Show HN: I made a community sourced fitness routine database

I also recommend Fitbod. Excellent tracking and use of watch and workout plans generated for you but plenty of options to customize to get rid of exercises you can’t do it want to avoid. I love that it generates the workout for you and then forces you to max out on a few exercises to calculate your max strength which can be used for suggested weights in further exercises. Can have multiple gym setups with excluded exercises (in case you have a regular gym but also use something much more limited like home.)

As mentioned the videos are great and explanations clear.

Fitbod is great, but no significant updates in a year. No additional exercises in the database from when I started, can’t log over 29 reps of a weighted exercise, lots of other niggles. Has this been your experience?

So.... This is good as in it is a good aggregate, but it is, well, useless for the goal at hand if the goal is to be fit. Why? Because you can do every single one of these sequences slightly wrong and that slightly wrong would completely destroy 99% of the benefits of doing it.

Why do I say that? Because I was in an excellent shape in my twenties and by the mid forties it was, objectively, terrible even though I ate right and I was active. Very active. Amazingly active. I could do twenty knuckle pushups and be just in the "probably can't do more" state. I'm also someone who paid about $1k a month for a trainer for his ballerina wife's 2x a week training because "It is easier than hear her whine but I dont get it"

I'm also someone who was a semi-pro downhill skier during the time. I fucked up badly on slopes two years ago. I did everything wrong. Like 6 things. If I did not do 1 of those things, I would have been fine. It was utterly stupid. MRI said fractures, MCL, ACL tears, meniscus trashed - think fucking up at 68 mph on a Super G course because you think you are 25 and not 43 year old now slob. So the ballerina wife goes:

-- Get your dumb ass back into the shape you were in I met you or my little ass is gone. Get the damn trainer. Real trainer. You workout regiment does not matter if your form is not perfect.

But I got a PT who was an athlete rehab trainer. She put me back together to a point where I nearly cleared the FIS qualifier.

I hired her personally. It has been two years. I shed 20 lbs. I'm about where I was at 30. I do 5x a week 15-20 minute workouts every morning ( warmup + plyometrics + strength ) and I do 1h a week warmup + plyometrics with her. We are doing pretty much the same things I used to do except that she says "I want you to look there when you are doing it. It will create the right line for you to properly engage the right muscles rather than compensate." That's what makes a difference. Do you, for example, know that then you do a renegade rows you really should pull your arm straight up with a neck turn slightly up because if you don't you will not actually engage the right muscles in your core ( you would either do no neck turn and or you would do it too much which in both cases will not get you into the right line for your body)

TL;DR: hire a real trainer. They are expensive ( $1k/month for 4 sessions ) but they are what makes your regiment work, not the "regiment"

> 1. Images/videos showing the exercises

And all the possible mistakes explained thoroughly. What I want of an exercise database is detailed information on how to do the exercises right so I would use proper muscles and prevent injury.

> The secret is to show up. Every day. Just keep stacking those good days.

This is just not true. The most popular beginner weight lifting programs are comprised of ~3 workouts a week of ~30-60 minutes each. There's a reason for that. Exercising every day sure sounds nice, but it increases the chance of injury and often is too great a commitment for people with a sedentary lifestyle.

> Most programs get repetitive after 6-8 weeks anyway

You can easily follow a beginner program for many months before linear progression stops. Switching programs after 6-8 weeks as a newbie is absolutely pointless when you do compound exercises.

> (It’s also much easier said than done)

Yeah, it is when you force yourself to work out every day. 3 days a week though? Far more manageable.