I’ve used all of these in the gym, not just on a spec sheet. So let me skip the marketing and tell you what each one actually feels like with chalk on your hands and a phone propped against a water bottle.
Three of these are logging apps. One isn’t. That distinction is the whole article.
The set logger that nailed the basics.
Strong is the one I recommend to people who just want to lift and keep a clean record. Start a workout, log sets and reps, rest timer fires automatically, your PRs and volume trends are right there. It does the fundamental job — record the work, show the progress — about as cleanly as anyone.
It’s not trying to program for you. You bring the plan, Strong remembers it. If you know what you’re doing in the gym and you just want a tidy logbook, this is a safe call. (Free tier exists; premium is paid — verify current pricing.)
Strong’s sharpest competitor, with a social layer.
Hevy is what happens when someone looks at Strong and says “good, now make it a little nicer and add friends.” Slick interface, generous free tier, routine sharing, and a social feed if you want your buddies to see your sessions. The logging experience is genuinely excellent and the templates are well done.
If the gentle accountability of friends seeing your training motivates you, Hevy’s social side is a real plus. If it sounds like noise, it’s easy enough to ignore. Either way, the core logger is top-tier.
Free programs, run properly.
Boostcamp’s move is different and smart: it hosts real, structured programs — proven ones, the kind you’d otherwise dig out of a forum PDF — and runs them for free, autoregulating sets and progressions as you go. For a beginner or intermediate who doesn’t want to write their own program and shouldn’t be paying a coach yet, this is enormous value. You pick a program, you show up, it tells you the numbers.
It’s program-first rather than log-first, which is the right call for the lifter who needs structure more than a pretty logbook. The honest limitation is that the structure stops at the gym door — Boostcamp will run your squat progression beautifully and has no opinion about whether you ate enough to recover from it. For a lot of lifters that’s fine; the program is the part they were missing. Just know it’s solving training, not the whole picture.
All three are training apps. They live in the gym, they’re about the barbell, and when you walk out the door they go quiet until next session. That’s not a knock. It’s their scope, and they’re good inside it.
Not a logger. A line item.
Transform’s Playbook is a different animal, and if you come to it expecting Strong you’ll be confused. The lift isn’t the whole app. It’s one item in the day’s Playbook, sitting alongside your three meals, your supplements, and your sleep window — usually six to nine things total.
The training is programmed as part of a 26-week mission with actual phases. During Compound — weeks five through fourteen — the lifts get heaviest, because that’s the block built for it. During Lock, the final weeks, you re-test. The barbell work is real, but it’s deliberately not the only thing on screen, because a transformation isn’t only the barbell. Recovery and food are pulling on the same rope.
In coaching terms, this is the difference between a logbook and a programmer. Strong and Hevy faithfully record whatever you decide to do — they’re a notebook with a rest timer, and a good one. The Playbook decides, in the sense a coach decides: this is week 9 of Compound, here’s the intensity that fits, and it accounts for the fact that you slept badly and your protein’s been low all week. One is memory. The other is judgment. Which you want depends entirely on whether you already have the judgment part handled yourself.
A logging app answers “did I hit my sets today?” The Playbook answers “is my training the right intensity for the phase I’m in, given how I’m eating and recovering?” If you only want the first answer, don’t switch.
Who should use what.
Straight up: if you are primarily a lifter and what you want is the best logbook, use Strong or Hevy. They’re better at being a logbook than Transform is, full stop — that’s not their weakness, it’s their entire focus. If you want a free structured program and you’re early in your journey, Boostcamp is hard to beat.
Use Transform if lifting is one pillar of a bigger six-month body change, and you want your training intensity to actually respond to your recovery and nutrition instead of living in a separate app that doesn’t know you slept five hours. That lifter — the one running a whole transformation, not just chasing a bench PR — is who the Playbook is built for.
There’s no shame in being a logbook person, by the way. Plenty of strong, accomplished lifters never want anything more than Strong and a program they trust, and they’re right not to fix what isn’t broken. The Playbook isn’t an upgrade from a logger — it’s a different tool for a different job. Reach for it when the job stops being “track my lifts” and becomes “change my whole body on a timeline.” Until then, the loggers are genuinely great, and I’ll keep recommending them.
Transform’s on the App Store for iPhone. Lifting on Android? Get on the waitlist — you’re first in the queue when it lands.
— END · ISSUE 032 · MAY 05, 2026 · TRANS4M.FIT