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Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

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Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#1
After decades of tracking my exercise programs in progressively more complex spreadsheets I eventually burned out on metrics and complicated periodization programs to the point where I had almost stopped exercising.

I am now at a place where I simply want the minimal amount of structure and tracking to make sure I can maintain my fitness, so I boiled the entire concept down to what I felt was its essence: enough information and structure to remind you of what is needed today, and how it went on the same exercises last week.

To reduce friction, the interface is kept as simple as possible. Simple to the point where all setup is done by editing the html source file and there is only one freeform "weight" textbox per exercise to manipulate. Data is autosaved as it is entered. It never nags or judges you except by showing the last date you entered data in for that day-of-the-week's exercises. The only quality-of-life feature is a super-simple rest period timer in the footer.

It has no external dependencies and only uses browser local storage. There is no possibility of monetizing it.

I was on the fence about sharing since it is such a small and simple project, but decided I would share here in case anyone is looking to make a fresh start in the new year and finds the philosophy appealing.

Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker
github.com

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#2
There's something beautiful about creating software in the absolute simplest possible way there is, html.

Good job, will definitely try it. But I know myself, will end up looking for something just a little more advanced. And before I know it I end up staring at graphs trying to figure out what my hours/day solving JS bugs has to do with my weight...

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#3
Love it! I have my own minimal system for tracking my fitness, which I came to after that typical track of forgetting YAGNI implementing all sorts of features...that never got used, because of how complicated it got.

Simple systems are the best; go only for complicated systems if you're a professional and _need_ complicated tracking features. (And if that's needed, you might be better off hiring a manager to do the tracking anyway.)

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#5

The demo link is to the raw HTML rather than rendered. I am on mobile so maybe that's why? I'm not sure what headers are being sent. A demo or screenshot would be great.

You need to take that file and drop it in githack.com or just open the link in GitHub and change “github” to “githack”.

Like this: https://raw.githack.com/bmtwl/exerciseminimilism/13d4ee27deb...

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#6
post #2

There's something beautiful about creating software in the absolute simplest possible way there is, html. Good job, will definitely try it. But I know myself, will end up looking for something just a little more advanced. And before I know it I end up staring at graphs trying to figure out what my hours/day solving JS bugs has to do with my weight...

Well, certainly some HTML ... but mostly vanilla javascript. Which in its own right is also beautiful.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#8
post #7

I love the idea of this type of app, but feel like local storage is too fragile to be the system of record. Any way to backup to disk or cloud storage?

I actually implemented an export/restore function at one point and ended up taking it out.

I waffled heavily on that feature but in the end only losing the last recorded weight for each exercise didn’t feel like enough of a loss to warrant the cluttering up of the interface or reliance on external services.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#9
post #8
post #7

I love the idea of this type of app, but feel like local storage is too fragile to be the system of record. Any way to backup to disk or cloud storage?

I actually implemented an export/restore function at one point and ended up taking it out. I waffled heavily on that feature but in the end only losing the last recorded weight for each exercise didn’t feel like enough of a loss to warrant the cluttering up of the interface or reliance on external services.

As you kinda note in the readme, that does mean that you can't migrate between browsers/machines, though since it can only save a week of data that's less impactful. Not my style, but the design decisions do work together.

Re: Show HN: Minimal, self-hosted exercise tracker

#10
post #7

I love the idea of this type of app, but feel like local storage is too fragile to be the system of record. Any way to backup to disk or cloud storage?

This made me think - is there a simple way to sync localStorage with my Firefox profile? If not, it doesn't sound like a WebExtension too difficult to create.
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