See how an exercise is done

Knowing what to train is the easy part. Knowing whether you are doing it right is what keeps people on the machines they already understand. Ratz has a demonstration built into the exercise picker for exactly that moment.

Find the info icon

When you add an exercise during a workout, exercises with a demonstration show a small ⓘ next to the name. Tap it and the demonstration opens over the picker, so you do not lose your place.

The icon appears in two spots: in the list while you are choosing, and next to the exercise once you have selected it. If you are mid-set and want to check your form, it is one tap away.

 2

Select Exercise

Search…

Bench Press 

Incline Dumbbell Press 

Cable Fly 

Push Up 

Battle Ropes

Box Jump

Watch the movement

The demonstration is a loop between two drawings: the start of the movement and the end of it. It holds on each pose before crossing to the other, so you can see the two positions that matter rather than a blur.

Underneath, How to lists the movement in numbered steps: how to set up, where to grip, what to keep straight, how to breathe.

 2

Bench Press

Start and end of the movement

How to

1Lie on a flat bench with your feet flat on the floor, keep your back flat on the bench.

2Grasp the bar a little wider than shoulder width apart.

Illustration: Bench Press, Everkinetic, CC BY-SA 4.0

What has one, and what does not

88 of the 143 exercises in Ratz have a demonstration. That covers essentially all the barbell, dumbbell, machine and bodyweight work, which is where form questions actually come up.

Exercises without one simply do not show the icon. That is mostly cardio, mobility work and most CrossFit movements, where a two-frame drawing would not tell you anything useful.

A couple are left blank on purpose. Sumo and trap bar deadlifts are stance variants that the drawing set cannot faithfully depict, and showing you a conventional deadlift instead would be worse than showing you nothing.

If you are starting out

Two habits worth building:

• Check the demonstration before your first set, not after. The steps are written for someone who has not done the movement before.
• Come back to it when a lift stalls. A plateau is often a setup problem, and the setup is steps 1 and 2.

The drawings come from Everkinetic and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Every demonstration credits its source in the app.