Liftosaur

Apparently, I'm pretty good at web development, but really suck at all other areas of product development. Getting people to use it is hard! I struggle finding communities I could reach and promote my app there, it's hard to write pitching texts. Month passed since I opened the app to public, and I'm still the only registered user :(

My goal is by December to have at least 10 registered users, who'd use the app regularly. That should be a good start!

The app gets more and more features (supports both kgs and lbs, knows your inventory, and adjusts weights accordingly, added several more popular workout programs).

I feel like it could be quite useful now for other weightlifters. I built the landing page (https://www.liftosaur.com/about), documentation, created a bunch of pages in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit), and trying to raise awareness of this app.

Added a bunch of features - plates calculator (like, what plates I should add to a barbell to get necessary weight), cloud storage, progress graphs.

Having to edit code and redeploy the app to make changes in the program sucks. How could I make it more convenient?

After thinking about it a lot, I decided to make a built-in scripting language, which I could use to describe the logic of the workouts and logic of progressions/deloads. Never wrote programming languages before, needed to learn that first :)

Finally, I did that. Called it Liftoscript, it now allows to express any logic of workouts based on completed reps, completed weights, various state variables you can create. That was a huge feature to lift!

Launched my MVP! Now I have 5/3/1 program encoded there, I can track my workouts, I have history, a rest timer. I start to use it to track my own workouts.

There're things I still miss a lot - progress graphs on main lifts, I can't change the workouts in any way (they all hardcoded), everything is stored on a device only (no cloud storage).

I created a TODO list, adding ideas there, and keep working on the app.

I'm doing weightlifting for about 8 months already. I followed Stronglifts 5x5 weightlifting routine, and it was a great program for beginners, and I really liked their app, but it's a newbie program, so I had to switch to something.

A lot of weightlifters recommend 5/3/1 programs as the next step, and I liked the approach there. But I couldn't use the Stronglifts 5x5 app anymore. I tried to find a replacement app, and there're 2 types of them:

• Jefit, Strong, etc - they're really pretty and nice, but they have no notion of a program. They won't tell you when to increase the weight, when to decrease it, etc - you'd have to do all of that manually, which is daunting

• Apps written for specific program - Stronglifts, five3one, etc - they are nice, but once I want to switch a program again, I'd have to find a new app, all my progress in the app will be lost, it's a bummer...

So, at that point I thought - I gonna just create an app for myself. I'm a good at web development, I'll build a PWA app which I'll use from my phone, and I would code in a program I want. Programs would be pluggable, so whenever I'm tired of 5/3/1, I'll add another program, and all my progress would be saved.

I got super excited about this idea, and started to work on it during evenings.