Muscle Builder for Windows

Muscle Builder allows users to create and print workouts, or at least, that's its claim. Our experience was that the program is really just a thinly veiled advertisement for a couple of bodybuilding Web sites.

The program's interface is simple and easy to use, consisting of a single screen on which users choose exercises from a couple of drop-down menus, one for strength training and another for cardio. For each exercise users can enter the number of sets and repetitions, or length of time. This is easy enough to do, but the program falls short with the limited list of exercises and the inability for users to add more. Once each exercise is entered it is added to a list that can then, in theory, be printed. Unfortunately, no amount of clicking on the printer icon resulted in a printed workout. The program has no Help file at all, so users with questions about printing or any other aspect of the program will remain uninformed and frustrated. In the end, we don't see any point in this program; it would be easier to jot down your workout on a piece of notebook paper, or type it up in Word or Excel. Two big blocks of the program's interface are devoted to ads for bodybuilding Web sites, which is likely the true reason for the program's existence.

Muscle Builder is free. It adds a desktop icon without asking but uninstalls cleanly. We do not recommend this program; although there is nothing functionally wrong with it, other programs have more features and are not just advertisements masquerading as software.