Build muscles with Lumia

Amateur and pro bodybuilders alike can get a boost with Windows Phone. Plan a routine, track your reps and get buff with these apps.

Back in the old days, your best friend at the gym was a notepad. Serious bodybuilder would use pen and paper to record their exercises, repetitions and weight for each set.

Smart Phones have made that process much easier, but most fitness apps on the market are designed for cardiovascular or endurance and general fitness goals. As an amateur body builder, I’ve longed for tools that serve my specific need to maximize muscle growth.

Luckily, the windows Phone Store offers several first-rate solutions for gym rats. After much personal research and testing, here’s a list of some favorites.

Trainer (free)

If you don’t have access to a professional gym, TRAINER lets you choose from professionally designed multi-day routines that use resistance exercises such as pull-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks and yoga poses to build muscles. There are 21 body weight and dumbbell-based exercises to work out your upper body, lower body and core.

The latest update this month added Microsoft Band integration to TRINER. Your Microsoft Band will now automatically recognize exercise movements such as tracking repetitions. That’s much-needed feature for folks like me who tend to cheat by ‘’rounding up’’ when counting reps.

DeekFit Gym  (free)

This is an excellent all-around gym tool that lets you enter and track workouts, build routines, monitor your weight and measurements, add custom exercises and even calculate your body Mass Index, Basal Metabolic Rate, and pound-to-kilogram conversions.

My favorite feature is that it can calculate the number and weight of individual plates to add to a barbell to achieve a desired overall weight. Very useful for when you’re more focused on the lifting than counting.

An ad-free version is also available for $2.99.

GymACE ($2.99)

This handy app allows you to customize your workouts and track your weight and measurements over time. GymACE boasts a huge database of exercises broken down by muscle group that with drawing showing you how to perform them.