I recently fell out of my regular exercise routine - in part due to spring break and South by Southwest, and in part due to endless freelance and school work. To motivate myself to return to the gym and workout, I decided to pen an actual workout schedule - a list of all the exercises I’m planning for every day of the week. So, largely to scratch my own itch, I’ve built a simple service called Workout Week that serves up workout schedules. Every week the workouts change, and day-to-day I’ve designed schedules that changes things up to prevent your body becoming accustomed to a routine. You can subscribe via RSS, we’ve got print-friendly versions, and all the information is 100% free.
A Greedy Application
Although I’ve put a lot of effort into building Workout Week into a polished service, I’ve really built this for myself first and foremost. If I’m not following my own schedules, regardless of how successful the site is, I’ll consider the project a failure. I’ll be following the “cross training” schedule.
Features:
Workout Week has three schedules at launch - cardio, weight training, and the most strenuous - cross training. The workouts change every week, with enough schedules to make sure you don’t repeat yourself for at least a month.
INSTRUCTIONS, OR NOT
If you’re already an expert in esoteric exercise names, then the at-a-glance view is built for you. For mere mortals, every exercise, regardless of how trivial, has the info to get you started.
GUILT-FREE SUBSCRIPTION
Every week, the workouts are served up fresh in RSS. Seven old workouts disappear, and seven new routines pop in their place.
Right now, Workout Week supplies a basic printer-friendly version. Look for some cool new print features coming soon (think pocketmod-style).
QUICK TO ADAPT
All schedules and exercises are stored as XML files. It may not sound too exciting, but this allows me to easily shape the data however I want.
COMING SOON: WORKOUT SHARING
First on the agenda is a workout editor that lets you define custom workouts to share with everyone. You’ll be able to check out what’s popular and what’s working. I’ll also allow users to post times to track their progress, with benchmark routines ranging from simple distance runs up to something like Gym Jones’ “300″ circuit.