A Short History of OpenFitness

The Reason
About 10 years ago, I was still in high school and working out all the time. I was keeping track of my workouts in a paper notebook, so I would always be able to look back and see how far I've come. I also wanted to be able to figure out which workout strategies worked well, and which ones didn't. Keeping a journal on paper lets you do that, but it's pretty tedious.

The Idea
Around the same time, I was taking a computer programming class, and realized I could make a computer program that would replace the notebook. I also figured if I could use such a program, other people could too.

Building It
The first version of my fitness software was created in 1995, and had exactly one customer (myself). It was written in FutureBasic, and only ran on MacOS. I can't remember if it even had a name, but it did let me record my weightlifting workouts.

While in college, I bought a PC, so I had to rewrite the thing in C++, and it was called Workout Journal. I still didn't know what the internet was yet, so unfortunately WorkoutJournal was not available for download.

Still in college, I learned about a new programming language called Java. Sounded like a good thing to learn, so I ported Workout Journal to Java and renamed it to Personal Training Workstation. I also created a website for it (http://www.workoutware.com/).

Over the course of 7 or 8 years, Personal Training Workstation (users called it PTW) sort of evolved into whatever the users asked for. Sometimes a user would request a new feature, and I'd have it built within a couple of hours of their request. I added sections for tracking diet, measurements, supplements, and many other things.

Somewhere around 2003, I created a Palm-based version of PTW, called PTW - Mobile Edition. It let users track workouts and chart strength progress on their Palm-based device.

In 2005, I renamed PTW to Open Fitness, gave it a makeover, and added a lot more features to it. I also created the OpenFitness.net website (http://www.openfitness.net/) to let OpenFitness users share their workouts and diets. PTW - Mobile Edition also got a makeover and a new name. I built a syncing mechanism too, so users could enter workouts on their Palm and have them automatically copied into the Open Fitness desktop.

Just this month, I finished rebuilding the OpenFitness.net website to basically be a web version of the Open Fitness desktop software. I also added many new features that would have been difficult (or nearly impossible) to add to the desktop software.