FitNotes is the number one workout logging app in the mobile app market, but is it really the best fitness app out there or are there better alternatives for quick and accessible workout logging?
We're talking about FitNotes being around two years since its last update, and that's why it may not be the best choice for the fitness market right now. Let's take a closer look at how the app works and whether it's really worth it for today's workout logging app market.
Effectively Log Your Workouts
For someone who is new to workout logging apps, FitNotes is a somewhat complex app to understand. There is a wide variety of functions to optimize our logging in the best possible way.
For a new user in the fitness world with little knowledge, FitNotes may seem like a complex and unattractive app. On the other hand, for experienced users, this app is ideal, as it keeps a large part of your logging optimally organized with the best data analysis and necessary tools for a good gym workout.
Main Features of FitNotes:
As a mobile app developer and more specifically focused on workout logging apps, I have used FitNotes for a few days to log my workouts, and I have been quite impressed with how it works for a user with minimal gym experience.
These are the most important features for a new user in the FitNotes fitness world:
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Workout Logging: Track the name of your exercises, weights, repetitions, and notes.
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Customized Calendar: All of your workouts will be recorded by day and displayed on a monthly calendar.
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Timer: Create alarms for rest periods or for specific exercises.
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Variables and Workout Data Analysis: Functions such as 1RM, weight plate calculator, records, body weight, body fat, and complete analysis of our workouts from repetitions, weight to exercise volume, and training are all completely free.
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Save your information in the cloud or through a file.
FitNotes offers a plethora of features in its workout logging app, with an impressive number of capabilities. These features are the most important for the average user and FitNotes delivers perfectly on their preferences. While the design may not be the most visually appealing, its functionalities are suitable for new users without imposing a heavy burden of fitness knowledge focused on gym training.
Discover the Innovative Features of FitNotes:
For more experienced users, these features may be the deciding factor when choosing one workout tracking app over another. Innovative features can also lighten the way users interact with the app, ultimately enhancing their experience and leading them to choose a product with unique characteristics.
After using FitNotes for at least a week, I have observed many attractive features that I find quite creative, including:
Exercise analysis: Shows the percentage of exercises trained based on the number of sets, which is extremely useful for preventing training imbalances.
Goals: Create weight, repetition, and training volume objectives. Perfect for setting fitness challenges.
Workout and exercise sharing: Share your daily workout, including the recorded weight and repetitions for each exercise. Additionally, you can share your progress on an exercise through a graph.
Calculators: Calculate a percentage of weight or transform weight into discs.
All of these ideas provide extra value to a workout tracking app. The difference between an app like FitNotes and a paper workout journal lies in these creative ideas, as well as the automatic data analysis that FitNotes offers.
Simply put, FitNotes remains a great option as a workout companion due to the variety of basic functions it provides. If you're looking for a workout journal app, this could be the one for you. However, if you find the app's design style from a few years ago boring, you struggle with its accessibility, speak a different language other than English, or simply do not find it engaging as an expert fitness user, then this may not be the right app for you. You could opt for another app like GymNotes, which eliminates all the disadvantages that FitNotes has. It has an attractive style, simple accessibility for new and old users, offers two different languages (Spanish and English), and, best of all, provides fun competition through a point system generated by missions directly related to the user's progress.
How does GymNotes compare to FitNotes? Which one is better?
Both are great alternatives to have a great training record because both specialize in it. While FitNotes specializes more in being a training diary, GymNotes wants to be an indispensable tool that is also competitive at levels similar to any competitive game.
It is a new modality, GymNotes wants to break with training record applications that are simply useful, GymNotes wants to be something more, a companion that records your progress, compares them with your friends, and promotes training through competitive rivalry.
If you just want to take notes of your workouts you can also use GymNotes because it offers many of the basic functions that an app like FitNotes offers. Your choice will depend on your preferences, if you are looking for something attractive, competitive, casual, and innovative, then go for GymNotes. On the other hand, if you are looking for something more basic and functional, choose FitNotes.
Main Features of GymNotes:
Like FitNotes, GymNotes is a training record app so its functions are similar, however, GymNotes has qualities that make it unique:
Daily and Weekly Missions System: Competitiveness is an essential factor in the idea of what GymNotes is, with a points system you can do the suggested daily and weekly missions to surpass your friends and make your training fun.
Training Record: Exercises, weights, repetitions, and variants.
Weekly Training Record: Generate a unique routine for different days of the week, and on rest days, you can mark them as "Rest," which will affect how the missions system is executed.
Sharing Workouts and Exercises on Social Media: In addition to being adaptable, shared data will depend on how you did your workout that day. If you set a record in an exercise, it will be displayed differently and attractively when shared.
Innovative Variables: Distribute your weight on the bar according to your registered weights, distribute your weight on dumbbells, your weight according to RM, know which days you train a specific variant.
Use of the App in 2 Languages: Spanish and English, with their weight measurements, kilograms, and pounds.
There are a lot of features that GymNotes currently offers, our app is updated every month with new functionalities that provide users with attractive ways to train, so it's the best option if you want to have fun in your workouts with us.
Features that make GymNotes an attractive alternative to FitNotes:
The most important factor to choose between GymNotes or FitNotes, in my opinion, is the goal of each person. If your goal is to compete with your friends, have fun at the gym, register and share your workouts in a totally accessible way, then your best option is GymNotes. I'm not saying this just because it's my app, on the contrary, I'm critical of myself, FitNotes is a perfect workout logging app for an expert user, but it doesn't focus as much on a casual community since its style is complicated to understand and is disorganized.
Some advantages of choosing GymNotes over FitNotes are:
Competitive System: GymNotes has an innovative system that encourages rivalry and fun in training, while FitNotes is like a simple paper to register your workouts, it offers incentives through goals, but it doesn't have the community factor to enhance it.
Constantly updated app: GymNotes is updated every month with new features, however, FitNotes hasn't been updated for 2 years, that offers a great advantage to GymNotes as it offers content adapted to what the user wants and new trends.
Attractive and accessible style: For a casual fitness user, GymNotes is the best option, since FitNotes only offers a single language, and its design is complicated to understand for casual users who train casually.
Efficient training logs: GymNotes has a fast and organized system, you won't get lost among pages as you can do with FitNotes. FitNotes, by offering a wide variety of functionalities, doesn't know where to place them, making the user experience difficult and slow.
As a fitness enthusiast, and especially in hypertrophy and strength training, I am a competitive person who is lucky enough to have friends who are also competitive. Using the FitNotes app has helped me learn new concepts such as RM and how to take advantage of it, as well as observing how it maintains a great record of data that can even be saved for free.
However, I believe that it doesn't adapt to the current needs of new generations, I'm only 19 years old and I believe that training has to be fun, using FitNotes has been a stressful experience at first because you don't understand anything, but then it has been quite satisfying. Although it's not my type of app due to the lack of a system that fosters competitiveness, I think I'll continue to use my GymNotes app, maybe it's because my app adapts to my taste, but honestly, I believe that new workout logging apps shouldn't focus solely on logging but also on promoting competitiveness and fun in training like my app GymNotes.
