Isabella Remedios's review of Hevy - Workout Tracker Gym Log

Date last edited: 05-30-2024 at 11:47AM

   
Rating: Not Rated

Review:
Isabella Remedios

Title: Hevy - Workout Tracker Gym Log
Developer: Hevy Studios S.L.
Genre: Fitness
My Rating: 5 out of 5
Primary Audience: Adult athletes
Version: 1.32.7
Platform: iOS, Android, Desktop
Cost: Free




Hevy is a fitness app available for free on iOS, Android, and Desktop to assist athletes in keeping track of their workouts, providing them with statistics regarding their performance, and connecting them with other athletes in similar fields. While many other workout apps simply just provide workouts to copy, Hevy is unique in the fact that it lets athletes save and log their own personally created workouts, along with providing them tips and advanced tracking tools on how to improve. Hevy was released on November 16th, 2019, and created by co-founders Guillem Ros and Desmond McNamee. Ros and McNamee decided to develop Hevy because they were unhappy with other existing workout apps at the time. They wanted to create a workout app that implemented more personalization, organization, and community.

The First Media Key: Balance
The media key of balance encourages us to ask questions like, “What virtues or vices does the media focus on?” and “What good can viewing or using this media do for me? (Gan, 32). The Hevy app focuses on the virtue of temperance because it encourages frequent exercise as a priority and aims to moderate inactivity. The app also applies a rest timer to each workout log to ensure that athletes do not overwork or injure themselves either. By organizing the amount of reps and exercises in different areas of the body in the workout log section, Hevy creates more balanced workouts for athletes based on both their skill sets and the areas they want to improve.

The Second Media Key: Attitude Awareness
Attitude awareness involves the message the creators convey to their audience through their media. “ . . . The second media key helps us cultivate an awareness of the attitudes underlying the media we view and use” (Gan, 40). The Hevy app strives to encourage athletes to become more self-sufficient by allowing them to manually create their own workout routines and add custom details such as routine notes, types of exercises, and the number of pounds, reps, and sets of each exercise. This personalized experience is perfect for athletes who want to take initiative over their own health and are interested in specific details of their exercise progress such as personal records, one rep maxes, muscle distribution, heart rate, and BMI in the statistics and measurements in the personal dashboard section. It is clear the creators value individuality and self-empowerment.

The Third Media Key: Dignity of the Human Person
The third media key encourages the user to treat his/her body and soul with respect along with those of others. “Our bodies aren’t cages that contain a soul. They’re part of us, and because of that, they too have great dignity” (Gan, 53). Thus, as humans, we can appreciate and aim to take care of our physicality. Physical exercise is good for every human to do to some capacity, depending on their ability. Hevy does not try to convince people to work out for the sake of appearance or opinion of others, as many fitness apps and videos tend to do. It does not provide unrealistic expectations and goals such as getting a six-pack or losing 20 pounds in three weeks. Rather, it concentrates directly on organized information and statistic-based progress. The dignity of the human person is focused on by encouraging healthy self-image and fitness improvement.

The Fourth Media Key: Truth-Filled
“All too often the profiles we devise for ourselves don’t represent who we are, but who we want people to think we are. We can leave out the details we don’t like, overemphasize the ones we do, and present the world an idealized and ultimately false picture of our life” (Gan, 75). Hevy tries to prevent this by encouraging users to build up their profiles, but only allows them to change very specific things. For example, a user can change their posted name, bio, and socials, but they do not have the ability to alter their posted workout statistics. The information automatically transfers over from the database. This promotes a sense of humility and honesty concerning fitness achievements or progress, preventing many athletes from acting on the temptation to lie about statistics in order to seem stronger than they already are. Thus, the fitness statistics presented in every Hevy profile are truth-filled and accurate in representing each user’s physicality.

The Fifth Media Key: Inspiring
While Hevy focuses on self-sufficiency, it also focuses on building community as well. On the home page, users have options to discover athletes and connect contacts. By doing this they can share workouts and engage in supportive comments, exemplifying the idea that “through the media, we share in God’s work of communicating love to others” (Gan, 85). The app incorporates a like button but does not feature a dislike button to avoid disparaging other users. The comment section allows for free speech, but the system is managed directly by the company and negative comments may be taken down. However, upon viewing, users can see that the majority of comments consist of either kind and inspiring messages or accountable feedback.

The Sixth Media Key: Skillfully Developed
It is important for media to be skillfully developed so that “it increases credibility. It increases believability. It tells users and viewers that the media-makers know what they’re doing” (Gan, 108). As a user, one needs to have confidence in the creator. The layout is informed by individuals who are either athletes themselves (yoga instructors, coaches, and gymnasts) and/or are passionate about creating content that serves the athletic community. The app has an easy-to-use layout that is well organized. When a user opens the app, they will see three categories to choose from at the bottom of the screen: home, workout, and profile. The home page consists of a feed of posts from other athletes the user can choose to follow. The workout page allows the user to create, log, and explore exercise routines. The profile page provides the user with specialized data and statistics regarding their own workout progress. These three sections of the app exemplify Hevy’s three areas of focus: community, personalized workout logging, and performance analytics.

The Seventh Media Key: Motivated by and Relative to Experience
In order to be motivated by and relative to experience, “the medium matters. How well it corresponds to the age we’re in” (Gan, 121). The age that we now live in is the digital age, and Hevy using an app as its medium reflects this, as mobile phones have become very prevalent in daily and personal use for over 20 years. Whereas many athletes used to log their workouts with a pencil and a sheet of paper, Hevy offers a more efficient approach that provides additional features, such as performance analytics and rest timers, that a simple piece of paper could not do. Hevy also directly correlates with the daily workout experiences of athletes, through the process of logging but also allows for notifications to be sent to users to remind them to work out daily.



Overall, Hevy is a very useful app that I would encourage any serious adult athlete to use. The Hevy app’s clear and to-the-point data and organization allow for a clean and sleek layout along with providing the aspects of community, personalized workout logging, and performance analytics, all of which encourage the user to embrace positivity and support, self-empowerment and personalization, and better knowledge of one’s self, specifically their physicality.








Seven Keys:
Balanced:
Attitude:
Personal:
Truth-filled:
Inspired:
Skillfully Made:
Experienced:

Overall Rating: 32/35

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