The spin on that title isn’t very good. Let’s say “Stats Simmering.” Stats are on hold for a bit as we finish some program improvements, fix some bugs, and do some code reorganization.

We’re disappointed about this, but it shouldn’t be too much longer.

Alex and I are excited to announce the latest WithFit changes!

The highlights:

Program Following
WithFit now lets you follow your favorite programs. This means no more switching back and forth between your calendar and the program page. You can also see other members of programs and have the option to receive email updates when workouts get added to programs. We’ve got more program enhancements coming as well, especially for program creators.

Logging Enhancements
There’s no more “custom workouts.” Now WithFit will track your progress in all workouts, always. Hooray for data! This was necessary to do for stat improvements (see below) and took a lot longer than expected. However, along the way we made some other tweaks that should make logging workouts easier.

Speed
We’re always looking for ways to make WithFit faster. This time, we combined a lot of our images, javascripts, and CSS into single files that should greatly improve load times.

What We Missed (Stats+)
Unfortunately, we were unable to get to a lot of the stat improvements that we had hoped to get to. We were also unable to get to the data dump. We’re pretty disappointed about this, but they will be coming and they will be awesome.

As always, the user feedback has been great. Please continue to send feedback, emails, and comments!

In our most recent planning session, Alex and I spent a lot of time talking about our two next big improvements, programs and stats. I wanted to share the major changes with you:

Programs

• The ability to subscribe/join to programs. This will cause the program’s workouts to be added to your calendar. You should have the option to get contacted (email, twitter?) when a new workout is added to the program.
• The ability to view other members of the program. You should be able to see their stats and stats for everyone who has completed the workout.
• Many more options for administrators of programs. You’ll be able to have more control over who sees what on your program, the ability to invite people, and the ability to have multiple administrators, among other things.

Stats

• More feedback on personal records and making workouts more comparable. We’re going to look at the ability to estimate the amount of calories used / work done in a workout, as well as the power output.
• Better comparisons between intra-workout results. You should be able to see how you improved on a single exercise even if it’s part of a larger workout. We’re also looking to improve our 1RM calculations as well as how they’re displayed.
• An “at-a-glance” stat page or a better way of viewing your per-exercise improvements. Right now there’s no way to get all of this information on one page.

We’d love to know what you think works and doesn’t work about both of these features.

Grin and I have been busy bees over the last couple weeks. Busy, super-adept programming bees.

Here’s what’s changed:

Facebook Integration
WithFit can now post workouts you complete to your Facebook feed. You can turn this on in your settings page (must be logged in). We’ll probably add some more controls to post other things (creating things, meeting goals, PRs) in the near future.

Scaling workouts now makes sense
We completely redid how workouts are adjusted and scaled. It should be a much more intuitive process.

Unified workouts
Now custom workouts can be turned into named workouts and you can track your progress in them. Can you say super neat? Not if you don’t want to sound lame.

Speed improvements
We reduced a bunch of image sizes and used some advanced CSS techniques to reduce the loading times of a lot of pages. There will be more improvements in this department soon.

What’s next
Our focus over the next couple weeks is going to be workouts groups and improving stats.

Help us out
Most of our changes are user driven. Keep clicking that feedback tab and telling us what you like and don’t like. Or let us know in the comments.

Here are some updates that we’ve made to the site over the past few weeks.

Weight Tracking
It’s now possible to track your weight. Simply click the “Track Weight” button on your calendar and record your weight. You can also set a weight goal and see your weight improve over time. By default, your weight is private, but you can share it by adjusting your privacy settings. Weight tracking was one of our most requested features. Let us know how you like it.

“Log It Again”
In the past, if you wanted to do a custom workout more than once, you would have had to create it by hand every time you did it. Now, all you have to do is click “Log It Again” and WithFit will create a full workout for you. You will instantly be able to see how much you improved from the last time.

Framework Update
We upgraded our web development framework (Symfony) to version 1.4. This means that the site is now faster and smoother than before.

Other Improvements
We made a bunch of minor enhancements and fixed an assortment of bugs and glitches. We learned about many of those bugs because you told us about them. Thanks for helping us make WithFit better.

I started working on WithFit over a year ago, after dropping out of grad school. When I started, my knowledge of web programming barely extended beyond the concept of hyperlinks. Alex joined me in June after finishing a contract with the government. Creating WithFit has been an education for both of us.

I was inspired to create WithFit when I couldn’t find a website capable of tracking CrossFit workouts. While other sites have emerged since we started, none approach WithFit in flexibility, power, or accessibility. And we do it all for free.

WithFit makes it possible for practitioners of any workout program to quickly track their workout progress. It’s easy for athletes and novices alike to find workouts that will suit them. Creating your own workouts to share with the world (or just for yourself) is also laughably simple.

However, WithFit is neither perfect nor complete. Alex and I will use this blog to post updates about what we’re working on as well as to collect feedback. We’re both adamant that the members of our online community are the most important part of WithFit. Consequently, we love to hear what you think sucks about the site even more than we like to hear what’s awesome (though we do enjoy a nice ego massage). If you can’t handle multi-sentence updates, you can also follow us on Twitter.

Finally, we’d like to extend some thanks. WithFit wouldn’t have been possible without the following:

• Wil Vicinus and Eric Neri at CrossFit South Philly – These guys did everything from let us use their facility for photos to having their members test our site and helping us with our exercise write-ups. It’s almost impossible to be hyperbolic when expressing how much these guys helped us.
• The Symfony and Doctrine creators and communities. Two powerful, flexible open-source projects that turned a sisyphean task into a merely arduous one.
• Moms + Dads. You’re owed some hugs.

That’s about it. Stop reading and start tracking!