Freely Offered

Every month or so my personal trainer gives me a new workout. This means filling my workout notebook with information about which exercises I am to do which day, how many reps, how many sets, and which weights she wants me to start with and work towards. Then I fill the spaces between her writing with notes and pictures about each exercise. And then each day I write down what I actually did. The next time I see my trainer she reviews my progress and answers any questions I had.

Rarely do I get a brand new exercise. Often it's been long enough since I did it that I don't remember some of the finer points, and so I find myself writing down information I had written down some time in the past, if only I could find it! Other times my trainer varies the exercise a bit, or I notice something I hadn't noticed before.

There's an app here, I can feel it! A tiny Tablet PC/UMPC form factor would work well. My trainer starts out with a baseline of exercises if she chooses, and/or add her own by typing and inking them in. When she builds my workout she chooses from existing exercises or writes new ones in directly to my workout; exercises added directly are added into the exercise database automatically. She and I both add ink annotations on top of the individual exercises or my workout.

Passing the workout to me happens directly via WiFi or infrared, or indirectly by syncing over the Internet. Each week I clone the workout into a baseline for what I do each day, filling in the actual reps and weights and sets I do. My results sync back to my trainer automatically, as would questions I have. Her comments sync back to me.

Calendaring is a natural fit here too - my trainer schedules her week here, with my appointments automatically syncing to my calendar.

Each exercise links to details about the exercise: any notes either my trainer or I had ever made, videos and other details of the workout.