We all know that Lifting Is Not A Suggestion. It's the easiest way for a man to start to see gains in his interpersonal relationships and sex life. It's a craft worth the continual effort to hone. So, for various reasons, I decided to try a personal training app called BodBot. I had seen ads for it on my phone and was intrigued. Here's what I've found after trying it out for a bit.

FEATURES

The app begins by asking a bunch of questions to orient itself to your specific needs. Here are the main categories:

  • Goals: Do you want to lose fat, gain muscle, improve overall health, enhance your sexual health, increase strength, train for football, basketball, soccer, baseball, etc., train for a marathon or triathalon? It tailors your workout plan to best suit these goals.

  • Body: You input your present stats to help the app figure out how many sets/reps you should be doing.

  • Muscles: You can click on a picture as to which muscles you want to target on a specific day. You can also select if you want to target only those muscles, or all muscle groups with an emphasis on the selected muscles.

  • Schedule: This gives you the option to let the app decide how long you work out and on which days, or if you'd prefer to schedule the workouts yourself and just have it tell you what to do when you get started.

  • Adaptive Progression: This feature enables feedback options after each set where you indicate how hard it was and the app will adjust your weight/reps to account for the feedback you give to make sure you're doing the right amount.

  • Fitness Tests: You can go through a series of exercises to test your present degree of fitness, helping the app calibrate what exercises, weights, reps, etc. you should be doing in future sessions to enhance your goals.

  • Equipment: You can let the app know what options you have available on a given day so that it can tailor your plan accordingly. If you tell it you're at the gym, it will include bench pressing, squats, etc. If you say you're at home, and you don't select any equipment, it will adjust to give a list of exercises/lifts that focus on natural body resistance.

  • Exercise Preferences: You can indicate on a scale how intensely you want to work out or if there are any particular types of exercises you don't want to populate (ex. if you have an injury)

  • Supersets & Circuits: You can tailor the program to alternate between muscle groups in order to maximize the down-time between two same-muscle-group sets, or circuit them so that you do one set of each exercise in a row before doing the second set, or if you just want to take the default order given, which may pair similar muscle groups on the assumption that you don't want to risk losing your spot on a machine if the gym happens to be busy.

  • Joints: I don't know what this does, but it lists several of them, presumably to advise the app if you want to be cautious with a particular joint.

  • Recovery Assessments: Between workout sessions the app may ask you how you're feeling and if any muscle groups are sore, for example, which can help tailor future workouts.

  • Connect Health Data: The app can download information from your FitBit or from Google Fit to track your progress and account for your sleep and activity patterns throughout the day to tweak your workout regimen each day.

  • Nutrition: The app also has a feature that helps you track your eating to make sure you're staying on your goals.


HOW IT WORKS

It's pretty simple: once you're appropriately calibrated, it sets up a uniquely tailored routine to meet your needs. Part of the fun in going through the above categories is that the app shows a bar at the bottom with all of your workouts for the day. As you change the options, you can watch which exercises were added, deleted, or modified based on the new selection you made, allowing you to see how certain selections affect the routine, and also which exercises are more likely to have a stronger impact on the options you're selecting.

The actual routine can take some time if you fallow all of the rest timers, so I found myself skipping many of them if I was jumping from one muscle group to another. For reference, my at-home routine today was:

  • 3 sets of 18 reps of handstand pushups

  • 3 sets of 12 reps of declined pushups

  • 2 sets of 6 reps of assisted one-leg squats (I didn't have assistance, so I used a table to help stabilize me)

  • 2 sets of 8 reps of hip thrusts

  • 3 sets of 6 reps of hand-together pushups

  • 2 sets of 20 seconds EQI push-up holds

  • 3 sets of 12 reps of door frame rows

  • 1 set of 50 seconds each side of side bridges (sideways elbow plank)

  • 1 set of 50 seconds each side of straight arm side bridges (hand on ground instead of elbow)

  • 1 set of 20 reps of 3 second alternating sides (i.e. 6 seconds for 1 rep) of straight arm side bridges

  • 2 sets of 20 seconds of isometric no-equipment bicep curls

  • 3 sets of 8 reps of 3 second lateral arm shrugs

  • 1 set of 20 reps of one-legged donkey calf-raises

  • 3 sets of 20 pushups

  • 2 sets of 25 pike presses

All of this combined took me about an hour, even with skipping several of the cool-down timers or cutting them short if I felt refreshed (hard to gauge exactly because I did have to stop at one point to put my kids to bed).

While showering afterward I noticed my muscles swollen in a way I hadn't seen since my early days doing SL 5x5 almost two years ago. Even now, hours later, I can still feel significant tenseness in muscle-groups that the SL5x5 or GreySkull might hit, but don't specifically target the same way this routine might.

Tomorrow's routine will be at the gym and includes:

  • Barbell overhead press

  • Dumbbell overhead presses with both arms

  • Dumbbell overhead presses, alternating arm

  • Assisted chin ups

  • Pull downs - shoulder-width, underhanded grip

  • Pull downs - wide overhanded grip

  • Dumbbell pullover

  • L-Raise to external rotation

  • Pull down - wide underhanded grip

  • External rotations - side lying with dumbbells

When doing initial sets, it puts an "X" for how much weight you're doing. Click on that and you can update the number and based on your feedback it will adjust the weight, reps, etc. for you in the future.


OTHER COOL STUFF

Reading through the list of exercises, I had no clue what several were. No fear - there are handy pictures every time an exercise pops up, which gives you a general idea. Still confused? Click the info button and it'll play a quick video/gif of someone doing it so you can see exactly what the right form and motions look like.

Don't like a particular exercise for any reason? No worries, just delete it from your list and the app will never suggest it again.

Want to add a particular exercise that isn't included in your routine for the day? There's a button for that too.


FREE v. PAY

Most of the app is free. There are several features that require a paid subscription. If you pay for a year, it amounts to $5/mo - easily affordable for most people, but still not necessary, as the free version is going to give you substantially similar plans, just with slightly less ability to tweak and tailor things. 3 months is at a rate of $10/mo.

The nutrition feature is pay-only. I haven't paid yet, so I don't know much more about that.

The ability to connect with Google Fit seems free, but FitBit requires a subscription.

The app also gives you the ability to skip the warm-up/cool-down part of the routine, which I admittedly ordinarily do skip.


POTENTIAL ADDED BONUS

Most women I know are more interested in following a yoga video on TV than going to the gym. They're often not motivated enough to research workout routines that best suit their goals. As with many other ares of life, they'd rather have someone in front of them telling them what to do, how to do it, and how many times to do it. I believe this is why yoga videos, cycling classes, zoomba lessons, personal trainers, etc. are all so popular among women.

The fact that an app like this minimizes the need for independent research and thought into one's exercise routine can be very tempting for women. While my wife is away on business for the time being, I wouldn't be surprised if she saw the simplicity of me doing it and decided to take it up herself - something that doesn't follow as naturally when she's seen me working out at the gym without anyone showing me what to do, which intimidates her. So, while it has yet to be seen, I suspect this could be an easy tool for guys to invite their wives to join in on.


FINAL THOUGHTS

I'm highly impressed with the way the app has uniquely tailored my workout routine. I'm even more impressed at the way I'm feeling muscles start to swell up that were never triggered heavily in my SL or GS routines.

While I haven't tested it for heavy lifting purposes, during my cut this seems to create a somewhat ideal regimen for me that I'm hopeful will prevent much muscle loss, while also toning up the peripheral groups that might be the supplements needed to up my maxes when I'm ready to bulk again.

I'm also pleased that it includes cardio and off days (one day was just to walk for 30 minutes), but doesn't force cardio into the main sessions. Most routines I see like this try to balance body resistance with cardio-type exercises, and this one seems to ignore that strategy - though this could be primarily because of the options I chose.

While it's not perfect, and I've only been using it for a short while, I'm pleased enough to give it my recommendation - especially for anyone who happens to be cutting (my present context) or wants to develop a familiarity with lifts beyond the basic SL/GS routine and how different muscle groups can be triggered to supplement the core SL/GS lifts that I still don't intend to leave behind.

A lot of the things I see this app recommending are the same things I see personal trainers doing with their clients at the gym. I used to look down on some of this, as I hammered away on the bench press. After spending time diversifying my routine through this app, I can say I have a new appreciation. While I doubt this app is a substitute for an actual personal trainer (I've never used one, but have worked out alongside friends who are PTs), it's not a bad option if you don't want to shell out the cash.