exercise

From IndieWeb

exercise is a (typically) passive post type that represents some form of physical activity. Its content is often similar to a note or can easily be represented as plain text.

Tags: fitness, fitbit, pedometer, physical activity, run, running, workout, workouts, health, tracking, quantified self, metrics

If you're looking for website metrics see:

IndieWeb Examples

Barnaby Walters

Barnaby Walters uses his open source HTML+CSS+JS Pushups web app (download to clone) to track (nose touch activated) and post (via Taproot's micropub support) pushups as a note variant to waterpigs.co.uk since at least 2013-10-14. Example:

Aaron Parecki

Pushups

Aaron Parecki uses his open source pushup-counter iOS app to track (nose touch activated) and post (via p3k's micropub support) pushups to aaronparecki.com (through p3k#Pushups) since at least 2013-11-28(or earlier?). Example:

Runs / Walks / Bike Rides

Sleep

Sleep isn't really exercise, but I wasn't sure where else to list it. Example:

Chris Aldrich

Chris Aldrich has posted some exercise related posts with a particular exercise tag and data as checkins at a particular exercise location. On 2018-03-18 he enabled the Exercise post type within Post Kinds Plugin to create exercise specific posts which he keeps at http://boffosocko.com/kind/exercise/.

John Johnson

John Johnson maintains a list of walks he takes including gps data and photos. He describes on the page his set up for posting them.

Jamie Tanna

  Jamie Tanna owns step counts via through a custom Google Fit integration.

Tim Nolte

Tim Nolte shares running posts using a generated image via his mobile running app. Along with that there is location/weather related data also shared with the post. Those posts are syndicated out to Mastodon/Twitter/Instagram. When those syndicated posts are liked/commented on those likes and comments are syndicated back as Webmentions.

POSSE

See microsyntax#metrics_and_exercise for some ideas on how to POSSE exercise posts into plain text destinations.

A POSSE service exists for the many exercise silos called Tapiriik - which has an interesting option to put all your "activities" into Dropbox as TCX files (a Garmin file format that covers activity, calories burned, altitude, etc that's captured from a variety of devices). It also pushes activities to other silos. It would be interesting to add Micropub to their sync services.

Silo Examples

Jawbone

Jawbone's API has a lot of stuff:

MapMyFitness

MapMyFitness has an app and website:

  • MapMyRun, mapmyrun.com which claims to be able to aggregate fitness posts/activities from nearly all other fitness silos, and then provides access to them with an API.

Nike

Nike has various fitness tracking applications (iOS, Android, ???)

Strava

Strava has an app (and website) which allows users to track multiple kind of activities.

It's possible to setup Strava to push into Jawbone

Strava allows you to download an export of all your data, which includes all the trips as individual GPX files.

Before GPS recording on the app one can choose between 'Run' and 'Ride' modes. After uploading you can choose the following exercise type names:

  • Ride, Run, Swim, Hike, Walk, AlpineSki, BackcountrySki, Canoeing, Crossfit, EBikeRide, Elliptical, IceSkate, InlineSkate, Kayaking, Kitesurf, NordicSki, RockClimbing, RollerSki, Rowing, Snowboard, Snowshoe, StairStepper, StandUpPaddling, Surfing, VirtualRide, WeightTraining, Windsurf, Workout, Yoga

Strava also offers a public API which you can use to periodically fetch all activities and save them in your own cms.

RunKeeper

RunKeeper tracks bicycle rides and runs and other types of exercise.

Apple

Apple appears to be adding a "Health" API for iOS to centralize health & exercise related activities:

Fitbit

Fitbit make a number of fitness/activity trackers.

Tapiriik

Tapiriik is an open source syncing software. Because of itโ€™s purpose of syncing across multiple silos it has a set of โ€œstandard attributes that might be useful while deterring mf2 for exercise posts. The attributes Tapiriik tracks are:

  • StartTime (similar to h-event)
  • EndTime (similar to h-event)
  • Name (standard mf2 title attribute)
  • Notes (standard mf2 content)
  • Type
  • Distance (experimented in with trip)
  • Stationary
  • Private (would be used through Micropub visibility Extension)

Challenges

Brainstorming

Some brainstorming about exercise posts, including simple text-only syntaxes that could be used in notes:

Step Tracking

Syntax: number-of-steps #steps anything-extra

Examples:

BMI Tracking

Syntax: number #bmi

Examples:

Issues

Privacy

Depending on what device you use and circumstances, you may not own the data, and it may be retrievable by others to then infer (or disinfer) other things about you:

  • 2015-06-29 Fitbit data just undermined a womanโ€™s rape claim

    For Risley, fitness-tracking may have backfired, tracking something she didnโ€™t necessarily want committed to the record. Itโ€™s likely weโ€™ll see more Fitbits being trotted out in court in the future, as the wearable trend takes hold, and self-tracking leads to self-incrimination.

Sessions

IndieWebCamp sessions about exercise and other physical activities.

Brainstorming

Specific Exercise Types

You may want to post and display different kinds of exercise differently, and thus give them specialized post types that are like an exercise post but with more specific details

See Also