Workout Program Tracking w/ Automation

iOS
1

I use a workout program that consists of three different workouts that rotate daily. I am looking for a way to set up a checklist or other tracking system that will be non-destructive. For example, when I’m ready to do my Day 1 workout, I would like a list where I can check off the exercises as I do them and ideally note how many repetitions I did.

Is there a way to do this so I don’t have to copy/paste my list each time and uncheck the boxes before beginning that workout for the second time?

I’d like to do this on the phone and am thinking maybe Drafts or Workflow might be the most able to do this, but I don’t even know how to set that up.

I appreciate any suggestions you have and would love some tips on working with automation on this!

2

Certainly possible with either, but I suspect Drafts might be better or maybe even both together might be the best solution. But there may be better options still.

  1. Roughly how many elements are in a daily routine?
  2. How many sets and reps would you count? Min to max across all elements. E.g. 1-5 sets of 1 to 100.
  3. Where do you want the data to end up? A journal, a dated text file, a spreadsheet, somewhere else?
3
  1. Each daily routine is generally 5 exercises, a couple of which are timed, i.e. 2-minute plank, and the rest are repetition based.
  2. Generally I would be counting 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps each.
  3. I haven’t given much thought to where I’d like it to end up, but I think a text file or spreadsheet would be most beneficial. Although, a journal might be nice too.
4

Here’s more on my thought process. Right now, each routine is written on a piece of paper with some notes about how many reps to do and tips on form from when I met with the trainer who showed them to me.

I decided I want to have those notes accessible on my phone and was going to put them in Apple Notes or Bear.

Then I decided, if I’m going to put them in a note, I may as well add a way to check them off as I do them each day and hopefully monitor my progress. So, hopefully this makes more sense.

5

The more specific you get with what you want the closer to the answer you can get. I’ve taken what you noted and made a few assumptions to have a quick go at coming up with a couple of options. One basic, one more complex. There could be other options that would suit you better using a spreadsheet directly or a database like AirTable. Much of it comes down to what you want to do with the data and perhaps where you want to store it. But in any case, here’s a couple of quick options.

First of all here’s a very simple Drafts 5 action that just inserts a simple Drafts checklist of an example exrecise routine at the current cursor position in a draft. Once run, you can tap in the “[ ]” markers to check “[x]” and uncheck an exercise. It prepopulates the exercises with some text where you can have default times or just placeholders for sets and reps, etc.

It includes a date stamp at the top and is a very basic check list style of log.

Second is a Workflow based approach that uses menus, and predefined sets of data to define your routines. It then prompts for each exercise to see if you did it. If you did it will then prompt to capture the details for what you did and default in values where specified. What is captured varies by the type of exercise (type vs. sets).

The results are combined into a tab separated format with a header line, and with each data line including a date stamp and the sequence of the exercise as well as all of its captured details (done, time, sets, reps). The idea is this has a simple structure suitable for copying into say a spreadsheet but easy enough for you to rework to whatever format you like.

Purely by way of example there’s a menu of export options at the end including Drafts 5, an in-Workflwo view, send to share sheet and copy to clipboard.

A couple of points.

  1. It is also worth noting that the routines can have any number of entries in up to 99. It doesn’t have to be just 5.
  2. The exercise routines are defined as separate JSON entries and I’ve jumped through a few hoops to get the data out. Note that there are more efficient ways of doing this with nesting in the JSON, but I figured it would make it harder for you to follow if I did that (dictionaries in dictionaries in dictionaries…)

Hope something in the above helps.

1 Like
6

Great use case for this. Would have been my suggestion as well. So… I second this. All those in favor? :wink:

7

This is great - thank you! I really like the Workflow, so I might play with that some more and figure out where to catalog my summaries.