Training

What this chapter is for

Training is the core of the app. Everything else — records, progress curves, days in a row, log cards — grows out of the sets you enter during a session. This chapter describes the three ways into a session and explains why the app asks a few things of you that other apps do not.

The three ways into a session

Way	When	Result
Create a workout and start it	You know beforehand what you will do	A template you repeat as often as you like
Quick workout	You are already at the gym and simply begin	A session without a template — at the end you decide whether one comes out of it
Planned session	The appointment sits in the planner	The same as the first way, only with a date in front of it

If you run the same sessions regularly, create them once as a workout. If you train irregularly, the quick workout gets you further — and you still get all the numbers.

Creating a workout

Creating one takes three steps:

Name, sets and rep range. The range is a span, not a fixed value — “8 to 12” means: as long as you stay inside that span, the set is on plan. These values act as the default for every exercise in the workout.
Pick the exercises. The library can be searched by name and by muscle group. If an exercise is missing, you create it as your own straight from the search.
A date — or none. You can put the workout into the planner right away (today, tomorrow, in seven days, or a date of your choosing) or skip the step. Skipping does not lose anything: the workout is in your list and can be scheduled later.

You edit an existing workout the same way — even in the middle of a running session, when you notice an exercise is missing.

Your own exercises

The bundled library covers the usual suspects, but not your specialities. Exercises you create carry a marker so you can spot them in the list, and you assign up to three muscle groups to each: primary, secondary, tertiary. That assignment is not decoration — it is what produces the analysis of which muscle was your focus this month.

An exercise of your own can later be renamed, reassigned or deleted. Deleting removes it from future workouts; the sets you already logged stay.

Running a session

When you start, a clock runs that measures the length of the whole session. You tap an exercise and enter weight and reps set by set.

Seven things are worth knowing:

Nothing is stored until you store the set. The wheels for weight and reps merely sit there at first. Only saving turns them into a set — an icon shows you which sets are already down. Stored sets can be tapped again, changed or deleted.
The step size is yours. How much the weight jumps per tap is your choice, and it is remembered per exercise. The plates on the barbell are not the steps on the leg press, and the app keeps both in mind. Which steps are on offer depends on your units: 0.5 · 2.5 · 5 · 10 kg, or 1 · 5 · 10 · 25 lb. Those are two grids of their own, not one converted into the other — a converted one would sit at 5.5 and 11 lb, numbers no plate carries.
The rep suggestion says where it comes from. A legend below the wheels tells you: yellow means “from the last time you trained this exercise”, red means “that was over two weeks ago”, green means “calculated from a set you did today”. A suggestion with a red marker is an old value, not a goal. If you already did the exercise today, the app suggests neither reps nor a weight and says so: trying the same weight again with tired muscles carries a risk of injury, and a number from the first round would be the wrong template. On other days the template from last time stays.
Alternative exercise. If the machine is taken, swap the exercise for another one for today. The swap applies to this session only at first. At the end the app asks whether the workout should keep the change from now on. If sets are already saved for the exercise you replace, the app tells you beforehand that they are lost in the swap.
The warning about heavy weight appears when the weight you entered is above what the app estimates as your maximum from your history. It does not stop you — you confirm it deliberately by holding the button for three seconds. It also appears if you already did the exercise earlier the same day. If the last workout of the exercise had only sets without weight, the app compares with the last workout that had weight. The warning does not replace your own judgement.
Finishing takes three seconds on purpose. The finish button has to be held, so that no stray tap in the middle of a session ends everything. The first short tap shows you a hint about it. In the quick workout a tap is enough, because the question how to save it comes afterwards.
A pause asks before the next set. If you paused the workout, or the app paused it by itself after a quiet spell (when you have switched on the automatic pause), it asks before the first new set whether to save and resume. The time of the pause does not count. You can also resume without a new set; changing or deleting sets needs no question. While a weight warning waits for your decision, the app does not pause by itself.

Weight and reps for an exercise already trained today, with the note that the app makes no suggestion — If you have already done an exercise today, the app makes no suggestion for it and tells you so.

Window “Workout is paused” asking whether to save the set and resume the workout — After a pause the app asks before the first new set whether the workout should run on.

If you cancel instead of finishing, the app asks what should happen to the sets you already entered. And if the app crashes or the phone dies, you are asked on the next start whether to resume the unfinished session, log it as completed, or discard it. The window tells you beforehand what the session contains, for example how many sets are already saved. Resuming takes you back to the exercise list with the clock still running; discarding asks once more, and going back deletes nothing.

Window “Unfinished Workout” with name, start time and number of saved sets — After a crash the app tells you which workout was open and how many sets are already saved.

If a workout could not be loaded at the start, the app tells you and lets you load it again. It then creates no empty session and overwrites nothing that is saved. If a workout changes while you have it open, the app quietly reads it again before it writes anything, so an old state is never written over a new one.

The summary

After finishing you see the session on one page: duration, sets, exercises, total weight moved — and the comparison with last time. On the first run there is no such comparison, and the app says so rather than printing a zero. New records show up here first. If you like, you can share the summary from there. If you trained at a place the app does not know yet, it asks here whether to save it as a training place (more on that below).

Quick workout

The quick workout needs no template. The clock runs once you start it; the empty page is at first only the invitation to add exercises and starts nothing by itself. You add exercises as you train. As with a planned workout, the app pauses the workout by itself after the waiting time you set, if you have switched on the automatic pause. The back button of your phone does not leave a running quick workout; you have to cancel on purpose. At the end — once at least one set has been entered — the app asks what should become of it:

Save as a workout: a template you can repeat in the future.
Log only: the sets count towards records and statistics, but no template is left behind.

Empty quick workout with the clock at 00:00:00 before it has been started — A quick workout begins empty with the clock standing still; only starting it sets it going.

That is the difference between “I do this regularly” and “this is what today looked like”.

Training places and the reminder at the gym

After a workout the app asks whether to save the place as your training place. It is optional and takes nothing away from the rest of the app. If you say no, it saves nothing and asks again after the next workout; you can also switch the question off altogether and back on later. What it is for: the app learns for each weekday when you usually start there — five on Mondays, perhaps, six on Saturdays. To do that it keeps, per place and weekday, the start times of your last ten workouts; it deletes older ones.

Summary after a workout with the question whether to save the place as a training place — After a workout the app asks once whether this place should become a training place.

If you say yes, the app switches the reminder on at the same time. When you then arrive on foot around that time (up to an hour and a half before or after), it reminds you with a message, at most once a day and not if you have already trained today. A tap on it starts the planned workout straight away, otherwise a quick workout. On days you never train there it stays quiet; driving past or waiting at a red light brings no message either.

Notification “Start a workout now?” with the text “You are at the gym.” — This is how the app reminds you when you arrive at the gym on foot around your usual time.

So that this works with the app closed, your phone asks when you switch it on for your location in the background, for motion and for notifications. On iPhone this needs the location permission “Always”; without it, the reminder and the automatic end stay off. The location is used only to recognise whether you reach or leave a saved place; the app does not record your path. It needs the motion permission for the step counter, which recognises that you are on foot. Positioning is not exact, so a message can occasionally come at the wrong time or not at all.

If you leave during a workout and do not come back within ten minutes, the workout ends by itself. It counts until five minutes after your last saved set — so the duration is right even if you only open the app again in the evening. A workout without a saved set is not kept; a message tells you so.

Place, start times and steps stay on your phone; the app does not store the step count at all. You can rename or delete saved places at any time, and their start times go with them. They are in neither your device’s backup nor a backup file; on a new phone the app therefore starts from scratch. What exactly is stored is in the privacy policy.

Records and progress

Your records sit on the start screen in one card: heaviest weight, most reps in a single set, days in a row, weight moved this month. A tap opens the full list; from there and from the record cards in the log you reach the exercise progress of that exercise.

It goes deeper in exercise progress, reachable from the dashboard. There, every exercise you trained at least twice has three views:

View	What it shows	What it is good for
Strength score	weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30) — an estimate of what you would manage for a single rep	Compares sessions in which you lifted different weights for different rep counts
Moved	weight × reps per session	Answers “how much did I move today”
Milestones	Only the sessions in which a new weight record fell	Shows the real jumps without the noise between them

Each view carries a help text explaining how its number is produced. The strength score, by the way, also rises when you manage the same weight for more reps than before — which is exactly why it exists next to the plain weight record.

How it fits together

Planned sessions come from the planner. Every finished session produces a card in the log and feeds the numbers on the dashboard.