A Strong alternative you can read

A logbook answers one question well: what did you lift last time. It is a good question and it is not the only one you have standing in front of a rack.

The other one is what the lift is actually doing. This is a free workout app built around that second question, with 158 exercises in it, 123 with a free weight and 35 bodyweight, and a page for every one of them.

Every lift has a page, and anyone can open it

You do not need an account to read one. You do not need to install anything. The pages are on the web, so you can open one on a laptop, send a link to somebody who asked you what a good morning is, or check something in the twenty seconds before your next set.

That is worth saying because it is easy to check and hard to undo: look for an exercise page you can read without a sign-up. Either it is there or it is not.

It names the muscle that drives the lift

This is the part it was built for.

Most exercise listings hand you a list of muscles worked. That list runs together the muscle that should be driving the lift and the ones that are only holding you steady, and those are not the same job. A mirror shows you the shape of a lift. It does not show you where the load is going.

So every page here splits them. What does the work, and what only steadies you. If you have finished a set wondering whether you felt it in the right place, that is the question this answers.

You can browse that way too. Filter by 14 muscles, 5 kinds of weight and 3 levels, and the muscle filter matches what drives the lift, never what steadies it.

Start anywhere in the library, or with a good morning or a front squat.

And it logs what you lifted

You are not giving up the logbook to get the reference. Pick a muscle, take the exercises out of it, set your reps and rest, then log each set against a weight.

When you come back to an exercise it shows what you lifted last time. Kilograms move in quarters, up to 200. Pounds move in halves, up to 441. Sessions stack up on a history screen and stay as you logged them: the database will take a new session and delete one, and refuses outright to edit one.

Star the lifts you take every session and they are one press away. Leave a note on an exercise, seat 4, pin 7, elbows tucked, and it stays with the exercise rather than the workout, so it is there next time you meet that lift.

The rest countdown runs on its own

Three beeps as it runs out, a buzz at zero, and the screen refuses to lock while a lift or a rest is in front of you.

Eleven guides, and every number in them is somebody's paper

The questions that sit above any single lift get their own pages. How long to rest. How many sets. Whether training to failure buys you anything.

Behind every figure is a named paper with an author, a year and an identifier, and that is a build step rather than an intention. The site refuses to compile if a citation has no stored copy of the paper sitting behind it.

Start with progressive overload or rest between sets.

Free, with no upgrade waiting

There is no Pro tier here and nothing behind a subscription, because there is nothing to sell you. No ads either, and nothing in front of you before you start.

An account is optional. It carries four things between your phone and your laptop, your history, your starred lifts, your notes and whether you lift in kilograms or pounds, and it holds nothing else about you. You can delete it from inside the app.

It works in a gym with no signal

A page you have opened before opens again without a connection, and you can hold the whole library offline from settings in one press, about 32 MB. That download never happens on its own.

Common questions

Can you look up an exercise without installing anything?

Here, yes. All 158 exercise pages are open on the web, so you can read one on a laptop, send someone a link to it, or check a lift standing at a rack without putting an app on your phone first.

Does it tell you which muscle is actually doing the work?

Yes, and that is the reason it exists. Every page separates the muscle that drives the lift from the ones that only hold you steady. Most exercise listings run those together into one list of muscles worked.

Can you filter the library by muscle?

Yes. You can filter by 14 muscles, 5 kinds of weight and 3 levels, and the muscle filter matches what drives the lift rather than what steadies it, so asking for shoulders does not return everything your shoulders were merely holding still through.

Does it log your workouts too?

It does. The workout builder logs each set against a weight and shows what you lifted last time. Weight moves in steps of 0.25 kg up to 200, or 0.5 lb up to 441, and every finished session lands on a history screen.

Is it free, and do you need an account?

It is free with no paid tier, and you never need an account to read an exercise page. An account is optional and only carries your history, starred lifts, notes and your unit between your phone and your laptop.

Is the training advice sourced?

Every figure on the guides traces to a named paper with an author, a year and an identifier, and a script checks each citation against a stored record of the paper before the site can ship.

About this page

Strong is a separate product made by Strong Fitness PTE Limited and this site is not connected to it. It is free to download and sells a PRO subscription in monthly, six-monthly, yearly and one-off forms. Its published details were last checked on 28 August 2026, and prices and features change, so check their own listing for anything current.

This page is not a scorecard. Strong is a workout tracker, by its own description, and a good one. It is answering a different question from the one this site was built for, and the point of the comparison is which question you have. The rest of the comparison lane is built to the same standard.