LiftTracker 1.1e is out

This was a drawn out release, partially because of my new job and partially because I started down the path of making the ultimate meet tracking system with federations, rankings, etc.   I wound up spending an entire weekend on this but ultimately decided to pull this out.   It added confusion to the program and I feel detracted from the purpose of this which is bettering lifters,  NOT tracking meet results all over the country.  I may revisit this at sometime, but for now I have returned to the goal of analytics and making a good logging program.

So,  for this release the theme was calculations to help you see just how you are training.   When you log in for the first time after getting the new release, the program will ask you for your most recent meet data.   This is so the calculation engine can measure your volume and training percentage against a target.

In addition,  you can override a meet data with your own target numbers.  This may come in handy if you flub a meet lift but don't want to reset your training percentages to just your opener.  To override your meet data you can go into the options screen and pick new numbers.  If you override one,  you must override them all.

The next part of the calculations involve taking into account resistance such as bands or chains.   A big mistake people often make is forgetting to take these numbers into account when doing percentages.  Let's say you are an 800 meet squatter,  you may feel that a 405 is a reasonable number for your dynamic days,  and you would be correct.  However,  add a blue band and the percentage now jumps up to 75% or so.   From our experience at Tampa Barbell,  if you are trying to have a truly dynamic day you need to factor in the resistance.   The program supplies default resistance numbers for the squat and bench.   These numbers were calculated by Michael Lawrence for EliteFTS.    You can also download the excel spreadsheet from the app which has band calculations for all different height lifters in order to help you supply your own values.   Note that the height is the height to the center of the bar NOT the lifter's height.    

Note that you do not have to supply ALL of your own values.   You can choose to override just the ones you want.  If the app detects that you have not supplied an override,  it will fall back to the default for the band type in question.   Also,  note that the resistance is the total resistance given bands or chains on both sides of the bar.     In addition,  when you are selecting a resistance when entering a lift,  it is per-side.   So,  if you wanted blue bands you would click once on the strong bands when selecting a modifier.   

             

Granted,  the calculation stuff is sort of complicated.   However,  this is where I really want to invest a lot of time in the app in order to help drill down and understand why certain training works.   It has been interesting to apply these metrics to the existing month or so of data  we have gathered.  It was a little surprising to me how little volume we were doing for certain lifts.   Also,  you can see when you are starting to enter into too high a percentage of your max with the resistance.     In order to see these calculations,  go into your Show Training Options screen and choose Core lifts.    The core lifts right now are defined as Bench, Squat, Deadlift, Sumo Deadlift, and Box Squat.      I am interested in feedback about how else you may want to see this data!

  

Finally,  there were quite a few bug fixes based on user feedback.  

One notable bug was that a missed lift (denoted by zero reps) was being tracked as a PR.  This is no longer the case.

The PR mechanism was reworked a little bit,  and you can now filter to only see PRs by choosing PRs in the options above.    I also wanted to rework it so not everything is a PR.    Previously,  PRs were calculated by matching gear,  extra resistance,  and reps.

For example:   225/5  and 275/8 would both be PRs since the reps were different.   Now,  if you do a lift at a higher rep range and with more weight,  it will erase the earlier one from your PR list.  After all,  if I did 275/8,  I would NOT expect 265/6 to be a PR since the previous performance was better.   The app now recognizes this.   When you first login after the update,  the PRs will recalculate according to this.

This was a bit tricky.  If you guys notice any issues with this,  PLEASE email me and I will look into it.   There were a lot of corner cases I had to work through and I may have missed some.

As I said,  this was a pretty big release.  My goal is to release more often based on feedback.
I will be posting up in a day or so what I am working on for upcoming releases.   If you guys let me know stuff or have suggestions,  the Beta is a great time to get these ideas to me.   I can likely work them in.


-TF