There are plenty of fitness-tracking apps that promise to keep a faithful eye on your steps, runs, or gym visits. However, why not let Gymbot track your training regime instead?
Thanks to app development agency 9Elements, you can give Gymbot a chance, and you don’t even have you install yet another app. The bot is available within the Facebook Messenger platform, and it was designed as a practical and easy way to track your progress through cardio and strength-building workouts.
The format that it adheres to is pretty simple and it covers two core exercise types. If you’re interested in strength training, the pattern is: exercise #weight / #repetitions / #number of sets (you could type “triceps 30/4/10”). For cardio, it’s exercise #duration / #distance / #calories, (“Zumba 20/10/450”).
So what do you do after entering this data? Proceed with you exercises, open Messenger, type in your vital stats, and there you have it.
Other potentially useful commands are also available, such as “help,” which gives the user a quick walk-through of the bot’s capabilities, or “exercises,” which provides a list with all the individual exercises tracked by the bot.
Don’t get too excited, however; the system has plenty of improving to do before it rises to the standard of a full-fledged fitness-tracking app. For example, you can’t change the units of measurement. Instead, you’re stuck in miles and pounds with no way of changing them to kilometers and kilograms, respectively.
Plus, it lacks the conversational side that defines most bots – you can’t ask it questions, and the number of commands is fairly limited.
At the same time, a minor flaw always requires the user to enter a calorie metric for cardio, which is unreasonable. A lot of people don’t know how many calories they burn on their regular run ’round the park.
But this particular feature reminds us why the bot is called “GYMbot” – it’s because the target audience is the people running on a treadmill and not fitness enthusiasts exercising outdoor.
This – and the lack of features – is the reason why people who want to track their workouts will probably stick to their preferred fitness apps.
Image Source: VentureBeat
