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827 points surgomat | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.367s | source

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

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midenginedcoupe ◴[] No.44316992[source]
Interesting timing, Stronger By Science have just made their programme bundle free for every body: https://www.strongerbyscience.com/program-bundle/

Maybe making use of these could solve the exercise selection and programming issues in the app?

replies(1): >>44317790 #
surgomat ◴[] No.44317790[source]
Awesome move from Stronger By Science

That said, they're mostly full training programs i guess, while what Workout.cool or the old Workout.lol project needs is more at the "individual exercise level" let's say. Videos, metadata, structure, etc.

If they ever open-source a library of exercise videos with clear licensing, that could definitely help yep

replies(1): >>44319065 #
1. midenginedcoupe ◴[] No.44319065[source]
But I think that's my major issue with the app as I understand it.

Starting by choosing which muscle to work is a really odd choice. If you're novice enough that you don't know which movements to choose then you're also likely to not know which are the most effective muscles to target for your goals.

Then the app gives you a bunch of exercises to target that one muscle, but doesn't tell you which other muscles the exercise also targets. Or any clues on suitable weights or rep ranges, never mind progression. It also seems it's suggesting doing all the suggested movements. I picked barbell and pecs and it gave me three exercises. Then, even more weirdly, I came in again to write this comment and selecting the same options it gave me a different set of three exercises. First time around it didn't even suggest barbell bench press - the most obvious and common exercises for that muscle and equipment. That's all really confusing and un-obvious.

Being able to pick a template programme and tweak from there seems a much friendlier way of getting started.