Four Great New Features in the Best Free Workout Tracker App

Looking for a free workout tracker app that not only helps you stay on track but also motivates you to achieve your fitness goals? Look no further than StrengthLog!

Getting you into the gym and helping you build a strong workout habit, is our main mission.

Here on the website we publish free evidence based articles and training programs at a breakneck pace, aiming to answer all your fitness related questions and needs.

And in our app, we try to make your actual workouts more inspiring, engaging and fun.

With the latest app releases, from version 5.7 to version 5.10 (the current one), we’ve introduced four new features to make the app an even greater tool for you:

  1. Monthly challenges
  2. Achievements
  3. Calories burned lifting weights
  4. Calendar events

Best of all? These features are free for all users.

Scroll down for an in-depth look at these new features.

Why You Should Get Started with a Free StrengthLog Account Today

★★★★★
Best App Ever, free or not
I am not a consistent person. I struggle to follow a program. I also waste time looking up form, how to do a workout, I just don’t use my time well at the gym. This app is a game changer. It can set up a program for you, provides a video on “how to,” as well as written instructions, allows you to swap out and exercise with one click, and all that for free. Anyone that works out should have this app. I’m done looking and paying for garbage apps. Thank you Strength Log for existing.

RCJ-CEDAR 03/20/2023, five star review from Apple’s App Store

If you came here looking for a free workout log app, this is what you can expect from StrengthLog:

  • Log unlimited workouts
  • Personal records & stats
  • Supersets, dropsets, circuit training, & more
  • Set timer
  • Choose among 300+ of the most popular exercises – or create your own
  • Exercise demos
  • Step-by-step instructions
  • Free support
  • And more!

StrengthLog truly is a great workout tracker – built by lifters, for lifters. And almost all features are totally free, in an ad-free environment.

It’s especially useful if you’re training for:

  • General strength and conditioning
  • Bodybuilding
  • Powerlifting
  • Olympic weightlifting
  • Crossfit
  • Improved performance in sports such as football, soccer, hockey, track & field, golf, baseball, basketball and tennis

Download it using the links below now. You don’t even need to create an account at first (even though creating one is free, of course), when trying to decide if this is the right app for you.

Download on the App Store
Get in on Google Play

We do offer an in-app subscription plan that unlocks a handful of advanced features aimed at advanced lifters, as well as more than one hundred premium training programs and stand-alone workouts.

But if you’re a beginner at the gym, the premium subscription is not tailored for you. We made sure to make everything a beginner needs 100 % free, to help you along your fitness journey. And yes, that includes lots and lots of free workouts and training programs, unlimited workout logging, the ability to build your own training programs, free (and fast) support through app@strengthlog.com, and much more.

Enough about that. Let’s take a closer look at the four new features and how they will help you achieve your fitness goals.

1. Monthly Challenges to Help You Train More (and Maybe Even Try New Things at the Gym)

To view your completed challenges, tap your profile photo on the startscreen in the app.
Once you’ve started collecting finished challenges, the badges will be shown on your profile page in the app. These are for the three we’ve released so far, and as you can see I completed them all. Please tell me I’m a good boy.

This was the first feature released of the ones mentioned above, back in January 2023.

You can read more about it in this article.

Every month we introduce a new challenge, that usually contain three sub-goals.

I managed to snap a screenshot of the March challenge, as it was presented on my startscreen, before it ended

It can look like this:

  1. Log 5 workouts with a deadlift variation
  2. Log 150 reps of a deadlift variation
  3. Log 200 reps of rows, lat pulldowns or pull-ups

As you can tell, the theme of that particular challenge (”March madness is back”) was back training.

Some will have a clear theme like that, others are more diverse.

Since January we’ve kept improving this feature. As promised in the article above, it now has badges and an archive. Any time you finish a monthly challenge, you’ll be presented with a badge.

To view all badges you’ve collected, head on over to your profile page (tap your profile picture on the startscreen).

2. Achievements – a Great Way to Get to Know the App Better and to Build a Stronger Workout Habit

To view all achievements, tap your profile picture on the startscreen.
I’ve used StrengthLog since we released it back in 2018, and I only have one single level of one achievement left to finish: level 10 of Log Workouts, which means I will have logged one thousand workouts in the app once it’s completed.

When we released challenges, we said achievements were on the way.

It took us two months, but once you’ve updated to v5.10 you’ll see them on your profile page.

If you’ve used the app for awhile, you’ll probably notice that you’ve already finished a bunch of them, at least partly.

At the moment, there are nine achievements available:

  1. Log Workouts (10 levels)
  2. Compound Hero (4 levels)
  3. Follow a Program (3 levels)
  4. Plan a Workout (2 levels)
  5. Cardio Bunny (1 level)
  6. Profile Picture (1 level)
  7. Real Username (1 level)
  8. Train All Muscle Groups (1 level)
  9. Use a Special Set (1 level)

Trying to complete these achievements will not only help you with your training, it will also help you get acquainted faster with the app.

Tap any achievement to follow your progress
Tap any achievement to follow your progress and view completed levels

We’re already working on a new batch of achievements. Stay tuned!

3. Calories Burned Lifting Weights – from Now on We’ll Calculate Your Energy Expenditure!

You can view how many calories your workout burned at the top of the workout summary
This screen shows the top of the workout summary, presented to you once you’ve saved the workout. It’s also always accessible through your training log. (Please note that I’m a big boy, weighing in at 140 kg/310 lb – my energy expenditure will be higher than that of a more average sized human.)

How many calories does your gym workouts burn?

Calculating how many calories you burn when you’re out running or cycling is relatively easy. Doing so for lifting weights is not as straightforward, and up until now we’ve ignored doing so (we’re a bunch of lazy lifters, okay).

You lift to get stronger and build bigger muscles, right?

But in a world full of smartwatches and health apps, the question has started to gain traction. At least that’s what you’ve told us the last couple of years, so we’ve finally looked into it.

This is what we came up with:

  • Lifting weights for 30 minutes burns roughly between 110 and 210 kilo calories (kcal), depending on your body weight and the workout volume.
  • The most important factor for how many calories your weightlifting workout burns is the total amount of work you do. Medium to high-rep training typically results in more work done than low-rep training.

Please keep in mind that this is not an exact science, but we have done our best to come up with an algorithm to calculate how many calories lifting weights burn.

You can read more about our algorithm in this article.

From now on, every workout saved to your training log also show calories burned, at the top of the page.

Beginning soon (like really soon), this will also sync to Apple Health and Google Fit. As we usually do, we rolled out the feature as soon as possible, to test it and get user feedback. We’re rolling out version 5.10.1, that will include sync with Apple Health and Google Fit, in just a few days.

(When you’re reading this, these few days have probably already passed.)

One last thing.

You can turn off the calorie calculation on the settings page in the StrengthLog workout tracker app
Don’t want to see our calculation of how many calories your workouts burn? Turn it off on the settings page!

If you don’t want to see energy expenditure for your workouts, you can turn it off on the settings page. However, we encourage you to give it a try and see how it can enhance your workout experience.

4. Calendar Events – Track When You’re on Vacation or Sick, to Remember Why You Didn’t Go to the Gym as Usual

The new calendar events in the free workout tracker app StrengthLog will help you remember why you were on a break from the gym
In October 2022, I went on a three weeks long vacation – missing three weeks of training. By marking this in my training log, I will remember why I didn’t workout for several weeks, even when a decade has passed.

Logging workouts, following training programs and showing you your training data in a way that’s intuitive and easy to understand, might be the biggest benefits of the StrengthLog workout tracker.

Compared to those things, calendar events is just a small feature – but it packs a useful punch.

Let’s say you catch the flu and can’t go to the gym for a couple of weeks.

A year or two from now, you’ll see a big gap in your training log. But will you remember exactly why you didn’t train at all during those two weeks, breaking your regular routine? I sure wouldn’t.

By adding an event in your calendar, you will be able to go back and read it later.

You can customize these events and use them for a lot of different things, for instance:

  • Sickness
  • Injuries
  • Vacations
  • Work travel
  • Planned time off from the gym
  • Menstrual cycle

And so on.

You can also add events to future dates, to see when you are likely to experience changes in your routine and plan your workouts accordingly.

Join 80,000+ Active StrengthLog Users Today

Overall, the StrengthLog workout tracker is an excellent tool for anyone looking to reach their fitness goals. The app offers customized workout plans, accurate progress tracking, and free support to every user.

These four new features will help you stay motivated and on track towards your fitness goals. So, if you’re looking for a way to take your workouts to the next level, give the StrengthLog workout tracker a try!

Download it for free using the links below:

Download on the App Store
Get in on Google Play

★★★★★
Finally a workout app that I can actually say I feel comfortable using. I have tried several other apps in the past and none of them really gave me the satisfaction I was looking for. The user interface is awesome and sleek. I recently needed to reach out to customer support, and my issue was addressed immediately. Having a top notch customer support team goes a long way with me. Thanks for an amazing product!

– Walveg 02/13/2023, five star review from Apple’s App Store
Photo of author

Philip Wildenstam

Philip used to be a powerlifter (his best lift was a 275 kg raw squat), but now he mostly eats, drinks, and sleeps. He's also a certified nutrition coach and a co-founder of StrengthLog, and he's always trying to make the app better and more user-friendly. If you ask Philip nicely, he might share his recipe for Swedish meatballs with you.