So I’ve been going back to the gym lately, so far I’ve completed a little over 7 weeks. Let’s do a little background first, so you can see where we are today. 2-4 years ago I use to be in the gym 3 times a week, lifting excessive weights. I wasn’t worried about cardio or anything like that, I just want to pump iron like a meat head from New Jersey. Back then I wasn’t a Blackberry user and my phones were rather simple. I use to record all of the reps and weights I used on a piece of paper that I kept in my wallet. But now 4 years roughly later I’m back to the gym, but of course way more high tech now.
First thing I actually did before I even signed up for a gym was research some way I could incorporate my Blackberry into my workout. The easiest of course was having music on the device, that was a no brainer, but I wanted a way to record my rep/weight progress without going back to the pen and paper. At first I thought I’d just using the memo feature on my Blackberry, but then thought there could be a better way. Was there a app I could use for this? I hit Google hard for this one. I did find quite a few apps, but none that really did what I wanted. I found some that recorded body stats, and had some list of exercises, and nutritionist stuff, but not what I wanted. Then I found Gym Technik. Gym Technik had everything I needed. Their website was very great. The Gym Technik site lets you chose from a list of workouts you can do or you can build your own from their extensive list of exercises. After selecting the workout you want to use or building your own, you can enter how many sets/reps/weights you will use each time you work out. You can also enter in body stats like weight and for the more advanced the size of your arms/legs/etc as you work out to see the growth.
The great part about Gym Technik is their excellent mobile site, which can be reached by going to http://m.gymtechnik.com. This allowed me to bring my Blackberry to the gym and enter in my stats on the fly, no more pen and paper for me!! From the mobile site I can login, choose my work out and get started. I currently do 3 sets of each exercise I have picked. If I decide to add a set or maybe even a new exercise I can do so on the fly very easy. Once I’m down, it saves all of my information, and shows me a summary of what I did and where I improved. If I increase my reps or weigh it gives me this information. If I reach a new distance on the bike or treadmill it tracks all of it and shows me my process. This was great enough to me, then they created a Blackberry App!
The Gym Technik Blackberry app takes it one step further by allowing me to easily enter in my stats as I go along without needing to be logged into a mobile site or have a data connection. Granted I still need a data connection to sync my data after, I could always do this when I had a connection later on. This also removes the fear that while I’m working out if there is some data outage that I wouldn’t be able to save my information as the mobile site would be useless. I must say first that I really wish this app wasn’t just for premium account users. This is a great app, but I don’t really need all the features of their premium account. So in essence, I’m really paying all that money for the app. That being said, the first time I used it was great. It was simple. I launched the app, chose my workout and then it displayed a list of exercises from my workout I could do. Upon choosing one, It provided me with the input fields to enter in the stats as I went along and below that it showed me exactly what I did last time for reference. Just like the mobile site, if I need to add a set or a new exercise I was able to do it on the fly. You can check out some more images of the app in the Gallery
Now it wasn’t always rosy. They do label this version of their app, the “preview” release. So while it is a great, it is prong to some issues. I did notice that when using the application, it sometimes wouldn’t show me what I did last time. After speaking with a support person from Gym Technik, I learned that this was a bug that is being worked out. So hopefully this will get fixed in a later version.
**Update** At the time of this draft I had the Blackberry Bold 9000 which was OS 4.6, I not currently have the Bold 9700 and OS 5.0. Currently Gym Technik doesn’t support OS 5.0, so I have lost this great app! I have spoken with them and they hope to have it before the end of the year. I’m hoping sooner as I really miss this app now!
Are you a Blackberry user? Are you going back to the gym or currently working out? If so, Gym Technik is the site/app you should be using. Check out more at www.gymtechnik.com
