The Muscle Couple here, offering  a step by step approach using Gym Technik on a Blackberry Storm.

The beauty of the GT site is the ability to do all of this “on the fly” while at the gym in a very simple but intuitive fashion.

<NOTE>This article assumes you’ve already created your GT Account and hopefully had time to play around from your PC inputting your own workouts or pre-selecting the already designed ones in their “Find a Workout/Routine” section.

You first need to log into the site as shown in the screen shot below:

The site will cookie you in normally.  I have set up my Storm with a shortcut to GT (using Quicklaunch)which takes me to the Start screen as shown in the next screen shot:

GT is so much more than just a “Workout Log/Tracker”.  It also allows you to keep track of your cardio and upload pictures of your progress as shown.  It’s also entirely customizeable allowing you to change your mobile settings whenever necessary to suit your perspective, interests or connection speed.

It’s probably best when first using the site to enter your “Body Stats” so GT can track your changes over time.  You don’t have to get this dialed in, but it really helps if you’re serious about your Fitness and want to track and record all of your progress over the years.   The start page to enter your body stats is below.

The Muscle Couple has been using GT for about 7 months now and we’re excited to think our workout logs will be stored for years down the road.  What could be better in designing future workouts when you have a resource to immediately harness your liftingand cardio data from years of previous tracking?

So assuming you’ve created a log in and password for the site and entered your Body Stats, it’s time to “Start a Workout”.

The Muscle  Couple is incredibly anal about building and creating our own workouts and changing them up about every 6-8 weeks.  For the less anal, the pre-constructed workouts GT has in their GT Library are great.  Feel free to pick one and enter it and then log in on the fly and go.

Let’s analyze by viewing The Muscle Couple’s current Full Body routine-Day 1.

As you can see, GT has all of the exercises listed in buttons for the current workout.  This is intuitive because you can choose to perform exercises in any manner or order that you want.  All you do is choose by clicking the button from each one.  Once I click on the button I’m taken into the “Sets-Reps and Weight” screen as shown below from the first exercise-Incline Hammer Press:

GT allows you to determine how many sets you are going to perform upon first creating the workout.  They leave nothing to chance by allowing you to augment on the fly by adding sets from the drop down menu at the bottom.  Once you are done with this exercise you’ll then  hit “Save my exercise” and then “Next” to progress back to the Exercise selection buttons.  By hitting next it will take you back to the “Start Workout” screen so you can continue from exercise to exercise recording the “weight lifted, and sets and reps performed.

Once you’ve finished all of your sets you have the ability to jot down notes.  You can also do this between sets as shown in the “Add Notes” section in the previous screen shot.

After adding your notes, you’ll then go to the bottom and hit “Finish Workout”.  You’ll then be taken to a summary screen.  It’s here where you will see the performance improvements you made from the previous workout.  This can be seen in multiple permutations.  From an increase or decrease in weight lifted, to the same for reps and sets.

A couple of other cool features to be aware of.  GT also allows you to upload photos of your performance or even “Body Shots” to track the aesthetic improvements to your physique.  Or maybe you just want to add some “photos of a pumped” bodypart?

All of these things are possible as the below screen reveals by sending an email to photo@gymtechnik.com.  This is a very cool feature that truly separates GT from most of it’s competition.

You can also track your cardio.  This is a BIG PLUS in The Muscle Couple’s book especially when we are dieting and trying to keep track of kcals burned versus consumed.  Here is a sample screen shot from the tracking of Jay’s stationary bike workout:

Once you’ve entered all your data from all of your exercise activities on GT, you’ll get a final summary screen similar to the screen shot below:

The Muscle Couple believes all people serious about their fitness should be tracking their progress while training.

We can’t think of a better tool than Gym Technik for fast, efficient, easy to use exercise charting and progress tracking on a PDA. 

You should be using it to truly maximize your fitness for life!

MIHWCS