Project HUGE: Dig Deep Fitness iPhone App And Huge In A Hurry
Posted March 18, 2009 at 10:00 PM by Ben Nadel
As I get more into Chad Waterbury's, "Huge In A Hurry" program, I want to start moving HIAH (Huge In A Hurry) functionality into my DigDeepFitness.com iPhone fitness software. On Day one of the "Get Ready" phase, the first thing I realized was that is was a surprising pain to add up the number of reps to hit the given rep volume. I know that math is not that hard with these numbers, but when you are trying to move heavy weight as fast as possible, math is not what you should be worrying about. As such, I added a rep volume calculation to the bottom of the weight/rep exercise sets:
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Now, whenever you a new rep count, the total rep count at the bottom gets updated dynamically.
Also, as I am moving into this new type of program, it becomes much more important to keep good notes about how I felt during the given exercise such that I can make any necessary changes on the next performance. As such, I have increased the size and usability of the notes field at the bottom of every exercise performance screen:
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Granted, these are minor updates, but they are ones that I believe will remove a good amount of friction while getting used to Chad Waterbury's, "Huge In A Hurry" program.
Reader Comments
Hold on here for a second...
Are those your actual numbers? Please tell me that is deadlift! I know your knee is preventing you from squatting heavy. If you are benching 385 x 3, then I'm thinking you just need to stay huge!
Can your app call back to the last workout same exercise so that you can review notes and weights easily? Like some sort of button that flips you between last and present.
My meniscus injury has been bothering me all week from deep squatting a measly 180 last Friday. I don't know if my knee was shaking or what, but stairs were immediately painful to use.
@Justin,
Yes, that is my deadlift :) It is by far my strongest exercise - nothing else come close. I wish it was my bench! I would be unstoppable, wmaa ha ha ha ha ha.
My knees are doing better lately after my Active Release Technique sessions. They still pinch from time to time, but the pain has been much alleviated. I am sure I will have to go back on a regular basis to get maintenance treatments.
Knee pain is the worst!
On the iPhone app, you can jump back to most current workout, but not to ones before that. This app right now is a *rough* Alpha. I threw it together in two nights, maybe like 10 hours total coding. There's a lot more to the vision than has been implemented yet.
My poor dreamboat (sighhh)
I don't like to hear that your knees aren't feeling good :-(
Your so handsome how you work out hard pain and all (sighhh) You are my inspiration!
Oh la la Ben, your admirer has me laughing.
@Justin
Why wouldn't I admire such a smart handsome man that is Mr. Nadel.
I'm glad I made you laugh! do you need a secret admirer of your own? ;-)
I can't find the app in the iphone store. Where can I get it?
P.S.
Big fan of the blog, Ben!
@Juce,
Unfortunately, I never had time to finish the native iPhone app development. If you goto www.digdeepfitness.com on the iPhone, however, it will redirect you to the web-based version.
I'd really love to rebuild it, even the web-based version. Now that I've used it for a while, I see there are a lot of things that could be improved, just from a usability standpoint.
Glad you're liking the blog :)
Very impressive deadlift numbers, The most I could ever do was 140 X 10, and that was exhausting. Is the app free? Seems like a small notepad would also work just as good :)
@Marcus,
I definitely used to carry around a notebook with me. The benefit to using a computer program to track this stuff (to me) is that I have, at my finger tips, all the previous efforts I made at any given time. This really allows me to keep myself mentally pumped up.
Yeah, it actually pays off to carry the notebook. It doesn't really work when you try to remember how many reps you did after your workout straight out of memory..
@Justin,
Yeah, 100% agreed. That was the whole impetus for creating the Dig Deep Fitness application.
Knowing Chad's training philosophy and actually experimenting with it, I found that with time, adding up the total reps became EASIER to remember and allows progress to come more naturally.
The traditional work out might be like
Deadlift 80% 1RM x 5 4 sets etc
Squat 80% 1RM x 5 4 sets etc
But by just remembering the total rep goal (say 25), it makes the work out A LOT easier to remember. And it allows for the variance of your day to day performance to be considered (some days you lift heavy, other days its very hard to get that weight up!).
Good deadlift weight. For added variation try doing Clusters to improve performance: lift one rep, set the weight down, pause ten seconds and repeat for 5 reps, rest 2 min and do for 5 sets. This will solve the bouncing and MASSIVELY improve the deadlift. Good luck!
@Omar,
Yeah, I definitely want to try some cluster (I think it is sometimes referred to as rest-pause training). I've seen some good stuff on it. In fact, I think some of T-Nation's new I-Bodybuilder work is based on that concept. I really need to get back in the gym hard core. I've been slacking a lot the last couple of months.
WOW, what a great idea for keeping track of your reps. I used to work out myself, not like you guys do, but remember how tough it is to keep track of those things.
Isn't technology great! Keep improving it and I am almost positive, it will become a hit.
@Peter,
Thanks my man. I wish I had a lot more time to work on it. Now that I'm starting to mess around with HTML5 and real mobile-oriented work, I think there's really a lot more than I can do with it.
Love this app! I was just wondering when would somebody come up with something like this. Simple, easy to use and really useful to remember your workout routines. Especially for people like me who forget what I did in the gym a day ago..
Hey Ben,
I'm thinking of restarting Chads HIH and have been using the 'Flex Workout Log' App for the last couple of month but got intrigued by yr DDF App.
I'm curious how did you enter your Routines into DDF, just from memory or is there a way to save them and I'm just too stupid to see.
Glad to see fellow lifters developing apps the world really needs ;)
Keep up the good work!
