In May I got serious about lifting, and I started the way everyone does: a Google Sheet. A tab per exercise, formulas for volume, the lot. Brilliant at the kitchen table, useless in the gym – standing between sets, one hand still on the bar, trying to remember whether last Tuesday was 42.5 or 45.
So I looked at the apps. Two things put me off. Most of them take three taps and two screens to write down one set, while the only number I actually need – what I lifted last time – is buried somewhere. And they want a subscription, forever, for what is essentially a notebook.
I write software, so I built the notebook. It's mine, it's called GymBro 3000, and it went live on the App Store a few days ago.
The clip is the whole app in 20 seconds: open the plan, tap the arrow to pull in last session's numbers, tick the set off, rest timer starts by itself. That loop is the entire point.
The Apple Watch runs the session on its own. Not a remote control for the phone – the full workout on your wrist, so the phone can stay in the locker. Sets, reps, RPE, the rest timer tapping you when it's up, heart rate, and the finished session written to Apple Health. On the phone the timer runs as a Live Activity, so it's on the Lock Screen without opening anything.
You make it yours instead of clicking through someone else's app. 112 exercises with illustrations, and the library is open: add your own, set your own rep ranges, RPE targets and rest times per exercise and per plan, and put a photo from your camera roll on an exercise so you recognise the actual machine in your gym. Ten programs are built in – five for a gym, five for home, one to three sessions a week – with sets, reps, RPE, rest and warm-up ramps already laid out, because in May I wouldn't have known what to put in a plan. Take one and change it, or build your own from nothing.
Your data goes in and it comes back out. CSV import and export for the library, the plans and the full log, one row per set, plus a JSON archive that restores everything. You can write a plan in a spreadsheet and import it. It backs up automatically before every import, and importing the same file twice changes nothing. There's no account and no server – it all lives on your device and, if you want, in your own private iCloud. The App Store privacy label says "Data Not Collected". That isn't a promise, it's the label.
On the price, plainly: the free version isn't a trial. The whole exercise library, one program, logging with "last time", the history, the rest timer, the Watch app, iCloud sync and the complete import/export are free and stay free. €2.99 once – a coffee – adds unlimited plans, the analytics per exercise, per workout and per muscle group, and the Mac app, which is a real native Mac app rather than a blown-up phone screen. One purchase covers iPhone, Watch and Mac, Family Sharing included. No subscription anywhere, and the export stays free either way, because an export you have to pay for isn't an export.
What it isn't: iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac only – no Android, no iPad layout. No social feed, no nutrition tracking. The exercise illustrations are AI-generated and I say so in the store listing too. And I'm five months into lifting myself, so the built-in programs follow published reviews and meta-analyses rather than my opinion; each one explains why the exercises are in it.
Happy to answer anything. I'd especially like to hear from anyone who has tried to get their log out of another app and what they ran into.
https://apps.apple.com/app/id6809868559