As a kid I spent most of my free time playing video games, being hooked on grinding skills and constantly trying to improve my characters. Half the time, I didn't know what I was doing but it was never about efficiency to me. I didn't even know it yet but I was chasing the feeling of being rewarded for repeating a process over and over again. I watched as experience bars filled up, always excited to advance to the next level. When the dopamine hit finally came, I immediately continued grinding towards the next milestone. Fast forward and I'm in my early thirties now. Been going to the gym on and off for years but always felt like I could be more consistent and achieve better results. In terms of progressive overload, I was either not showing up or not keeping any record my lifts. As I browsed through various gym tracking apps, nothing really hit home. I had no interest in testing any of them because of the many menus and settings, basically way too much setup before you even touch a weight. Then a thought crossed my mind - what if I could track each set and level up my muscles as if they were skills in a game? I imagined an interface with 14 major muscle groups classified as "skills", each with a level from 1 to 99. When you complete a set during a workout, you can tap a button to gain XP and level up over time. In the background every set gets logged with a history of the weight you used, the number repetitions (both are set via a slider), and XP earned for a specific muscle. There are also statistics such as progression, volume, diversity, upper/lower body focus, and many more, available from logging. Custom exercises and full workout plans can be added. Full offline functionality is supported, meaning that no account is needed to get started. By design, there should be nothing to distract you from your workout - just tracking your sets made effortless. I felt like this idea had potential but had no real means of testing it. Until I got my hands on ClaudeCode. During the winter holidays, a friend introduced me ClaudeCode. I decided to test it out and had it develop a plan for me to build a basic web app around my gym tracker concept, with the final stage of converting it into a fully functional iOS app I could carry with me in "my inventory" to the gym. So like a true vibe coder I ran two AIs - one to translate my monkey brain thoughts into cohesive instructions, and ClaudeCode to actually build the thing. Everything started to come together and in under 7 days, while still working my full-time job, I realized that I was ready to rent a Mac cloud server and compile my first ever app in Xcode. With a bit of Claude magic, it was done and submitted to Apple. It took another week for Apple to review my submission, which came with the first major obstacle. Being very impatient with the submission process from the start, I was crushed to find out that my app was rejected on the grounds of being "misleading Fortnite content". I kid you not. I was confused but Apple clarified that my app icon was the issue. It could not consist of the letters "XP". I tried to argue my case but ended up changing the icon anyway, after which Apple was kind enough to allow the distribution of XPGains. So here I am two weeks later, almost 30 downloads strong and finally getting my dose of skill grinding, while simultaneously improving my fitness and using XPGains all the time. I find myself tired after work but still thinking about my gym stats. I get inspired to go to the gym not because I should but because my chest is 3 reps away from level 5 and that genuinely bothers me. I'm sure anyone who played RPG games before gets it... This app was made for you. It's a work in progress, any suggestions are always welcome.

XPGains - Gym Tracker

Gamify your workouts by training to level up muscles skills

Gamify your workouts by training to level up muscles skills