I’ve always been drawn to products where messy human behavior needs to be turned into clear product logic.

Fitness is one of those areas.

On the surface, a fitness app may look simple: track workouts, sets, reps, weights, calories, and progress. But in real life, fitness tracking is much more complicated.

Many fitness apps can log activity, but the experience often breaks down when a user needs more structure: building a training program manually, selecting exercises one by one from long lists, or following generic plans that do not match how people actually train in a real gym.

For me, fitness tracking needs to be smarter than just a list of exercises, sets, reps, and weights. People train on different machines, use different watches, follow different programs, and expect their data to make sense across tools they already use.

This is where product experience becomes interesting.

I genuinely like Technogym equipment. Their machines feel premium, the interface on the equipment is polished, and the overall digital experience looks strong. I also follow Technogym on LinkedIn because I find the brand and product direction interesting.

But as a regular user and Product Manager, I still notice a product gap: the Technogym experience and the Samsung Health ecosystem do not feel like one connected training reality. They feel like two separate worlds.

For everyday training, I still find it easier to track activity with my Samsung Watch. The issue is not that one product is “bad” and the other is “good”. The issue is that the data does not always feel transferred, translated, or synchronized in a way that is truly useful for a person who trains regularly.

And this is the product problem I find fascinating.

A fitness product is not only about having a beautiful interface or a strong brand. It also needs to fit into the user’s real life. It needs to respect the tools the user already has , the data they already trust, and the way they actually train (for sure, you understand it well, it’s not a rocket science).

For me, a good fitness product should answer questions like:

• What is the user trying to achieve? – for example, I want to have one full picture of my daily activity including workouts .
  
• What data is actually useful for training decisions? – For me, this is often heart rate, training time, rest time between sets, and sometimes blood oxygen.
  
• Which system is the source of truth? – One source of truth wins. When several tools collect data, one source of truth should be clear.
  
• How should workouts, sets, weights, volume, effort, and progress be represented? – the information should be easy for understaning, editable and it show trends (progress over the time)
  
• How do we avoid forcing the user to manually reconcile data between different apps? – The less a user needs to add, tap, scroll, or fix manually during a workout, the better.
  
• How can the product support consistency without becoming overwhelming? – This is one of the main challenges. Health Connect by Google helps with data transport for Android users, but the question of ownership and interpretation of the data is not always fully solved.

This is one of the reasons I started building my own small fitness app MVP, GymBuddy.

At this stage, GymBuddy is intentionally simple. It is not trying to compete with large fitness ecosystems. (Of course not, this is like a paper plan trying to compete with a Boeing 777X). It is a learning and product-building project focused on the basics: training structure, workout tracking, sets, weights, progress visualization, and a clearer relationship between the user’s starting level and their training plan.

This is the kind of fitness app Product Manager work I enjoy most: turning real training behavior into clear product logic, user flows, requirements, and buildable MVP scope.

The first version is designed to suggest a training plan based on core movement patterns and the user’s initial fitness background. The goal is to help users train with more structure, track what they actually do, and see progress over time.

Later, the product can become smarter (if i have time and efforts for this). It can learn from completed workouts, missed sessions, fatigue signals, progression patterns, and user preferences. It can help adjust training plans more intelligently. It can become less like a static tracker and more like a practical training companion.

I’m building GymBuddy using a controlled AI-assisted product development workflow.

I use ChatGPT to think through product logic, requirements, edge cases, and documentation. I use Cursor and Android Studio for the development workflow. UI concepts and screens were explored in MagicPatterns (I enjoyed this experiance), and the mascot was created in Midjourney.

For me, this project is not only about building an app. It is about practicing the kind of product work I enjoy most:

• turning unclear ideas into clear MVP scope
• translating real user frustration into product requirements
• defining user flows, screen logic, and edge cases
• connecting product decisions with technical delivery
• keeping the first version simple enough to build
• creating a foundation that can become smarter over time

Fitness and health products are especially interesting to me because they sit at the intersection of behavior, data, motivation, safety, personalization, and everyday habits.

A good product in this space cannot just collect data. It needs to help the user understand what the data means and what to do next.

That is the kind of product work I would love to do more of.

I’m open to Product Manager / Product Owner opportunities in SaaS, fitness, wellness, healthtech, and related products — especially where teams need someone to bring structure to ambiguity, clarify MVP scope, improve requirements, and turn complex product ideas into buildable work.