Alpha Progression App Review 2024 – Pros, Cons and My Overall Verdict

I’ve used this weightlifting app for over a year now. Here are my key takeaways.

When it comes to logging your workouts and following effective muscle building plans, there’s a new tool in town – Alpha Progression.

This Alpha Progression app review outlines everything you need to know about the app, including the pros, cons, and ultimately if it’s worth the money or not.

In a hurry? Here’s the bottom line… I really like Alpha Progression – in fact, it claimed top spot on our recent comparison of the best weightlifting apps for 2024.

The company has also very kindly offered Fitness Drum readers a unique 20% discount to help get started (which includes a 14 day free trial). Simply click below to have the discount automatically applied (or use promo code FD20 at checkout).

Alpha Progression – TL;DR

If you don’t have time to read this Alpha Progression review in full, swipe across the images below to see some screenshots of what the app is like to use.

What is Alpha Progression?

Alpha Progression was founded in 2019 by Benjamin Schnabel & Marwin Sinapius. It is a German-based company, but it is available in US and everything is available in English.

Alpha Progression falls under the general umbrella of “fitness apps”… although it’s really a gym logger and workout generator.

The app uses A.I. to generate workout plans and recommendations, based on available equipment, experience, and other attributes.

Features	Details
Free Plan?	Yes
Pro Plan Price	$59.99/year
Founders	Benjamin Schnabel & Marwin Sinapius
Promo Code Available?	FD20 (20% Off)
Apple Average Rating	4.9/5
Android Average Rating	4.8/5
Free Trial?	14 Days
Best Fitness App Category Winner	Weightlifting and Hypertrophy

What I Like About the Alpha Progression App

Available on iOS and Android Devices

Alpha Progression is available on both iOS and Android devices. The app also works very well on both and offers the same features.

I’ve been quite surprised how some apps often offer different experiences depending on device (often favouring iOS), which can be frustrating.

Luckily for Alpha Progression users, the device they own really doesn’t impact the overall experience of the app (obviously navigating through the app differs between device based on how iOS and Android allow users to tap, scroll, etc).

Record Body Measurements and Track Progress

This is quite a standard feature for any sort of fitness or weight loss app, but it’s worth noting. Alpha Progression encourages you to record body measurements and track your progress over time.

Ultimately, this helps you monitor your progression.

You do need to manually enter these details… so to fully take advantage of this feature, you’d need access to scales and a tape measure.

As I’ll discuss later on in this review, this sort of feature is just one of many reasons I think the Alpha Progression app lends itself very well for bodybuilding and those looking for aesthetic transformations (as opposed to just a more general strength training app).

Clean Code, Very Few Glitches or Issues

The app itself appears to have been developed very well… I experienced no bugs whilst using it.

It always surprises us how many apps, including popular workout apps, often come with unwanted glitches or bugs. The last thing you want is for the app to freeze when you’re trying to record your new personal best on the deadlift!

Reliability is a key when it comes to delivering a quality user experience and Alpha Progression scores very highly for this.

Create and Store Custom Workouts

Alpha Progression allows you to create and store custom workouts.

I really like this feature for numerous reasons.

Firstly, if you find a workout you like online and want to follow it, you can simply enter it into the app and track your progress. For example, our 4 week glute workout plan or 12 week dumbbell workout plan could give you the inspiration or foundation to create your own workouts in the app.

As you work through the workouts, you can see all your previous workout performance and data… helping you understand how you’re improving (the use of simple graphs makes this very easy to interpret).

Secondly, Alpha Progression is able to generate A.I. workouts based on your preferences and performances… and if you find it generates some workouts you really like, you can simply save these and do them again (and again).

Create Multiple Gym Profiles

A very subtle difference between Alpha Progression and many of the other fitness apps I’ve used is the ability to create multiple gym profiles.

So, what is a gym profile and why is creating multiple profiles useful?

A gym profile allows you to enter details like available equipment, age, weight, experience, length of workout, how many days a week you want to train, any muscles you want to focus on or ignore and plan cycle.

Based on this data, the app is able to generate customized workout plans for you.

Ultimately, this means you’ll get a workout that is much better suited to what you want. With free fitness apps, they often just assume you have access to all equipment… and consequently can become pretty useless pretty quickly when you can’t follow along to half the exercises.

Similarly, the ability to exclude certain equipment, exercises or muscle groups is great if you’re recovering from injury and need to rest up your lower body, for example (although this is potentially a dangerous feature if you use it frequently and start excluding certain muscle groups all the time just because you don’t like training them… remember friends don’t let friends skip leg day!)

Now, the ability to create multiple gym profiles is ideal if you like to mix up your workouts – for example, sometimes you exercise at home, sometimes in the gym, sometimes whilst travelling.

By creating a new profile and the associated equipment selected, only exercises using that equipment will be shown.

Simple, but a very effective solution that’s lacking with many other gym loggers.

Big Exercise Library

The app includes a big exercise library of over 621 exercises.

Each exercise includes a demonstration video (often with multiple angles), detailed description and your past performance history doing that exercise. The demonstration is also done by a real human, as opposed to a graphic illustration (the way many workout apps display exercise demos), which I think is much more useful.

It also splits exercises into one of 3 categories – small, medium and large. You can set a rest period per exercise category, which makes for a more natural training regime. For example, it makes more sense to have a longer rest period after exercises like bench press and deadlift, than with bicep curls.

Similar Exercises Feature

The app makes it very easy to find similar exercises for each exercise in your workout, if you want/need to swap.

If there are just certain exercises you really don’t like, you can just exclude those in the gym profile so they never show up.

Maybe you just don’t like db sumo deadlifts… that’s fine, you can simply exclude that from ever being generated, or find similar exercises to replace it with.

Effective A.I. Workout Plans

I found Alpha Progression was very effective at generating workout plans via its A.I. (artificial intelligence) feature.

This is based on workout performance, available equipment, etc.

This creates really professional workout splits and programming… which you’d usually need a Personal Trainer to make for you. In other words, this feature is worth a lot more than you’re paying. It’s also completely customized based on data… which means it becomes better over time.

The main thing is to always record your workouts and ensure the app is getting accurate data. If you start to forget to upload your workout stats, the app simply won’t be able to customize your plan as well.

Built for Progressive Overload, Classic Strength Training

Where Alpha Progression comes into its own is for progressive overload training and the “classic” bodybuilding strength training routines.

The ability to carefully track and monitor the weight you are lifting will really support and enhance any attempts at following this sort of traditional progressive overload workout plan.

Progressive overload training is proven to be the most effective way to build muscle. The logic is simple… you keep “progressively” challenging your muscles by upping the weight, reps or sets during your workouts.

And the Alpha app makes this incredibly easy to do.

Very Easy Logging

I’ve reviewed a lot of “fitness” and “workout” apps… and I tend to split them in two main categories – those that offer on-demand or live workout classes to follow along to, and those that offer workout logging and performance data.

Alpha Progression makes no attempts to be a generalist fitness app, offering live classes or celebrity-backed workouts… instead, it is built to be an effective and easy-to-use workout logger, and I think it does that very well.

Things to Consider

Doesn’t Track 1RM

A somewhat surprising omission is no mention of 1RM (rep max) – i.e. what’s the absolute heaviest weight you could lift for 1 repetition.

This is quite a popular metric gym-goers often want to know.

However, it does track 10RM (ideal for German Volume Training and Hypertrophy). Credit where credit is due, if you want to develop a muscular physique, this sort of hypertrophy training that includes higher reps is what you want to be doing (as opposed to the powerlifting approach which focuses on absolute strength and power… but not necessarily muscular development, toning, sculpting, etc.

Our guess is that most users would actually benefit from focusing more on 10RM than a 1RM… but for those purists who want to give their egos a tickle with how much weight they can shift, they may hope the ability to track 1RM is a feature that’s added soon.

(They actually have a free 1RM calculator on their website if you need one too).

Favours Big Lifts and Classic Gym Training Plans

I think Alpha Progression would likely agree that the app is really designed for effective hypertrophy and bodybuilding style workout plans.

If you prefer bodyweight HIIT sessions or circuit training, the app isn’t going to feel as intuitive to use.

The benefits come from being able to track lifts.

I would describe Alpha as a “weightlifting app” as opposed to a “workout app.”

(For what it’s worth, I also think everyone should do weightlifting too, as the benefits are too important to ignore).

Who is Alpha Progression Best Suited For?

Based on our experience of using the Alpha Progression app, I think it is best suited for those who focus on lifting weights as part of their fitness routine.

I think the app is undoubtedly one of the best gym loggers in the app store, as well as being unrivalled in its ability to generate hypertrophy workout plans customized to each user.

The focus on hypertrophy, as opposed to just “strength” also means this is a fantastic choice for anyone who prefers to follow a more traditional bodybuilding style gym workout… where the focus is on muscular development and aesthetic transformations, as opposed to just 1RM powerlifting approaches.

The ease of use means the app is also a great choice for anyone who is perhaps less tech savvy and just wants something that is simple to get started with.

I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone who wants to follow live or on-demand classes, or who actually wants a more generalist fitness app.

Alternatives

The category of gym loggers and workout planners is pretty saturated, but I think Alpha Progression has certainly carved out a respected audience and following in quite a short period of time.

In terms of alternatives, Fitbod is another popular lifting app, as well as Strong and JEFIT. They’re all quite similarly priced and although similarly matched in features, they do all have unique qualities and uses… so you’ll probably find yourself naturally drawn to one of them more than others.

Our comprehensive review of the best weightlifting apps provides some details on the differences and key features of all these gym loggers and weightlifting apps – check it out here.

As I’ve mentioned, I rated Alpha Progression on this list as best for hypertrophy and bodybuilding workouts.

Bottom Line

If you’re looking for a reliable gym logger, Alpha Progression is definitely worth considering.

Based on how much value I’ve gained from the app, I’ve managed to get our readers a unique 20% off the first month. Simply click below to have the discount automatically applied, or use the promo code FD20 at checkout.

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