My Tech Fitness Stack

Introduction

Fitness, like most things else in life, does not progress linearly. There are many ups and downs, however a lot of this can be mitigated by 1: not getting injured (duh), 2: not overtraining (you’re probably not doing this though), 3: don’t have your nutrition in check (this is probably true), or 4: Not properly progressively overloading. If you follow what I’m doing here, I think you can check off 2, maybe 3 of these items off this list.

Injury typically comes from 2 things, from my experience:
1. improper technique
2. overuse (not to be confused with overtraining, for this article’s sake atleast)
Overtraining, in terms of this article, will be defined not by overuse, but by improper scheduling/routines, or overexertion of the CNS
Bad nutrition, not getting enough protein, etc.
Not following principle of progress overload

How does this tech stack solve these issues?

Injury

I always keep an eye on the Fitness page of intervals.icu and make sure I am not in the “High Risk” zone.

Overtraining

The same as above, plus using Hevy to track my workouts. If I just hit a heavy chest day on Monday, I’m not going to hit chest again for at least 72 hours, from my experience.

Progressive Overload

For cardiovascular training, I make sure I stay in the “Optimal” section in the Fitness page For weight training, I make sure I am, well, progressively overloading. Even with my background as a personal trainer, keeping track of workouts was never something I cared to do. It was annoying enough for me to never want to both, and I kind of just went off my intuition with things. However, I do not think this is the best approach, and having an app like Hevy makes this almost frictionless and super easy to keep track of my workouts. I’ve only been using it for a few weeks at the time of this article, so we will see how it goes as I keep using it.

The tech stack and how they all fit together:

Strava - I use the free version
Hevy - I use the free version, considering using paid here
intervals.icu - I use the free version, considering supporting creators with the paid version
Apple Fitness

How I use them:

I if am doing any sort of cardiovascular, or really any non-weight lifting type exercise, I begin my workout with my Apple Fitness app on my watch to begin record the session. Then when I am done, I hit “end workout”. This data, along with my health data, is sent to my Strava app. All of that data is in turn sent to intervals.icu, where I get super useful and in depth metrics about my fitness.

Tutorial

1. Create accounts on Strava, Hevy, intervals.icu

2. Hookup Apple Fitness with Strava

https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/216917527-Health-App-and-Strava

Go to Strava and open up settings, click “Manage apps and devices”:
Choose Health
Check all the boxes for “Automatic uploads”, “Send to Health”, and “Notifications for new workouts”. This is important to note too, because sometimes Strava will fail to upload an activity, so you just need to come back to this spot and you can re-import activities from here. If you’re ever missing something in intervals.icu and you can’t figure out why it’s not showing up, this is usually the solution

Image Description

3. Hook up Strava with intervals.icu

Log into your invervals.icu account in the browser and go to “Settings”
In the “Settings” page, click on “Connections” at the top
Find the one for Strava and click the “Connect” button. I’ve already done this so mine looks different

Image Description 4. This will redirect you to Strava, where you will need to log in and authorize intervals.icu to access your data

4. Hook up Hevy with Strava

Go to your Hevy app and go to your Profile tab (Button the bottom)
Click the settings gear at the top right
Scroll down to the Preferences section, and choose “Integrations”
Click “Connect” for Strava

5. Make infinite gainz

⢀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⢀⣤⣶⣤⠀⠀⠀⢠⣤⣄⠠⠀ ⠘⠻⣶⣦⣤⣄⣀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣻⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠈⠉⢻⣆⠁ ⠀⠀⠀⠙⠛⠻⢿⣿⣷⣾⣷⣦⣿⣿⣿⣿⣯⣤⣄⣀⣀⣸⣿⡆ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠃ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⠛⠛⠛⠛⠛⠋⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Result

Intervals.icu: