Gentler Streak won the Apple Watch App of the Year award among the 2022 Apple Store Award winners.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the app is a workout and fitness tracker with a unique twist: a self-compassionate approach to exercising. It is built for iPhone and Apple Watch use.

The initial offering from Gentler Stories, a mobile app development company with headquarters in Slovenia and a focus on sustainable living solutions, is Gentler Streak.

Three former students of the Apple Entrepreneur Camp and one former participant of the startup accelerator Y Combinator came together to form the women-led business in February 2021..

Although it has only been available for a little over a year—since its inception in September 2021—the app has been steadily growing in popularity.

In essence, Gentler Streak is a fitness program that aids users in keeping track of their exercise routines, distance traveled, heart rate zones, and other data.

But what makes it truly distinctive is its kinder approach, which also emphasizes recovery time.

Rest days don’t end your fitness streak with Gentler Streak, unlike Apple’s Workouts app, for example. Actually, the app’s objective is to encourage a healthy activity level without placing undue pressure on users to meet daily targets that don’t really reflect their bodies’ actual demands or circumstances on a given day (injury, or sickness for example).

Fitness applications can be a double-edged sword, according to study from the University of Galway, since some users may eventually acquire compulsive tendencies or unfavorable opinions of exercise and burnout.

The goal of Gentler Streak is to change certain unhealthy exercise practices into useful routines that can last a lifetime.

To do this, it responds to each user’s unique fitness status and offers the best workout regimens through a tailored Activity Path. Additionally, users have access to the Go Gentler feature, which tracks their exercise intensity and notifies them when to speed up or slow down while accounting for active recovery and rest periods.

Since its release, the program has undergone constant improvement; some of the most recent changes include social media sharing and the addition of Spanish.

Tom Henriksson, General Partner at early-stage European venture capital firm OpenOcean, commented on the app’s swift ascent to prominence, saying: “Gentler Streak stems from a long tradition of software businesses from modest European countries punching above their weight.”

He went on to say that this is consistent with a larger pattern in Eastern Europe, which has emerged “as a hotspot of technical innovation” and is home to many brilliant concepts and tech entrepreneurs.

“With its development strategy focused on finding solutions, Gentler Streak appears to have won over the judges, said Henriksson.

“The makers have fashioned a highly rated Apple Watch fitness program that knows users’ readiness and balances nicely between training and rest,” said one reviewer. “Rather than trying to combat larger competition on performance or design alone.”

The Software Store offers a free download of the app, but in order to use it fully, you must subscribe. The cost of the premium is $7.99 per month and $24.99 per year.