[HN Gopher] Show HN: Workout.cool - Open-source fitness coaching...
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Show HN: Workout.cool - Open-source fitness coaching platform
I was the main contributor to workout.lol, an open-source fitness
app to easily build a workout routine. The project had traction
(1.4k GitHub stars, 95 forks, ~20K visits/month), but was
eventually sold due to video licensing hurdles. The new owner
stopped maintaining it, and the repo went abandoned. Over the next
9 months, I sent 15 emails to try to save it : no replies. Feature
requests & issues were ignored. The community was left with a
"broken" tool let's say. I couldn't just let it die So I built the
new version from scratch with the same open-source spirit, but a
better architecture long-term vision, more features and no license
problems. It's called : Workout.cool (https://workout.cool). What
it offers: 100% open-source, MIT-licensed - 1200+ exercises (with
videos, attributes, translations) - Progress tracking -
Multilingual-ready - Self-hostable I'm not doing this for money.
I'm doing it because I believe in open fitness tools, and I've been
passionate about strength training for 15+ years. If this
resonates with you, feel free to: - Star the repo - Share with
fitness/tech friends - Suggest features - Contribute
code/design/docs Together, we can build the open-source fitness
platform we all wanted to easily build a workout routine and get in
shape Website: https://workout.cool GitHub:
https://github.com/Snouzy/workout-cool
Author : surgomat
Score : 506 points
Date : 2025-06-18 12:33 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| eitally wrote:
| Thanks for sharing -- I'm a personal trainer and will give this a
| shot. Is there any plan to allow users to create workouts to
| share (or does it already and I haven't discovered it yet?)?, or
| API integration with common platforms like Strava, Garmin
| Connect, Healthkit, Google Fit, Coros, etc?
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks to you ,really cool to have a personal trainer trying it
| out.
|
| Yes, sharing workouts is on the roadmap. Users will be able to
| create routines, save them, and share them with others (even
| with public links) as the previous workout-lol project.
|
| As for API integrations (Strava, Garmin, HealthKit, etc.)
| definitely something I'm open to.
|
| Curious to know : what kind of data would you want to sync or
| pull in? Workouts? Step counts? Heart rate zones?
| eitally wrote:
| For your reference, Medbridge is one of the leading players
| in this market, for trainers creating prescribed programs for
| their clients/patients. The mobile app does everything you've
| created so far, but adds a governance and analytics layers
| for the trainer to specify sets and reps, track weights, and
| for the client to assess their rpe/comments/feedback.
|
| Think of it similar to the Strong app, but aimed at
| trainers/PTs.
|
| https://www.medbridge.com/care/home-exercise-program
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| wow, its great tool
|
| has muscle selection is so much more help full than 80+% apps on
| app store right now
| surgomat wrote:
| Does that mean that i got to do a mobile app? Do you think its
| worth it ?
| billyjmc wrote:
| It could potentially help with discoverability. As it stands,
| I'd imagine it takes a very particular sort of search query
| (either "open source fitness" in Google or "fitness" on
| GitHub) to have a chance at finding this. Unless your target
| audience is only the intersection of FOSS-advocates and
| fitness folks, you might be limiting adoption.
|
| With that said, the website works just fine on my phone.
| adobrawy wrote:
| It looks promising.
|
| I retrieve error response when fetching exercise:
|
| 0:{"a":"$@1","f":"","b":"eETmgndxtv4Ar0i8Wync1"}
| 1:{"serverError":"An unexpected error occurred."}
|
| My request: curl 'https://workout.cool/' \ -H 'accept:
| text/x-component' \ -H 'accept-language: en-US,en;q=0.9,pl-
| PL;q=0.8,pl;q=0.7' \ -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \ -H 'content-
| type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8' \ -b 'Next-Locale=en;
| _fbp=fb.1.1750253718188.954698194752805529' \ -H 'next-action:
| 7f80b017f78704b00d2411aebde5ba8318b475de6d' \ -H 'next-router-
| state-tree: %5B%22%22%2C%7B%22children%22%3A%5B%5B%22locale%22%2C
| %22en%22%2C%22d%22%5D%2C%7B%22children%22%3A%5B%22__PAGE__%22%2C%
| 7B%7D%2C%22%2F%22%2C%22refresh%22%5D%7D%2Cnull%2Cnull%2Ctrue%5D%7
| D%5D' \ -H 'origin: https://workout.cool' \ -H 'pragma: no-cache'
| \ -H 'priority: u=1, i' \ -H 'referer: https://workout.cool/' \
| -H 'sec-ch-ua: "Google Chrome";v="137", "Chromium";v="137",
| "Not/A)Brand";v="24"' \ -H 'sec-ch-ua-mobile: ?1' \ -H 'sec-ch-
| ua-platform: "Android"' \ -H 'sec-fetch-dest: empty' \ -H 'sec-
| fetch-mode: cors' \ -H 'sec-fetch-site: same-origin' \ -H 'user-
| agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0; Nexus 5 Build/MRA58N)
| AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/137.0.0.0 Mobile
| Safari/537.36' \ --data-raw '[{"equipment":["PULLUP_BAR","BANDS",
| "BODY_ONLY"],"muscles":["TRAPS","BACK","SHOULDERS","TRICEPS","FOR
| EARMS","GLUTES","HAMSTRINGS","CALVES"],"limit":3}]'
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks a lot for reporting! The traffic from HN hit hard (which
| I didn't expect tbh).
|
| I'm working on stabilizing it and will have a fix in the next
| minutes / hour
|
| Appreciate you testing it out! thanks again.
| mandeepj wrote:
| HN Kiss of death or love :-). You are #1 on the front page
| now, so that was expected. Can I say the HN audience is very
| health-conscious? :-)
|
| Selected a few workouts and got this error - _Error loading
| exercises_. I 'll try again after a few hours.
| Congratulations on the launch!!
| surgomat wrote:
| Haha thank you! Wasn't expecting this kind of attention so
| quickly tbh
|
| The issue should be fixed RN !
|
| Definitely feeling the HN kiss of traffic right now lol,
| Ii'm scaling things up and fixing the bottlenecks
|
| Really appreciate you trying it out.
|
| And yes seems like the HN crowd is more health-conscious
| than I thought. Loooove it !
|
| Thanks again for the kind words and support!
| lucasverra wrote:
| Cool problems to have, enjoy the ride!
| toyetic wrote:
| This is cool, as someone whose been lifting for ~5 years its nice
| to see a fleshed out opensource tool for weightlifting.
|
| The main problem with any app I've tried is that after enough
| experience the bells and whistles of the app don't really matter
| and mostly what you care about is consistent tracking for
| progressive overload.
|
| I think this is a good app for people who want to get started
| weightlifting I would say the two main things needed for wider
| adoption would be 1. A mobile app ( or pwa, I've made and used my
| own personal workout app for a while as a PWA and its been just
| as good as any native app I've tried) 2. A way to save specific
| workouts as routines and track those for long periods of time
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| Hesitating to write this because I don't want to push back at
| all on OP but I'm not sure I agree that something like this is
| a good option for people wanting to get started in
| weightlifting. I'm not sure it's a good option for anyone
| really. I applaud OP for the effort but this is recommending
| some pretty awful workouts. For example if I select back and
| bi, it's giving me nine different exercises with complete
| disregard for the order they are in or what other exercises are
| in the workout.
|
| Why are compound lifts in the middle of the workout and why am
| I doing three different types of chin ups? There are also no
| reps / sets calculated nor are there 1RM percentages for
| weight.
|
| Bro splits are some of the lowest quality routines you can use
| and this somehow makes them worse. You could replace all of
| this, remove the bells and whistles, and create a bare bones
| PPL app that determines exercises based on equipment available
| and it would be light years better than this.
| duxup wrote:
| Were those intended to be "do it in this order" or were they
| just options?
|
| I got the feeling they were more options and you could
| reorder them if you wanted or shuffle or just do one or
| another.
|
| To me a more casual / getting started is just about doing the
| thing.
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| I'm not sure a beginner would know what order to place them
| in nor would they recognize the potential injury risk
| associated with stacking some of these exercises.
|
| Beginners should be focusing on form and simple compound
| lifts. Throwing them into things like heavy accessory lifts
| with no regard for exercise choice or format is a quick way
| to get hurt. Again, I want to applaud OP for doing this.
| The fitness industry is in a terrible place and tools like
| this have a great place. I just think it needs a ton of
| work to make it useful. Maybe if I find some time, I'll try
| and contribute but in it's current state I would never
| recommend something like this to anyone.
| duxup wrote:
| What are the odds someone is going to get hurt?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Pretty high if you don't know what you're doing with a
| weight that you're not strong enough to handle.
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| Pretty high.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Agree. IMO a simple 5x5 is going to be the better option for
| someone just starting out. Stronglifts is one flavor with a
| great app that just works and tracks all the little stuff
| (progression, giving you a specific rest time) and, once you
| plateau, you can start digging in to other options.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I also wanted to say that for people starting out keep it
| super simple. I wouldn't even use an app. At most a
| notebook or spreadsheet. Do "Starting Strength" (squats,
| bench, deadlift. 3 sets of 5). Start with a weight you can
| handle with good form, even if it's just the empty bar.
| When you can do that add 5 pounds at the next workout.
| Increasing the load is important but don't let your form
| break down. An app is not going to help you with form, and
| proper form is critical to avoiding injury, especially if
| you are at all older.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Couldn't agree more about form and keeping it simple. I
| would note, though, that an app can help with that, e.g.
| the one I mentioned has videos demonstrating proper form,
| and what I would do when starting out is video myself
| from the side and compare. An app will also track
| progression more easily on something you naturally carry
| around (your phone), versus needing to remember a
| notebook.
| Rapzid wrote:
| Hardly anybody would recommend 5x5 these days for anyone,
| much less beginners.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Why?
| mywittyname wrote:
| Community-made working plans would be a killer feature.
|
| But I do agree with your assessment. Each exercise needs a
| categorization (compound, isolation), compliments (if an
| exercise is a push, then what are some pulls), companions (if
| you're working arms at the cable stack, might as well do a
| bunch of arm/shoulder/back cable exercises), and a est. time
| to perform (including warmup, setup). This will allow plans
| to be generated in a way that makes sense.
|
| Though, I think community made exercise plans are a better
| solution than trying to devise algorithms to generate good
| plans. Though, an LLM integration might work well for
| beginners, send a prompt with a list of exercises and goals
| (i.e., beginner looking for a 3 day a week strength plan,
| build one using these 20 exercises).
| LostMyLogin wrote:
| My next question would be why are we trying to use
| algorithms to generate good plans? Good and simple plans
| have been around for decades that are easy to find.
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks a lot means a lot coming from a gym bro hehe
|
| Btw I totally agree: once you've been training a while, the
| only thing that really matters is tracking your progress and
| showing up consistently (or "mental" side in my case, i do not
| train anymore for performances).
|
| Good news : saving + tracking routines over time is in the
| roadmap.
|
| That's why the architecture of the "workout session" is the
| part that is the most different from the old app.
|
| I want users to create, reuse, share, analyse and evolve their
| own training blocks with minimal friction.
|
| Would love to hear how you handled that in your own PWA sounds
| like we've walked similar paths :)
| gavmor wrote:
| Ideally, some way to export and share between different UIs.
|
| https://json-schema.app/view/%23?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgist.gith...
| atrus wrote:
| I was just poking around, but how/why aren't there issues with
| the videos now. Sure you're just embedding youtube videos, but
| what's to stop them from taking that down?
|
| Are there really no open licensed workout-movement animations out
| there? That sounds like a fun beginner animation project
| honestly.
| surgomat wrote:
| The videos currently embedded are "watermarked" and come from a
| partner app that granted permission to use them for this open-
| source project.
|
| I wanted to make sure everything is legally safe and not just
| scraped or reused without rights.
|
| Producing proper 3D exercise videos is actually VERY expensive
| we're talking EUR10-20 per animation, or thousands of euros per
| month if you go through a good/high quality API provider.
| That's why it's such a tough space for open-source tools to
| compete in.
|
| Long-term, I'd love to help build a community-driven, open-
| licensed library of movement animations but until then, this
| partnership was the best balance between cost, legality, and
| quality.
|
| Thanks for raising it
| mariotacke wrote:
| Love it! Would be cool to be able to optionally select muscle
| groups first, i.e. before selecting equipment. Also, seeing all
| available exercises for a muscle group rather than the pre-
| defined 3 would help tailor the experience more.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| Why muscles first?
| kleiba wrote:
| Because the purpose of exercising is usually not to use a
| certain machine but to train a certain muscle (group).
| pc86 wrote:
| You generally want to make sure you're working out specific
| muscles or muscle groups a certain of times each week and
| with a certain number of working sets, rather than "I have
| used $MACHINE recently so I need to do that today."
| Zananok wrote:
| I only have dumbbells, so selecting the equipment first is
| actually ideal for me
| pc86 wrote:
| Ah yes that makes sense! I would think of that as more of
| a pre-workout filter? Where you select the equipment you
| have available and it automatically filters out
| everything that requires equipment you don't have access
| to.
| surgomat wrote:
| Mhh yes that was a question.
|
| Bcs a lot of beginners don't know what to do with certain
| equipment, but they do know what they want to train.
|
| That said, I'll maybe make both paths easier and let users
| toggle between them!
|
| PR ares welcome
| jcmontx wrote:
| "Error loading exercises". Are you getting hackernewsed?
| nsagent wrote:
| Just ran into the same issue. The start of the flow certainly
| looked interesting. Too bas I couldn't get further along. I'll
| try to look at it again later.
| miltonlaxer wrote:
| same
| minimalist wrote:
| It does not appear to be working for me right now, I get "error
| loading exercises".
|
| What are your thoughts about the wger project [0]? It is a FLOSS
| AGPL-licensed self-hosted fitness/workout/nutrition manager that
| has existed for almost a decade (I think?) It's a django app and
| has a companion flutter app that runs on
| android/ios/windows/linux/macos. It supports multiple users and
| could even be used to run a gym. Body.build [1] is a newer FLOSS
| project (also browser-based) that is focused around building a
| weight lifting program. The author of body.build also contributes
| to wger.
|
| I'm using wger in my homelab and while there are a lot of moving
| pieces to the self-host process, it works well. I'd say the
| biggest limitation is the comprehensiveness of their exercise
| database, but that is something that many people have recognized
| and are steadily expanding. If anyone is willing to contribute
| exercises (and exercise media) to this AGPL licensed project,
| they would definitely appreciate it!
|
| [0]: https://github.com/wger-project
|
| [1]: https://github.com/Dieterbe/body.build
| riedel wrote:
| I got the same error.
| surgomat wrote:
| Yes totally unexpected! It is fixed right now.
|
| Traffic spiked and my backend rate limits kicked in too hard.
|
| Thanks so much for trying it out
| gonzalohm wrote:
| I'm still getting the same error
| surgomat wrote:
| maybe some weird cache?? sorry about that e_e... cannot
| see the error anymore in the logs
| entropie wrote:
| Still.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| I'm seeing the error too as of now.
| lucasverra wrote:
| same for me >> Error loading exercises
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks for flagging it should be fixed now !
| Kovah wrote:
| I just tried Wget the other month and sadly can't recommend it.
| The UX of the website is horrible, and their mobile app is a
| buggy mess (at least on iOS). No matter if I wanted to start a
| workout, edit weights for an exercise, or browse previous
| session, the app kept crashing, hanging and logging me out. I
| am now using LiftLog which does everything that I need. FOSS
| too. https://github.com/LiamMorrow/LiftLog
|
| It's interesting that fitness and weightlifting are pretty
| common these days, but there are so few non-commercial
| applications out there that are usable and well maintained. At
| least that's my perception after digging through dozens of
| Github projects.
| duxup wrote:
| I like the idea of some of these every day basic information type
| things having nice free sites.
| surgomat wrote:
| yup, glad it resonates with you :)
| stephenhandley wrote:
| I don't get the pick the muscles thing almost as much as I get
| the open source fitness thing.
| marcuskaz wrote:
| Agree, it seems like a mismatch of features and audience.
|
| As someone who doesn't know much about working out or what
| exercises to do this sounds like a good app. I need help, but
| picking based on muscles is off. My thought and goals are not
| by muscle group, but losing weight or getting more toned.
|
| Conversely, someone who knows what muscle groups they want to
| target, probably already has some sense of the exercises to
| target and thus less likely to need the app.
| dybber wrote:
| For someone like me, who have had an accident (dislocated
| kneecap) and need to focus on special muscle groups to
| compensate it makes sense to search for exercises based on
| muscle groups.
| jhaile wrote:
| Interesting, although I wouldn't say that's the audience
| that the author says he's targeting.
|
| Also - for most people who had accidents they'd probably
| rather click on "Dislocated Kneecap" and then have the
| software suggest exercises to help with that condition - vs
| needing to bring that knowledge to the app.
| surgomat wrote:
| great feedback and I agree that (i forgot tbh..) most
| beginners don't think in muscle groups, but in goals like
| "lose weight" "feel better", "beginner friendly", etc...
|
| The goal is to make the app more welcoming by offering goal-
| based (or filters,let's see) entry points like "fat loss"
| "beginner full-body" or "3x/week routine" and not require
| anatomy knowledge to get started.
|
| The muscle filter will just be one of many ways to browse,
| not a gatekeeper i guess. Thanks a lot for highlighting this!
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I think this is geared more towards people doing bodybuilding
| splits, rather than fitness in general.
|
| Personally, as someone that exercises but not for aesthetics, I
| think of strength training in terms of movements not muscles
| worked. So I'm thinking "press, pull, squat, hinge" not "chest,
| lats, glutes". Thinking of function and then doing fundamental
| compound movements just makes more sense to me, although I do
| sometimes need to hone in on a muscle for functional reasons --
| like targeting the glute medius for opening up my kicks in my
| Muay Thai training.
|
| Neither is more correct, they're just different approaches.
| nickjantz wrote:
| Thanks for doing this! I recently was looking at enhancing
| workout.lol and noticed that but was wondering what happened. I
| have some enhancements and think still an open PR on the original
| repo I will port over.
| surgomat wrote:
| That would be amazing
|
| I'd love to see your ideas make it into Workout.cool!!
|
| Let me know if you need help porting the PRs ill support and
| merge contributions quickly.
| SeeManDo wrote:
| Looks a lot like https://workout.lol/
| SeeManDo wrote:
| Ah I see he mentions this
| derbOac wrote:
| It reminded me a lot of https://musclewiki.com/ (or vice
| versa).
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Is this not just more AI slop? Why is anyone commenting or voint
| it up?
| mrln wrote:
| How do you even come to that conclusion? There's nothing on
| that page that screams "AI slop" to me.
| blitztime wrote:
| The readme and the emojis seem heavily AI.
| edude03 wrote:
| Could be, I've seen a weird trend of using AI to write
| content when it doesn't make sense. Sure, using it to write
| a blog post about a topic is "slop" but I can see arguments
| for it. Using it to improve thoughts you have in your head,
| by making up details and add emojis however, I can't
| understand.
|
| For example as a heavy FB Market place user I see a lot of
| stuff like:
|
| [picture of an iPhone 12]
|
| - iphone 14 - new battery - delivers to [enter your state
| here] - comes with [enter accessories it comes with]
|
| Like they were too lazy to even fill in the brackets or
| ensure some level of accuracy. What's the point?
| throwawayoldie wrote:
| That's a problem that was solved in the 1980s with the
| introduction of "mail merge" functionality in word
| processors. Using an LLM to do this is like using a
| sledgehammer to swat a fly.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I hope people come to realize that this kind of stuff is a
| major turn-off right out of the gate.
| surgomat wrote:
| Mh no in this case, just... me. I posted this before going out
| to grab dinner with my sister, and honestly didn't expect any
| of this traction. Came back to dozens of comments, stars,
| traffic spikes, app down... lol
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| It would be great if the equipment and muscle selection wasn't
| mandatory. For example, I have a pull-up bar but I have no idea
| what muscles I can train with it. Why not let me filter on
| beginner exercises instead?
| lifesaverluke wrote:
| then you should choose your pull-up bar as equipment, right?
| surgomat wrote:
| Mh yeah i didn't expect that but it shows that the current flow
| assumes a bit too much knowledge up front, I"ve heard similar
| feedback from others.
|
| I'm already planning to make the filters optional, and add
| things like "beginner-friendly", "popular exercises",
| "calisthetics", ...
|
| Thanks for pointing it out
| flkiwi wrote:
| This is the number one complaint I have with all of these
| solutions (and my tone here is friendly, not irritated): they
| assume you're already far along your fitness journey.
| Watching Apple's iOS updates talk about AI coaches to "help
| ensure you stay in your max results zone" or whatever ... my
| dude, that person doesn't need an AI coach. That person is
| already optimizing by fractions of a performance percentage
| point. People need, and benefit from, tools and coaching when
| they're starting from zero.
| surgomat wrote:
| > "ensure you stay in your max results zone"
|
| lol true
|
| Tbh that's exactly the gap Im trying to fill with
| Workout.cool. After reading all the feedback here
| (including yours), I've realized we need to make things
| even simpler and more beginner-friendly.
|
| not some hyper-optimized tracker, but yeah a simple, open,
| and welcoming entry point into strength training. Got it.
| It's faaaar from perfect yet, but it's made with that
| intention at heart. Trust me !
|
| Thanks again for your feedback mate.
| abtinf wrote:
| Just out of curiosity: if the original project was open source,
| why did you decide to restart from scratch?
| surgomat wrote:
| I actually tried really hard not to
|
| sent 15 emails over 9 months to the new owner, offering to help
| or even take over the repo but i had no replies.
|
| Issues and PRs were ignored(you juste have to see the issues
| section of the report). Rebuilding from scratch was the only
| way to fix the licensing & continue the project i guess
| Asraelite wrote:
| So why didn't you fork it?
|
| And what specifically were the licensing issues? workout.lol
| is MIT from what I can see.
| surgomat wrote:
| the code was indeed MIT.
|
| The licensing issue I referred to was about the videos:
| many of them came from paid/licensed sources
| cAtte_ wrote:
| just fork it?
| surgomat wrote:
| the original project was built in javascript with a NoSQL
| backend (mongo).
|
| I wanted to move to a more "new", (robust?) and
| maintainable stack with TypeScript and a SQL-based backend
| (PostgreSQL)
| abtinf wrote:
| This makes a lot more sense and sounds like a good move
| for the overall health of the project.
| abtinf wrote:
| I think the missing context here is what is meant by "fix the
| licensing". Both the original project and this new one are
| MIT, so naively there doesn't seem to be an issue.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| Open source just means the source code is available. It doesn't
| mean you can legally use it. That is, in fact, the whole point
| behind the most famous open source license, GPLv3: code is open
| source, but there are still restrictions on how you can use the
| code. I don't know about now (most projects I work on are MIT-
| licensed, these days), but there was rancor around the move
| from v2 to v3 because v3 was more restrictive.
| bramhaag wrote:
| 'source available' means the source code is available. Open
| source comes with a whole set of guarantees [1] about free
| redistribution and derived works.
|
| Copyleft licenses like the GPL come with extra guarantees
| that do not violate the core guarantees of open source
| software. Instead, they make them stronger. The
| 'restrictions' GPL imposes essentially boil down to this: "if
| you use (parts of) GPL software, you must give your users the
| same freedoms the GPL guarantees." GPLv3 and AGPL closed up
| loopholes that allowed people to bypass those clauses.
|
| [1] https://opensource.org/osd
| thayne wrote:
| Even if it was licensed under GPL, which it isn't, forking
| the project to create another open source project is allowed,
| as long as the fork is also GPL licensed.
|
| But in this case the original project used the MIT license,
| so the only requirement is that it the form includes
| attribution to the original project.
| olliejennings wrote:
| Am not sure what your data source is, but l run the following:
|
| - https://wrkout.xyz/ (exercise database api with images and
| videos) - https://github.com/wrkout/exercises.json (open source
| exercise dataset)
|
| If they are of any interest / help
| surgomat wrote:
| Hey actually came across wrkout.xyz a while back, really cool
| project!
|
| For this, i rebuilt the entire dataset from scratch with a
| partner to avoid any licensing ambiguity (especially with
| videos), and to have full control over attributes,
| translations, etc.
|
| But I absolutely love seeing other open projects in this space
| and I'd be happy to explore possible synergies if it can help
| both communities.
|
| DMs open !
| desireco42 wrote:
| This is how you do contribution. Thank you. Everyone has ideas
| about fitness, but this makes it super easy to start because
| you already did a collection for us.
| unstppbl wrote:
| Wow! You're a legend! Thank you!
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks for your comment !
| paul7986 wrote:
| I count calories and use chatGPT to do so by taking pics of my
| meals / what I eat.
|
| I'm looking forward to Meta adding this feature to their Ray Ban
| smartglasses so the glasses automagically count my calories each
| time it sees food on my plate or going into my mouth. A feature
| they possibly should make optional, but for me who has
| prescription Metas it would be a big time saver (try to eat 1500
| to 2000 calories a day and burn 250 to 500 in exercise). I think
| the knowledge of how many calories you consume done automagically
| would prompt 1/4 of people thinking and or on Ozempic to not do
| it.
| edude03 wrote:
| You know counting calories by taking a picture literally
| doesn't work right? In fact, I'd argue it's one of the best
| examples of when an LLM confidently feeds you misinformation.
| An obvious example, a chicken breast fried in oil and a chicken
| breast air fried look identical, yet the oil fried one would
| have 3-4x the calories at least. Don't take my work for it
| though - this was just on HN the other day:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44220135
| toyetic wrote:
| What happens if you give it that context though? Or prompt it
| to search the web for comparable meals?
| cogman10 wrote:
| At that point I just have to ask what the AI is actually
| doing for you?
|
| I can just hit a search engine and say "number of calories
| in X" and get a precise answer with 2 seconds of calculator
| math.
|
| If I have to take a picture, send it to ai, but then amend
| it with "This is air fried chicken, it weighs x, it's a
| breast cut. I didn't add salt."
|
| Why do all that when a single search will give me the
| answer I want without the picture upload or context?
| paul7986 wrote:
| I agree but with smart glasses doing it for you i feel
| it's a whole different experience and utility.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Well i eat out almost always at healthy-ish chains (Cava,
| Panera, etc) so GPT gets the calories directly from each
| chains website. As for food prepared in regular restaurants I
| use it the same and its not precise but close same with home
| cooked meals per my testing the data.
|
| Overall I am a bit obsessed but not that obsessed to the
| point it needs to be exact on-point precise.. just give me an
| idea of where my calorie count stands for anytime of the day.
| Just be way better if it was done auto-magically and Im
| betting this will be a good future use that gets people
| excited for smart glasses one of many upcoming innovations
| with them.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I agree in principle, but I'll say that the number of
| calories are likely not 3-4x. The 3-4x number is for deep
| frying chicken. You usually don't do that if you aren't also
| breading the chicken.
|
| A pan-fried chicken with a little oil in the pan to avoid
| sticking/make better thermal contact will add calories but
| not 3-4x more. You're likely using about 1 tbsp of oil which
| is around 100 kcal. 100g of chicken has around 160 kcal. Even
| assuming all the oil ends up on the chicken (it isn't) that's
| ~2x the calories at most.
|
| Perspective wise, though, it'll by the white rice or mashed
| potatos that are more problematic in terms of calories. Both
| have a load of calories and can't be eyeballed by camera.
| It's all about the weight for those. And if you threw in
| butter/oil, even harder to know what the actual calories are.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Not if you eat out at well known healthy chains they
| already have their nutrition details on their sites that AI
| pulls from.
| busymom0 wrote:
| Even a little bit of variation in the amount of calories
| consumed vs detected by AI will be the difference between
| gaining or losing weight. Also, since fats are the most
| dense calorie wise (9 per gram), and also hardest to detect
| by AI as fats are usually transparent (oil), it's even
| harder to get a remotely accurate measurement of calories.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| I don't want to track any of this myself. I want to walk into a
| gym, have some cameras follow me around, and have it analyze what
| I did while I was there, including statistics over time.
| ctxc wrote:
| Well if I had to do this, I'd build the whole system just
| procrastinating walking into the gym :P
| ashwinsundar wrote:
| Wow I really do not want this...cameras to track you in a gym?
| What kind of dystopia is that?
| stevesunderland wrote:
| To be fair, the cameras are already there. This would just
| make them more useful I guess?
| bityard wrote:
| Do we have any assurance that you won't sell it again?
| surgomat wrote:
| To be clear: I never owned workout.lol, I was just the main
| contributor.
|
| For the sell process, like with any open-source project whether
| it's an NPM package or anything else, there are no absolute
| guarantees... that's just the nature of open ecosystems...
|
| But I've built Workout.cool with transparency in mind, no
| hidden business model, and self-hostable.
|
| Just what I can tell you is this :
|
| I've been passionate about fitness my whole life let's say. I
| started sports at 3 years old, and I've been into strength
| training for over 15 years.
|
| I didn't build this to make money. I built it because I
| genuinely care and because I see more and more people missing
| out on the benefits of training, often overwhelmed by
| complexity, closed ecosystems, or paywalled apps, including
| people close to me, like my sister.
|
| Hope that my reply counts for something...
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| This looks great. Yours isn't loading for me, but workout.lol
| looks like it'd provide the perfect level of instruction. (I'd
| skip the exercises/sets screen and DIY, but picking muscles and
| getting ideas/examples is helpful.)
|
| One note: if you're using the same video set as workout.lol, the
| one that loaded for me (male_dumbbell_hammer_curl_front_ani.mp4)
| could be compressed from 3.3mb to <300kb with little quality
| loss.
| surgomat wrote:
| Hey, the issue is fixed.
|
| I'm only embedding YouTube videos now, all with permission or
| public use from the original author.
|
| If you're into 3D or want to help create open assets, I'd love
| to chat!
| Vincenius wrote:
| Oh funny to see it here. I'm the original author of workout.lol.
|
| I sold the app to a guy who seemed to just abandoned it. I also
| texted him multiple times if he needs support, but he didn't
| answer anymore. It makes me really happy to see it being
| maintained again!
|
| Great work on the UI improvements.
| surgomat wrote:
| Ohoh ! Vincenius !!
|
| You have no idea how happy I was when I saw your name pop up
| ahahha
|
| Yeah, no luck either. It really broke my heart to see the
| project stall like that.
|
| That's what pushed me to rebuild everything, keeping the same
| open spirit you had from day one.
|
| Thanks a lot for the kind words about the UI it means a lot
| coming from you.
|
| And if you ever feel like jumping back in (I totally get that
| it might be tricky, especially since you sold the original
| project and this one is so close) but you'd always be welcome.
|
| Your input, ideas, or even just your presence would mean a lot
| !
|
| Cheers !
| repeekad wrote:
| So... someone in the industry bought it hoping to stop a free
| alternative from getting popular? Wonder what will happen to
| this one
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| From what I can see this is AI generated, and it doesn't work
| when you press continue.
| xeromal wrote:
| lmao
| repeekad wrote:
| I think the servers can't handle the high traffic from HN,
| you can clone the repo and run your own
| surgomat wrote:
| Yeah, HN hit hard earlier lol, we are now on the 2nd
| place so things should start calming down now (or no,
| lol), btw the app is already back up and running normally
| again!
|
| Sorry for that
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| > I think the servers can't handle the high traffic from
| HN
|
| It appears to be hosted on Vercel...
| surgomat wrote:
| database*
| gnarlouse wrote:
| This is SO COOL!!!
|
| I've been working on an automated calendar scheduling api that
| integrates with Apple CalDAV (iCal) that lets you schedule your
| life around goals (it uses Google OrTools to solve a great big
| CP-SAT constraint model blazing fast, a year in under 5
| seconds), along with meal planning around macro goals. I _knew_
| I wanted to integrate a workout /training plan system but had
| no idea what component I'd end up using.
|
| Now I know! Thanks for building this project.
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks mate.
|
| I'd love to hear more about your setup and if Workout.cool
| can fit as a "component" let's say? in your system, that's
| exactly the kind of use case I built it for. Open, hackable,
| and easy to plug into more powerful workflows. GG !
| cssanchez wrote:
| I started working out without a trainer a few months ago as well
| as doing rehab for a nasty shoulder tear. Today I see the benefit
| of targeting precise muscles and muscle groups, unlike other
| beginners in this thread.
|
| One feature request I'd add to the pipeline is to filter
| exercises available by Gym. Planet Fitness is ironically super
| unfriendly to beginners and limited in what they offer. People
| could add the exercises available at their gym and grow the
| database. Conversely, this could help beginner home gymmers plan
| what machines / weights to buy to maximize their routine.
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience I'm glad to hear you're
| finding value in understanding muscle targeting.
|
| Bcs It's true that most beginners tend to think in terms of
| "full body" or "upper body" rather than doing a structured
| split let's say. They don't usually say "I want to train my
| posterior deltoids and lats" lol
|
| I love the idea of filtering exercises by gym type or gym but
| can be hard to handle for "private" gyms and will also need
| some kind of moderation... Could work for large branded gyms
| though.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| This is awesome! Thanks for sharing :-)
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks mate.
| _justroy wrote:
| Awesome tool. Thanks for Sharing
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks to you for testing the app !
| czhu12 wrote:
| Got an error when trying to build a workout. Looks useful though!
| When I travel I only have bands if there are no local gyms
| offering reasonable prices, and doing the same 3 workouts gets
| boring
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Z71iT65
|
| One thing that would be super nice, make the back button and
| forward button work. Its really tempting to want to hit the back
| button when you select equipment, click next, and realized you
| missed one.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| "Error loading exercises" on what should be a simple SQL where
| query? and no way to retry the selection without refreshing the
| page.
| surgomat wrote:
| Yeap,was due to some backend rate limiting issues (got
| unexpectedly HN'd lol), but should be fixed ! Thanks for
| calling it out !
| zeta0134 wrote:
| As a fitness newbie, my first and most immediate feedback is
| confusion at the otherwise delightful muscle selection interface,
| which seems to be required during onboarding before I can see
| what the product does. I'm loosely aware of "push", "pull" and
| "leg" groupings, but I'm not personally familiar with what
| specific muscles each routine is actually meant to target.
|
| This seems to mean the app is currently only meant for those who
| want to seriously study their anatomy. Would it be possible to
| ease a novice into things more gently somehow? Perhaps with
| recommended muscle groups?
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks so much for this feedback
|
| The current onboarding assumes a bit too much knowledge up
| front (didn't expect that).
|
| Bcs yeah, most beginners don't think in terms of "rear delts"
| or "lats" they just want to "get stronger", feel better i guess
|
| I'll be adding:
|
| Optional muscle selection (or skipping it entirely)
|
| Beginner-friendly presets like "Full Body", "Upper Body", etc.
|
| OR suggested muscle groups with labels like "Chest + Triceps
| (Push)" / back-biceps... etc.
|
| The goal is definitely not to make you study anatomy before you
| can get started lol and your feedback helps to build a
| smoother, more welcoming flow
|
| Thanks again for that ! And welcome to the fitness journey!
| Hope to see you soon
| aio2 wrote:
| push and pull i can understand struggling on, but if you don't
| know legs that's kinda on you
| deadbabe wrote:
| I struggle to see the point of most fitness apps.
|
| Fitness really is a solved problem. The fitness apps and
| influencers will try to convince you that you need a whole
| database of "creative" and new exercises to see progress, making
| it seem like there's "secrets" to getting the body you want fast.
|
| There are no secrets. The truth is, you just have to do the same
| dozen or so "boring" exercises that everyone already knows. But
| you have to do them consistently, and you have to increase their
| difficulty over time. And then make sure you eat right.
|
| A lot of coaching should just be on getting the numbers right and
| correcting your form. But once you learn how to get that right,
| you can pretty much be on your own, and fitness apps become
| little more than a place for you to track progress, if you even
| care about tracking progress. Progress will happen whether you
| track it or not, you can just go by feel.
| bschwarz wrote:
| The boring exercises too were once novel but you're right in
| that continued progression is the most important thing.
| However, you can't improve what you don't measure.
| atum47 wrote:
| Damn, I made an app to track gym progress back in college; I've
| made a deal with the gym owner so I could workout for free. I
| hoped one day to polish it up and release it to the public.
|
| Mine had some good features, like the ability to share your
| protocol with other people
| surgomat wrote:
| Awesome would love to see this app!
|
| The idea of sharing your protocol (or full workout templates)
| is something I'm definitly building into Workout.cool as well.
| Users will be able to create routines, save them, and share
| them publicly (or privately) super useful for friends, coaches,
| or even just "community inspiration"?.
|
| If you ever feel like revisiting your old project or
| contributing some ideas/features, I'd love to hear more!
| atum47 wrote:
| mine was a php mysql backend with a js spa running on the
| browser. back then I got a cheap server to host everything,
| but once the app (pwa) was installed there were only a
| handfull of requests per user.
|
| my idea was to actually have a centralized backend and
| distribute the app. I need to take a look at the source code
| for that project...
| mywittyname wrote:
| This is great! I've been looking for an alternative to Strong,
| since it has a limit on the number of workout templates that you
| can have in the free version (and $100+ for such a simple app
| feels excessive).
|
| I added a link to my home screen to make it feel like an app and
| I'll give it a go for a week to see how it goes.
| surgomat wrote:
| Really appreciate you giving it a shot!
|
| Adding it to your home screen is exactly the right move ahah
| i've done the same
|
| Would love to hear your thoughts after a week of usage feel
| free to drop feedback anytime, i will add a button in the
| topbar called "Feedback" by the end of the week.
|
| Thanks !
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Wow, this doesn't suck at all.
|
| The thing that's missing for me is suggestions on how much to
| lift / how many reps. There's a fitness program called 100
| Pushups that came up with a good solution for that...
|
| - Repeat the exercise (in this case, a push-up) as many times as
| possible until failure. A person might achieve 8, for example.
|
| - The app comes up with a schedule; every other day, the user is
| expected to do a set of 3, 4, 3, 3, 5 (with a 2-minute rest
| between each set)
|
| - The app's schedule has an algorithm that ramps up the reps at a
| pace that the user can manage -- and self-adjusts if the schedule
| is too easy or too hard...
|
| - until the user can do 100 push-ups at the 6-week period.
|
| If there's any interest in this, I'd be open to discussing a UI
| and contributing.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| If you wanted to ditch the backend, you could hook this up to
| AT Protocol, have all the users' data in a PDS. No need for
| servers -- ever -- and if this project fell to a similar fate
| of the old one, it could keep working forever.
| surgomat wrote:
| I love that idea. Yeah i know this app : it is a great example
| of how simple, adaptive progression can really motivate people
| (specially beginners).
|
| And yes I'd absolutely be interested in discussing a UI + flow
| for a self-adjusting progression system like that. Yeah. Let's
| talk about that, drop me a DM? I can think about some (ugly)
| alhorithm first
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I don't think they do DMs here? but anyway I posted on the
| Github issues with some thoughts on UI and basic sketch of
| data needs
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Curious on the design decision to have a server backend, instead
| of just offloading everything to the client to avoid the hug of
| death issue and server costs.
| surgomat wrote:
| Great question i definitely considered going fully client-side
| at first to avoid backend costs and "risks" lets say.
|
| I choose to keep a server backend for a few key reasons:
|
| - Centralized updates to the exercise database (videos,
| translations, attributes) without shipping a new frontend each
| time. (The goal is to have 5 to 10 new exercices per week)
|
| - The ability to offer shared features like community workouts,
| saved routines, and (eventually) syncing across devices, etC...
|
| Room to grow into more advanced features like progression
| tracking, public/privates APIs (strava, garmin, ...), and
| integrations all of which are much harder to manage purely
| client-side in my humble opinion.
| jahrichie wrote:
| Ironically I made something just like this 2 years ago, but much
| less sophisticated and pretty.
|
| If you want any help or to collab on future iterations please
| shoot me an email.
|
| https://compute.rorwashere.com/
|
| cheers@rorwashere.com
| surgomat wrote:
| Awesome, love seeing others exploring the same health/dev
| space!
|
| FYI your link is bringing me to a Typeform (?) feel free to
| resend a link
|
| For collaborating, yes i'd be up or even just bounce around
| ideas for future iterations.
|
| I'll shoot you an email soon so we can chat more
|
| Would love to collaborate. In the meantime PRs are always
| welcome if you ever feel like contributing directly :D
|
| Cheers!
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I guess Sign in with Apple costs money compared to Sign in with
| Google, right?
| surgomat wrote:
| Technically sign in with Apple doesn't cost money (directly)
| it's free to implement
|
| But you do need to have an active Apple Developer account
| (which is $99/year) to set it up and maintain it.
| R_khameshra wrote:
| It looks promising. I retrieve some error response when fetching
| exercise, will check again
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| I ran into a handful of technical issues, which are
| understandable at this early stage. But on a more fundamental
| level, the exercise recommendation doesn't seem like it
| demonstrates a good knowledge of fitness program design. So I
| really would not recommend anyone use it to design a fitness
| program, at least in the current state.
|
| It might be better to focus not on generating routines from
| scratch for users, but rather logging existing workouts, and
| importing routines/templates other people have designed. (I know
| you expressed interested in working on the latter in the comments
| here.)
|
| Some specific issues I encountered:
|
| 1. I said that I wanted a full-ish body workout, and it
| recommended 33 distinct exercises for a single session. That's
| wildly impractical.
|
| 2. The exercise selection seems to just pick 3 random lifts
| (based on available equipment) for each selected muscle group and
| ignores the fact that many lifts hit more than one muscle group
| at a time. It also disregards the widely accepted notion that
| certain muscle groups respond better to different training
| volumes.
|
| 3. The selection of specific exercises seems arbitrary,
| recommending some that are very far out of the mainstream and
| with poor resistance curves.
|
| 4. It recommended exercises with equipment I do not have (I'm a
| home gym person - no way to exclude machines)
|
| 5. It suggests strange branded equipment (e.g., "Dynaband
| Shoulder Press")
|
| 6. If you go back to select different equipment, it will continue
| to recommend exercises with that equipment.
|
| 7. Can't delete recommended exercises, nor even add new ones.
| surgomat wrote:
| Wow, Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this seriously.
| This kind of detailed feedback is incredibly valuable,
| especially at this early stage. Thanks !
|
| So, yeah you're absolutely right: the exercise suggestion logic
| is very basic for now, and doesn't reflect proper programming
| principles (volume, movement patterns, recovery,
| compound/isolation balance, etc.). It's more of a discovery
| tool than a real "smart" coach let's say. I probably need to
| make that clearer in the current UI.
|
| To your specific points:
|
| 1. 33 exercises for a single session YES that's overkill, lol.
|
| 2. It currently just picks 3 per muscle group, with no upper
| cap or "contextual logic" let's say, and that'll change soon.
|
| 3. I'm already working to "categorize" the exercises by
| introducing metadata like compound/isolation, primary/secondary
| muscle groups, movement patterns, and tags for resistance
| "quality" let's say or "popularity".
|
| 4. I'm not sure I fully understood your expectation here. Do
| you mean you'd like to explicitly exclude certain machines or
| "types" of equipment, even if others are selected? (e.g. : "I
| have dumbbells and a pull-up bar, but please exclude all cable
| or machine-based exercises"). If so, that makes total sense.
| I'd love to clarify and improve that part of the UI. Thanks.
|
| 5. OK
|
| 6. Changing equipment doesn't fully update the list : bug
| confirmed, I'll fix that. (For the moment yes you have to do it
| 2 time - render problem).
|
| 7. It's high on roadmap. You'll be able to fully edit your
| routine very soon.
|
| Really appreciate the critique. No ego here I want this to be
| useful and respectful of good training principles. If you're
| ever up for helping shape that direction (even just high-level
| ideas), I'd love your input, what do you say?
| beezle wrote:
| Similar take. The UI and lift explanations are nice but the
| lift selections (when even available) are a bit dubious at
| best. In some cases, sub-optimal, in other cases out of left
| field.
|
| My personal suggestion would be to populate the data base with
| all the standard primary/secondary lifts (bar, dumbell,
| machines) and let users build their own program. Maybe have an
| option to suggest alternatives for any given lift.
|
| After that is done, then maybe work out routine creation,
| hopefully with some general input to the developer from actual
| trainers.
|
| Also agree, keep the equipment simple/standard and avoid
| branded machines,etc.
| surgomat wrote:
| Thanks for the honest feedback.
|
| Yeap ! Once that foundations are stable: introduce routine
| creation tools, ideally shaped with input from "real"
| trainers and a free "marketplace" to pick any workout session
| / program, provided by the community.
|
| I guess we are aligned, lol :) Thanks again !
| apineda wrote:
| If I were to want to experiment with my own gym app idea, would I
| be able to license the data set?
| surgomat wrote:
| Are you speaking about videos ? If yes, it comes from a
| partnership, and while it's allowed for use within this open-
| source project, it's not automatically "sublicensable" let's
| say.
|
| That said, if you're interested, you can either:
|
| Reach out directly to the partner for permission, or
|
| Let me know more about your project idea, and I'd be happy to
| introduce you or ask on your behalf to see what's possible.
| sfblah wrote:
| I was interested in making an open-source version of strava, so
| along the same lines. I hate how strava blocks so many features
| if you don't pay. The idea was to make a lichess to strava's
| chess.com.
|
| I'm just not sure if there are people who would want to work on
| such a thing, though. I built a few pieces, but kind of got
| stalled out.
| surgomat wrote:
| I love that idea making a "Lichess for Strava" lol.
|
| I totally relate to your frustration so many basic features are
| paywalled on Strava (i paid...lol) and there's real room for a
| community-driven, open alternative. Can't encourage you more to
| continue !
|
| I felt the same way when starting Workout.cool. On the old app,
| I realized a lot of people want open, transparent tools in the
| fitness (bodybuilding / weightlifting specially) space.
|
| If you ever feel like picking it back up or want to brainstorm
| how pieces of what you built could plug into something broader
| I'd be super happy to chat?
| jimmcslim wrote:
| Some of the other comments have identified the priority of proper
| form when lifting... are there any accurate and effective
| computer vision solutions for checking correct lifting form and
| posture throughout different types of moves? Preferably open
| source and deployable with off the shelf consumer hardware.
| aagha wrote:
| Tried to register.
|
| Error: window.fbq is not a function
| ugh123 wrote:
| Amazing! For the muscle group selector, could it have an option
| for things like 'full body', 'core', etc?
| ericzawo wrote:
| Got an error immediately.
| surgomat wrote:
| Uh, sorry about that we got hit with a "surge of traffic" let's
| say (earlier).
|
| It should be back to normal now! Mind giving it another try
| e_e?
|
| Keep me posted !
| victor22 wrote:
| Fuck yeah us nerds are working out, the bullies are so cooked
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