charts
- Set type (warmup/drop)
- Timers
- Online backups (right now it's saved to your phone)
- Programmable custom routines using JavaScript (like 5-3-1, progressive overload)
- A suite of default routines
It's a web app because I'm not paying Apple and Google to publish it on the app store.