Gentler Streak: Wellness Hub 12+

Before Gentler Streak, I had bought, sold, then bought Apple Watches again because while I loved the idea of health tracking, I hated Apple’s Activity Rings. They simply don’t take into account that we are dynamic human beings with fluctuating needs.

Enter Gentler Streak. It played a large part in my decision to try the Apple Watch one more time, and it has single-handedly made it worth it. I love everything about this app: its friendly demeanor, intuitive user interface, educational angle, the ability to monitor heart rate zones in real time, the wholistic Activity Path, the option to set workout status (“on a break,” “injured,” and “sick” in addition to “active”), the wellbeing tab which gives you insights on your body’s readiness for the day based on sleep data—the list goes on and on.

For me personally, Gentler Streak has actually helped me trust my body more, giving me the assurance that I can exert myself more heavily during workouts than I had previously thought. As a result, I’ve been able to push harder over time with intentionality and care. Of course, this will vary from user to user—some people will find they need to drastically rein it in—which is the entire point of this app.

If you’re burned out on Activity Rings or are just looking for a workout app that feels more like a faithful companion than a strict taskmaster, Gentler Streak is for you. Just buy the subscription. It’s more than worth it.

Wow, what a nice review 🥹🧡 Thank you so much for taking the time to write it! We love to hear Gentler Streak proved to be this helpful to you, making your fitness lifestyle more pleasant, efficient and healthier. Wishing you a pleasant fitness journey! Thanks, Vid

UPDATE: We still aren’t getting anything to show our steps as activity in this app. That’s a critical issue here. We shouldn’t have to log our daily steps as workouts to record the activity. I’ve tried doing this to have a more accurate picture of wellbeing and actually have the app saying I’m overreaching when it’s not that hard to walk throughout the day, taking breaks in between. Developers need to find a way to work this into the algorithm for the app. As it stands it seems that while other apps ignore the need for customization based on individual abilities/needs this app ignores the need to have basic data at its core. We need to meet somewhere in the middle here ASAP.
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I like the app but there are area it needs work; 1) The new Wellbeing tab and syncing with Health is good, but why doesn’t it show our steps? and why aren’t our streaks reflecting our walking throughout the day? This needs attention ‼️ 2) I’ve had to edit sleep in other apps as it over estimated my time sleeping. But then this app shows “Insufficient data” under the Wellbeing tab.🤨 The day is there? I just corrected it so that the record is accurate. This shouldn’t be a problem. 3) One of the reasons I’ve liked this app is the ability to do things at our own pace. I don’t like the “reminders” about exercising or losing a streak. A streak shouldn’t rely solely on workouts but also steps. See point 1.

Hello,

thank you for taking the time and leaving a review. We are indeed a work in progress. 😊

1.
a) Steps may become a part of Wellbeing if we find a sensible way to include them.
b) Your heart rate is the base for the TRIMP formula, which lies at the core of our algorithm. When you don't track your workout, we get very scarce feedback on it; therefore, we cannot estimate the toll it took on your body. The same goes for steps that appear as exercise minutes (if you use Apple Watch). We take it into account, but since heart rate data is not dense, we can't tell the strain it had on your body, therefore the effect on Activity Path is most probably not as great as it would be with full data. The Apple Watch reads your heart rate continuously every couple of seconds when tracking a workout, giving us great data to work with. When you are not tracking, your watch reads your heart rate every 2 to 5 minutes, getting up to 20 readings per hour at best.

2. This was a bug that was removed with the next version. If the problem still persists, please send over an email to support@gentlerstories.com and we will have a look into it.

3. Reply in the 1st point covers this. I agree this would be optimal, but it would not be backed with data, which then makes it messy. You could insert walking activity by hand, and do an equivalent of distance, and estimate your efforts with RPE. However, this is not optimal and we would suggest tracking as many workouts as possible, and with that getting quality data in, so we can guide you best as we can.