Training is great. Training apps are great, sometimes.
There’s a cancer in the industry with a name: ensh*ttification. A product gets useful. You put years into it. Then the company starts extracting — features behind a paywall, a new fee, a worse deal — because the history you already made is what keeps you from leaving.
That’s the hostage.
In a fitness app, it’s your training log. Sets, reps, loads. The program that worked. The six weeks that didn’t. You could switch. Now you get to find out how much of those years comes with you.
Norway’s consumer council actually just made two short films about the pattern: A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator — a man goes to work and makes apps worse — and The Life of Death and the Ensh*ttificator. You’ve probably used something they could have worked on.
We embed from youtube-nocookie.com, because YouTube itself has already gone through
the process.
The accompanying Breaking Free report looks at how digital products deteriorate and what would help people push back. For fitness apps, one question is especially useful: what do you lose if you leave? Hostages always provide leverage for bad behavior.
Any training app could change their deal
A few examples:
- MyFitnessPal moved barcode scanning to Premium in October 2022. A quick way to log food became a paid feature. The company documents the change in its scanner support page.
- Fitbit removed Challenges, Adventures, trophies and open groups in March 2023. If competing with friends helped you get your steps in, that part of your routine disappeared.
- Peloton introduced a $95 US used-equipment activation fee in August 2024. New members buying secondhand faced an extra charge on top of the equipment and subscription. Peloton has since run temporary fee waivers, so it hasn’t been charged continuously.
- WHOOP’s May 2025 hardware launch came with an upgrade-policy backlash. Members expecting a free upgrade faced a fee or a membership extension. WHOOP then expanded free upgrades and offered refunds for eligible members. It also said its earlier blog promise of an upgrade after six months of membership had been incorrect. The partial reversal matters; so does the expectation people had when they signed up.
A removed feature, an added fee, a changed upgrade deal. Each affects what you get from a training setup you’ve already invested in.
Paying for a useful app is reasonable. Developers need to eat too. But years of logs, saved routines and training partners make switching harder than downloading something else. A company can make a worse offer and still keep you.
That’s the hostage problem: leaving costs you something you’ve already put work into.
A training log should travel with you
I have been haunted by ensh**tification enough times to start to wonder if the guys with the paper-bound log “book” were the real geniuses.
Say you’re comparing two training blocks. You want your exercises, loads, reps and notes together so you can see what changed. A download with half those fields missing isn’t much help. Neither is a file your next app can’t read.
A useful exit means you can get your records, open them elsewhere, and keep enough detail to use them. Perhasps it’s not a 100$ recreation of every chart or wont move your friend connections too. But you shouldn’t have to rebuild your training history from screenshots.
That is what we’re building around in tensr.fitness
But now since we are using open data, and not paper, your own agents can read your training history. Give a capable tool access to an export and it can compare blocks, chart your progress or prepare a summary for your coach. You can ask questions the app hasn’t built a screen for. Here’s how open data makes that possible.
Your records live on your device. The app reads and writes a local SQLite
database, which you can export as a .tensr.db file. SQLite is a widely used
format with tools that can open it independently of tensr. Our
data model guide shows how to inspect
the file and query your history.
The basics stay free and work without an account. Recording, history, goals, routines, export and manual device-to-device sync are covered by our free-feature policy. That gives us a specific standard to check when we add features.
Workouts have a documented format. Our
.workout.md documentation, schemas and
command-line tools give other developers a way to read and build on those files.
That doesn’t mean every competing app can import them today. It makes that work
possible without asking us for permission.
We support sensors from other manufacturers. The app connects to devices
including the Tindeq Progressor and Weiheng WH-C06 through the open
@hangtime/grip-connect library. You can use hardware you already own.
Yes, we’re planning a paid tier
Cloud backup is useful. Lose your phone and you’ll be very pleased a second copy exists. Automatic sync, sharing updates with a coach, and tools for managing clients are useful too. We plan to charge for services like these through Premium.
That means our servers will hold training data for people who opt in. Our cloud privacy model allows the server to read synced data. It isn’t end-to-end encrypted. That matters when deciding whether to use it.
The local copy stays on your device. Cancelling Premium should stop the paid services while leaving your records available to read and export. We’re happy to sell you a backup. Access to the training you’ve already recorded stays free.
Our sync design also includes links that carry the data inside the link, so a recipient doesn’t need an account to retrieve a server-held copy. You still need compatible software to open the payload; a link alone doesn’t guarantee that a website will remain available forever. For keeping your whole database, export the file.
What to hold us to
Here’s the checklist for tensr.fitness as we build out those services:
- Free Basics: recording, history, goals, routines, export and manual device-to-device sync, without an account. As long as we are solvent, Basics are Free.
- Complete and readable exports: include the training data and metrics we store about you, keep old recordings readable, and maintain the published format documentation.
- Straightforward cancellation : ending a subscription must leave your local history intact and usable. No payment or support request to retrieve it.
- Open Hardware: no dropping third-party support to push our own sensors, exclusive app requirement for hardware we sell, or fees to activate, transfer or resell it.
- Sharing is under your control: no restrictions on how you use your exported records, and no subscription required to decode a data-carrying link.
Code and written policies help us stick to that list. They don’t make bad future decisions impossible. We still have to make the next decision well.
There’s also a limit to what an export can fix. If all your training partners use one app, leaving means losing some of that convenience. We haven’t solved that (yet). Making records portable is one part of making switching easier.
Try the exit before you need it
Export a few sessions from whichever app you use now. Open the file outside that app. Check whether your exercises, dates, loads, reps and notes came through. If you record sensor data, check for that too.
Can you use what you got? How much would you have to rebuild?
You put in hard work in the session. Why should keeping data ba hard work too?