See the change you cannot feel yet

What this is, plainly

Real change is slow. The change you cannot feel yet is the change most likely to make you quit. The progress tracking system was built to make invisible change visible — so you can prove to yourself that the work is landing, even when the mirror is still catching up.

The photo comparison tool

Once a week the app prompts you to take a set of progress photos — front, side, back. The second time you do this, and every time after, the previous photo appears as a faint overlay on the camera so you can line up exactly the same posture, distance, and lighting. Consistency across photos is what makes comparison possible.

The comparison view has two modes:

• Side-by-side. Two photos next to each other with a draggable slider. Useful for clear before/after framing.
• Overlay. One photo blended into another with adjustable opacity. The app uses subject-recognition to align the bodies first, so the comparison is fair even if you stood slightly differently.

You can compare any two photos in your library, not just adjacent weeks. Most clients use the overlay mode at week 8 versus week 1 — by then there is something visible that the day-to-day mirror has been hiding.

Body composition logging that respects how slow real change is

Weight, body-fat percentage, waist, chest, thigh, arm, neck. The full set takes 60 seconds with a tape measure. The app stores every reading and plots it on a trend chart with two features most apps miss:

• Smoothed lines. Day-to-day weight bounces 1–2kg from water alone. The chart shows a 7-day moving average alongside the raw points, so signal beats noise visually.
• Trend arrows, not absolute values. The summary card shows "↑ +0.4kg in 30 days" rather than "78.2kg today". The whole point is the trajectory.

Bluetooth body-comp scales (most Withings and many Xiaomi models) pair directly and auto-log every weigh-in. You can hide any metric you do not want to see — many clients hide weight completely and focus on circumferences and photos.

Monthly transformation check-ins

Once a month, the app runs a structured check-in. Photos in the same five positions every month. A short set of mobility-and-mirror prompts. A 1–10 mood rating. A 1–10 sleep quality rating. A free-text reflection on what worked and what did not.

Done seriously, the monthly check-in is the most valuable data we collect. Six months in, you can scroll back through every entry and see exactly when things shifted — useful both for celebrating real progress and for diagnosing slumps.

Benchmarks on a regular cadence

Your trainer schedules standardised tests every 8–12 weeks so progress is measurable on consistent benchmarks rather than vibes. The library covers:

• Strength. 3RM bench press, 5RM squat, 1RM deadlift estimate, pull-up max, push-up max in two minutes.
• Conditioning. Cooper test, 1km time trial, 5km time trial, rowing 2km, ski-erg 1km.
• Mobility. Sit-and-reach, shoulder flexion, ankle dorsiflexion, hip internal rotation.

Each test has a clear protocol — warm-up, attempts allowed, rest between attempts — so results are comparable. Historical results graph on the same axis. "5km time" plotted over 18 months is one of the most motivating charts in the app for anyone who has been training a while.

Anonymous league bands

Optional, opt-out from settings. If you opt in, your benchmark times and lift numbers get placed against other MyPT users in your age and gender bracket. You see your position as a band — "top 25% for women 35–44 on the Cooper test" — not as an exact rank. Names are replaced with generated handles unless you choose to show your real name.

The point is to give you a sense of where you stand without the toxicity of public leaderboards. "Above average on conditioning, below on strength" is genuinely useful information for picking training priorities.

"I never weighed myself in my life because the number messed with my head. The overlay photos at month 8 versus month 1 hit completely differently. I could see my arms looked bigger. I could see my waist looked smaller. I did not need the number."
— Studio client, Malta

Quiet alerts

The app watches the long-term trajectories and surfaces alerts when something starts moving the wrong way. Weight trending up faster than expected for someone in a build phase. RHR creeping up week over week. Sleep quality declining for more than 10 days. Each alert comes with a one-paragraph explanation and a suggested conversation to have with your trainer. Alerts are intentionally conservative — they fire when patterns are clear, not on single bad nights.

Data ownership and export

Every metric we collect is exportable as a CSV from settings. Workouts, nutrition, measurements, photos (with EXIF preserved), benchmark results, sleep, HRV. The exports are formatted to import cleanly into other tools if you ever want to leave MyPT.

Data portability is a right, not a courtesy. The app was built so that leaving is as friction-free as joining was. The only way to keep clients is to be worth staying for.