Fitbod vs Hevy: Generated or Logged

The case for Fitbod

It removes the decision. For someone new, or returning after years off, or training in an unfamiliar gym, the barrier is not effort — it is not knowing what to do. Fitbod produces a complete, reasonable session in seconds and adapts it to the equipment in front of you.

Equipment adaptation is genuinely good. Hotel gym with three dumbbells and a bench? It handles that well, and manually reprogramming around missing equipment is a real friction that stops sessions.

The recovery model, within its own frame, is sensible. It tracks which muscle groups you have hit recently and biases away from them.

Adherence beats optimisation. A suboptimal session you complete produces more adaptation than a perfect one you skip. This is the strongest argument for Fitbod and it applies to more people than the internet admits.

The case for Hevy

Progression is observable. Same lifts, week after week, with the previous set prefilled and a chart of where it has gone. That is the mechanism by which strength actually improves, and it requires stability that a generator deliberately breaks. What the volume and progression evidence supports.

You keep the information. After a year of training you know which lifts you respond to, which ones aggravate an old shoulder, and how much volume you tolerate. A generator cannot know any of that. Handing the decision to it is discarding your best data.

The free tier is real. Unlimited logging, large exercise library, decent charts, no paywall on the basics.

Logging speed. Prefilled previous sets, quick rest timers, minimal taps. This matters at 6am more than any feature.

The variety problem, stated precisely

Fitbod's rotation is not random, but it is frequent enough to break the thing that drives strength.

Progressive overload means adding load or reps to the same movement over weeks. If Monday's quad work rotates between hack squat, leg press, Bulgarian split squat and belt squat, you have four sparse series instead of one clear one — and no way to tell whether you are getting stronger or just doing different exercises.

The counter-argument is real: for hypertrophy specifically, exercise variety is less costly than for strength, and total volume matters more than movement identity. That is true. It is still the case that you cannot see progression in a series with one data point per month.

The comparison

The gap both share

Neither app knows you run, and for both this is more consequential than it looks.

For Fitbod it is a live error. Its recovery model is built from Fitbod-logged lifting only. A 45-mile running week and a rest week produce identical recommendations, so it will confidently prescribe heavy squats the day after a long run, every time. The interference from concurrent training is dose-dependent, and the dose is exactly what Fitbod cannot see. What the interference-effect research actually found.

For Hevy it is an omission you have to cover. It records what you tell it and takes no position, so the error is not in the app — it is in you having to hold the endurance context in your head.

Either way, three decisions fall through:

• Weekly volume target. The set count you can recover from during a marathon build is not the one you can recover from in an off-season. Count what you are actually doing.
• Deload timing. The signal is lifting volume plus endurance load plus recovery markers. Neither app has two of the three. When a deload is actually indicated.
• Session order and spacing. Lifting and running on the same day has a right order.

Which to pick

Fitbod for your first six to twelve months, or any time the alternative is not training at all.

Hevy once you know what you respond to. At that point you are the better generator.

Neither, if you run seriously. Both are strength-only tools. The volume you should be doing is a function of your endurance load, and neither app can see it. What one ledger for both halves looks like.