Gentler Streak Workout Tracker 12+

thank you

I am Jiang Linhan, a university student in China. I actually didn't like exercising before, but after a semester of sitting for long periods, I gained 10 kg. So I need to lose some weight. I discovered that dancing in Apple Fitness+ is suitable for me, and I dance every day. However, sometimes I don't know how long I should dance or if I should do another 30 minutes. The gentler option gives me a suitable reference indicator, like the progress bar on the homepage, which helps me understand whether I’ve met my daily exercise goals or if I haven’t done enough. It allows me to arrange my life easily and prevents me from overexerting myself and causing muscle strains.

Also, the Apple Watch is compatible, but I prefer to stay consistent with Fitness+ and use Apple's official fitness app. I don’t have any other reason for this preference. However, I have to say that it offers many features, and most of them are free. As a student, I don't have much pocket money and can't afford the premium version. But the app developers have been kind enough to leave the essential homepage progress bar and widgets available for free users. I really appreciate that! 👍 Thank you for your development!

Still needs a bit of work

UPDATE: We still aren’t getting anything to show our steps as activity in this app. That’s a critical issue here. We shouldn’t have to log our daily steps as workouts to record the activity. I’ve tried doing this to have a more accurate picture of wellbeing and actually have the app saying I’m overreaching when it’s not that hard to walk throughout the day, taking breaks in between. Developers need to find a way to work this into the algorithm for the app. As it stands it seems that while other apps ignore the need for customization based on individual abilities/needs this app ignores the need to have basic data at its core. We need to meet somewhere in the middle here ASAP.
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I like the app but there are area it needs work; 1) The new Wellbeing tab and syncing with Health is good, but why doesn’t it show our steps? and why aren’t our streaks reflecting our walking throughout the day? This needs attention ‼️ 2) I’ve had to edit sleep in other apps as it over estimated my time sleeping. But then this app shows “Insufficient data” under the Wellbeing tab.🤨 The day is there? I just corrected it so that the record is accurate. This shouldn’t be a problem. 3) One of the reasons I’ve liked this app is the ability to do things at our own pace. I don’t like the “reminders” about exercising or losing a streak. A streak shouldn’t rely solely on workouts but also steps. See point 1.

Developer Response ,

Hello,

thank you for taking the time and leaving a review. We are indeed a work in progress. 😊

1.
a) Steps may become a part of Wellbeing if we find a sensible way to include them.
b) Your heart rate is the base for the TRIMP formula, which lies at the core of our algorithm. When you don't track your workout, we get very scarce feedback on it; therefore, we cannot estimate the toll it took on your body. The same goes for steps that appear as exercise minutes (if you use Apple Watch). We take it into account, but since heart rate data is not dense, we can't tell the strain it had on your body, therefore the effect on Activity Path is most probably not as great as it would be with full data. The Apple Watch reads your heart rate continuously every couple of seconds when tracking a workout, giving us great data to work with. When you are not tracking, your watch reads your heart rate every 2 to 5 minutes, getting up to 20 readings per hour at best.

2. This was a bug that was removed with the next version. If the problem still persists, please send over an email to support@gentlerstories.com and we will have a look into it.

3. Reply in the 1st point covers this. I agree this would be optimal, but it would not be backed with data, which then makes it messy. You could insert walking activity by hand, and do an equivalent of distance, and estimate your efforts with RPE. However, this is not optimal and we would suggest tracking as many workouts as possible, and with that getting quality data in, so we can guide you best as we can.