It’s never too late to start working out, but taking the first step without proper guidance can be daunting for newcomers. There’s more to it than the number of reps and sets, after all, with other considerations such as exercise form, rest time, progress tracking, and planning routines complicating the onboarding process.
Hevy sets out to ease the learning curve while also accommodating the needs of more experienced users and fitness enthusiasts. While the free-to-use app locks premium features behind a paid subscription, its standard build already covers many bases, including an intuitive, straightforward interface, automatic rest timers, a variety of different training types that span heavy weight lifting, powerlifting, crossfit, strength training, and the like, the ability to copy or follow a workout routine, and over a hundred exercise videos with step-by-step instructions to prevent and reduce injury occurrences.
Past the fundamentals, its versatility extends to customisation. Gym regulars can filter exercises by muscle groups and equipment type and create their own workout plans, mark sets as Warmup, Drop sets, Failure, and Supersets, keep track of their previous lifts and One Rep Max (1RM) — which the app automatically calculates — for overload progression training, and analyse their sessions with easy-to-understand graphs of volume, best weight, and total reps.
It’s not all about weights, either, as Hevy also works for bodyweight and home workouts such as calisthenics, cardio tracking and HIIT. Syncing it up with an Apple Watch allows for even easier access to all of the tools, including a heart rate monitor, right from the wrist.
The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for free, with the paid Hevy Pro version offering unlimited routine templates and custom exercises, detailed analytics, a muscle heatmap, the user’s entire graph history (as opposed to the last three months), a warm-up calculator, and advanced measurements like body fat percentage and body part circumference. If all of that sounds overwhelming, the official website comes with informative guides on how to get started.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
Kevin Low
Ting Wei
