- What should I train today?
- What weight should I use?
- How many reps should I aim for?
- What happens if I miss my prescribed reps?
- I beat the target. Should I increase the weight?
- How did this workout compare with the last one?
- Am I actually getting stronger?
- What should I do next time?
About Oved
Built because logging the workout wasn't enough.
I built Oved because the way I was training had outgrown the tools I was using.
The problem
Two tools, doing half the job each
Like a lot of people who take strength training seriously, I used a workout tracker to record my sessions. It did a good job of keeping track of exercises, sets, reps and weights.
But increasingly, the most useful part of my training was happening somewhere else.
I was using AI to help design my workouts. Before training, I'd ask what I should do, what weights I should use and how many reps I should aim for.
During a workout, the questions continued. What should I do if I miss the target? What if I beat it? Should I increase the weight? Is my form right? Should I change something?
And afterwards, I wanted more than a completed workout in a log. I wanted to know how I'd performed, whether I was progressing, where I'd set a PR, what the workout meant in the context of my recent training and, most importantly: what should I do next?
Two systems
I was effectively using two systems
Over time, I realised I had created a strange workflow.
My workout logger knew my training history, but couldn't really coach me.
My AI assistant could coach me, but didn't automatically know my training history.
So I became the connection between them.
I'd send screenshots. Copy previous workouts. Explain my goals. Provide personal bests. Describe what had happened in earlier sessions.
The better I wanted the coaching to be, the more context I had to provide.
It worked. But it was far too much work.
The idea
What if they were the same thing?
Eventually, the idea behind Oved became obvious:
What if the workout logger and the coach were the same thing?
What if the coach already understood your goals, your programme, your previous workouts, the targets you'd been given and what actually happened when you tried them?
Instead of repeatedly giving an AI assistant enough information to answer questions such as:
…the training history itself could become the evidence used to answer them.
That idea became Oved.
The philosophy
From workout tracker to training loop
Most workout trackers are built around a simple loop: Log → Save → Repeat.
Oved is being built around something different:
Plan → Train → Adapt → Review → Progress → Next Workout
Your workout isn't just something to record. It's new evidence.
What you were supposed to do matters. What you actually did matters. Your previous training matters. And the difference between those things can help determine what should happen next.
That's why Oved isn't simply trying to become a more detailed workout log. The goal is to build a strength-training coach that learns from the work you're already recording.
The standard
Evidence before answers
AI can give you an answer very easily. The harder problem is giving you an answer that makes sense for you, based on what you've actually been doing. That's an important part of how I think about Oved.
If your target changes, I want there to be a reason. If the coach recommends holding the weight rather than increasing it, your recent training should support that decision. If one bad workout isn't enough evidence to change the plan, the coach should be able to recognise that too. And when the evidence isn't strong enough to draw a confident conclusion, the product shouldn't pretend otherwise.
The aim isn't to make training unnecessarily complicated. It's to make the decisions behind your training more useful, consistent and understandable.
Real training
Built from real training
Oved isn't an idea I came up with on a whiteboard. I built it because I wanted it myself.
I still use it to train. That means the product gets tested in the environment it was designed for: between sets, with tired hands, missed reps, unexpected PRs, exercises that don't go to plan and workouts that sometimes look very different from the prescription.
Those experiences continue to shape the product. The question I keep coming back to is simple:
Does this help me make a better training decision?
If it doesn't, it probably doesn't belong in Oved.
Looking ahead
What I'm building towards
I want Oved to connect the parts of strength training that have traditionally lived in separate places: your programme, workout logger, training history, progress data and coaching decisions.
Not to replace the athlete's judgement. Not to pretend every workout can be reduced to an algorithm. But to make the information you're already generating every time you train genuinely useful.
Because logging a workout should be the beginning of the next decision, not the end of the process.
Log the work. Learn from it. Know what to do next.
Get involved
Train with more context
Oved is currently in private beta, built around a simple idea: your training history should help shape what you do next. If the idea of a workout tracker that actually learns from your training sounds useful, you can follow the project or request beta access.