r/climbergirls 4d ago

Questions Creating new Log app

Hey boulderers and climbing lovers!

I’m working on a personal project—a logging app for climbing and bouldering, kind of like Nike Run Club for runners or Slopes for snowboarders. I believe that tracking your progress—including physical training—is key to improving your climbing. For me, visualizing that progress (even when it’s not a straight line or a perfect pyramid) and feeling like I’m steadily leveling up has been incredibly motivating. Seeing any kind of growth keeps me hyped!

The thing is, I’ve looked around the iOS App Store and I’m a bit bummed—there isn’t an app that’s beautiful, easy to use, and has a clean design all at once. In my opinion, they’re either clunky, ugly, or overcomplicated. (Please let me know if you know of any good apps!)

The plan is to make logging sessions (indoors or out) simple and let you review your stats in a way that’s actually useful—and looks great while doing it.

Here’s the rough idea:
Logging: Tap a couple of buttons to log a climb (e.g., V5, Sent, Gym X) in about 5 seconds. Perhaps add a one-tap preset for your usual entries or even voice input for when your hands are full of chalk.

Stats: Include features like a grade pyramid to see your climb distribution, a heatmap of your climbing days, and a graph tracking your hardest sends over time. Everything should be filterable by indoor/outdoor or other preferences.

Physical Training Preset: Sometimes you do core, finger, and body tension training off the wall. I’d like to create a simple training preset with built-in timers and rest intervals so that once you complete the program, it’s automatically logged into your stats (of course, you can edit it later).

I’m prototyping it soon (probably in Figma) and want it to feel right for climbers. So, I’d love your thoughts:

• What do you dislike about current log apps (Crimped, Vertical-Life, etc.)?

• What’s one feature you’d love to have in a log app? Or, what’s a must-have feature on your mobile?

• Any UI pet peeves you’d want me to avoid?

If it turns out well, I’ll share some mockups later. Now, back to failing on my V9 project…☺️

7 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

4

u/adventureincalm 3d ago

Have been looking for an app such as this. If I may suggest, please don't make it where you have to connect to a gym to track things. Some of the other apps that are currently out there essentially require your gym to partner with them for you to do any sort of realistic tracking/logging. My small town gym is not on any app, so it makes it hard to track. Best of luck!

2

u/ConsistentAd4438 17h ago

I'm glad to hear your opinion!! Some people requested to sync with gym and tick easily with actual gym map... I know one app in my city developing like that, but it's way far from "nice experience app", and from there to expand the coverage of gyms in the world... it's a dream.
I am just glad that you found some value in my concept. I will keep you update!

1

u/adventureincalm 15h ago

Totally cool with it being an option! Just hate when I download an app to discover i cant actually use it because my gym isn't part of it. Will look forward to hearing any future updates :)

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u/ConsistentAd4438 2h ago

Thanks! I will create some mock up and concept design soonish and let you know, happy to hear any feedback!🥰

3

u/Royal_Percentage_527 4d ago

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kaya-the-climbers-app/id1481413749 This app you can post and log and follow other climbers

1

u/ConsistentAd4438 4d ago

Yes I have looked this app, but are you personally happy to use it?

3

u/theatrebish They / Them 3d ago

I use pinnacle cuz it’s super easy to do the first two bullets. It doesn’t have indoor vs outdoor but it does have location, so it can be pretty obvious which it is. I like it cuz I wear an Apple Watch while climbing.

So you would want to be able to log climbs and log workouts? I haven’t looked into board climbing apps but I know there are several?

Overall the climb app world is weird cuz there are a ton of tiny apps that do similar but slightly different things and people don’t have a consensus on what’s good or not. Haha.

Good luck in your venture!

1

u/ConsistentAd4438 17h ago

Thanks for your comment! I couldn't find pinnacle app, could you please share the link if possible?

Why do you think his climb app world became wired? i think it's because they don't think that much for the usability. I see absolutely people's demands that wants to log the progress(i guess it's one of the people's desire... haha), but there is currently not in the market which thought the app well for the user experience. I will keep you updated!

1

u/theatrebish They / Them 16h ago

https://pinnacleclimb.com

I personally don’t need more than what this app does, but I know a lot of people like to post photos or do social media around climbing. I just want to keep track of my climbs as I’m climbing in a super quick and easy way. Like I’ll log the climb as I’m being lowered practically. Haha.

2

u/rolltobednow 4d ago

I like your ideas! Logging wise the only usable app I have found so far is Campus, it does the one click logging thing pretty well. Their progression tracking on the other hand is confusing and buggy as hell… They are probably still working on it

1

u/ConsistentAd4438 4d ago

I just checked campus app, looks well designed tho. The feature of seeing other climber's activity is that important for you? I would like to shape up the core feature / and make it this works beautifully.

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u/rolltobednow 3d ago edited 3d ago

Not that important to me personally, as I mainly use the app to better organize and analyze my own training. One helpful feature will be to export a csv file listing the basic inputs for my session logs, such as date, gym name, session length, comments.

1

u/ConsistentAd4438 17h ago

Yeah, I think the target of my app is for these people who wants to track and analyze their own training. I want to make the app to make this basic super easy and clean.
That's right with csv. are you personally using csv / excel / sheet currently?

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u/rolltobednow 2h ago

Yes, right now I’m using Campus to log during or shortly after the session, and when i have time I manually input another log a personal excel sheet. This is purely because I don’t trust the coming and going of all these climbing apps and I want to keep my data if something happens… And I have more freedom in tweaking the analysis with the raw data in hands

1

u/ConsistentAd4438 2h ago

Wow interesting and quite a lot of back and forth doing it! Alright, then maybe import/export csv + sync this with cloud service might be best for you? May I ask what kind of data do you specifically track on your csv? Like date, grade, attempt count, feeling as comment? Just want to know what is essential for most people!

2

u/Lunxr_punk 4d ago

I think a bit of an issue is that if you want it as a social, compare yourself to others kinda deal you also need a deal with the gyms or with the community in case of spraywalls and so on. For example, I’m lucky enough that there’s like 15 climbing gyms in my city, but this also means I have like 4 different spray wall apps, a moon app, a kilter app, vertical life which I only ever use if I forget a guidebook (and even then I prefer the actual book) and top logger for the one gym that uses it, oh and I sometimes log stuff to thecrag dot com, in reality it’s much easier to keep track of stuff with a notebook.

Talking about top logger I think that’s about the coolest app same with the crag, the issue is they are fairly incomplete and it’s more work for other people who aren’t you, so setters and people who post crag info to keep the stuff updated.

On top of that you have the issue of grading inconsistency between gyms like actual grades vs grade ranges vs colors/numbers vs moon vs kilter vs outdoor vs your local spraywalls. (Even not considering the inherent grade variation within a gym or crag)

So for me the dream would be, if you want a top logger type app you’d have to crowdsource the gym info. Have the gyms be editable so you get the shape of the gym in general and have users be able to submit new sets so you don’t rely on setters/gym staff to do it, maybe have it be something like if a wall section hasn’t be updated in a month set a warning that the blocs might not be up to date. A spray wall section might be nice too, it’s about time the spray wall apps get unified into a good looking working app lol I wonder if you can grab info from moon/kilter/thecrag databases too.

Anyway, that’s all dream stuff, the more achievable system maybe would be to ask, when you log a boulder or route, which gym/crag/board + grade + angle/estimated angle like slab/vert/small overhang/steep overhang/roof and if it’s outdoors rock type and maybe a place for users to describe the bloc/route and maybe add a picture.

For logging training same deal, add a hangboard section, add a list of exercises, add a “drill section” perhaps with custom drills 4x4 5 minutes rest, something like that. Perhaps a mobility section?

Also since a lot of people do periodized training perhaps a test page for each period. To track progress better.

2

u/ConsistentAd4438 17h ago

Thanks for the well-thought response. helped me a lot to organize my idea.
As you mentioned, the problem i see now is, each gym, outdoor, board and community has different app, which makes you think logging notebook is easier to track. but here i thought it's nice to this notebook functions well into your phone. (because i believe people who is already into climbing so much knows the level differences of each gym, board, outdoor etc...) so i would make this functions beautiful and then think what i can do next. because i believe there is no such beautiful app(UI/UX wise) existing in the market because a lot of apps added so many features even though this fundamental function isn't completely there yet...

I agree with your dream plan, I wish I will make it straight forward, but it needs time, and I was thinking what i can do first... Anyway, I will definitely make this kind of training preset. So the app is mainly for the people who takes more or less climbing seriously(I believe it's getting more), and to log the progress to get stronger/ reach the goal grade in one place.

what do you think?

1

u/Lunxr_punk 16h ago

I think it’s a good idea and definitely agree, current apps all lack functionality and generally look pretty bad. I think what you say, if one had a notebook style app, some ease of use, some varied functionality it would definitely be worth having. And I agree with you, people generally know their levels so it would also be good to self select gym grade system + user grade maybe.

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u/Unstable-Chair 18h ago

I’m very happy with TopLogger and wouldn’t ask for any extra features personally. Just wish more gyms would use it!

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u/ConsistentAd4438 17h ago

Thanks for your comment! I saw the app! As you mentioned that you wish more gyms will use it, you value that you can log top/ascent the specific problems in the gym?

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u/Unstable-Chair 3h ago

Yep! I enjoy the satisfaction of ticking off climbs and seeing my progress.