The Algorithm

• Double progression, per exercise: reps move inside a window, then the load takes one step and the reps start over.
• The window and the step come from the per-exercise table. Barbell bench: 2.5 kg, 6–10 reps. Barbell overhead press: 1 kg, 6–10. Dumbbell lateral raise: 0.5 kg, 12–20. Leg press: 5 kg, 6–10.
• Your own custom exercises have no row in the table, so they take a default by muscle: arms, abs, adductors and abductors 1 kg, 10–15 reps; small muscles such as side delts and forearms 0.5 kg, 12–20; traps and calves 2.5 kg, 8–12; everything else 2.5 kg, 6–10.
• All working sets at the top of the window → one load step, reps back to the bottom.
• Targets hit → +1 rep next time.
• A plan with no weight, on a lift your log shows a load for, is judged at the load you lifted.
• Short two sessions running at the same target → one step back, reps kept (no load, or too little to take a step off: one reps or seconds notch down). Short means under the reps or lighter than the weight that session was planned at, on a set you completed. A set left undone is no miss: skipping sets never triggers a step back. Nor does it earn anything, as a step takes every working set done. A session lifted heavier than the plan never triggers a step back.
• Bodyweight work moves by reps (+1, or +2 from 20 reps), holds by seconds. Lifts marked load-only, like the barbell clean, keep their reps and take the step when targets are hit.
• Warm-ups and skipped sets: never counted, never changed.
• A plan with no weights takes them from your last session, even if the reps fell short.
• On the celebration card, PROGRESS MY PLAN only moves the exercises you did in that session.
• Completed sets count, even on an exercise you bailed, whatever the reason. A session with only a warm-up logged isn't judged: the one before it is. Only the last session from that plan day is judged (the last from any day if that day has none), plus the one before it for the two-miss rule.

Barbell bench 60 kg, target 3×8 (window 6–10). You log 8, 8, 8 → next time 3×9. You reach 3×10 → 62.5 kg, 3×6. You come up short twice at 62.5 → 60 kg, still 3×6.

Pick Go lighter, Stay here or Go heavier in an exercise's note (or start the note, or a clause of it, with those words) and your last session's pick wins. Go lighter: one step back. Stay here: no change. Go heavier: one load step, same reps (one reps or seconds notch with no load). A pick applies once: the next session's note starts blank.

Sleep, soreness, nutrition, technique. The rules only see your log and your note.

• Progressing reps or load both grow muscle. Plotkin et al. 2022 · PeerJ
• 2–10% load steps when reps exceed target. 2.5 kg on a 60 kg bench is about 4%; on a very light set a fixed step can go over 10%. ACSM Position Stand 2009
• 10+ weekly sets per muscle beat fewer; 12–20 looks a reasonable band in trained lifters. This is not a Trainer rule: it is the background to the MUSCLES tab, which counts weekly sets (a secondary muscle as half a set, our convention). Schoenfeld et al. 2017 · J Sports Sci · Baz-Valle et al. 2022 · J Hum Kinet
• Sets closer to failure help growth modestly, but strength gains stay flat across a wide range, and going all the way to failure shows little overall edge. Why no rule here asks for failure. Robinson et al. 2024 · Sports Med · Grgic et al. 2022 · J Sport Health Sci
• Hypertrophy similar across loads when sets are hard. Schoenfeld et al. 2017 · J Strength Cond Res
• Deloads are practice, not proven. The Trainer schedules none. Bell et al. 2024 · Sports Med Open · Coleman et al. 2024 · PeerJ

No study has tested double progression as a scheme: it is standard practice, inferred from the first two rows. The two-miss step-back is practitioner convention; no trial defines it. Only the first two rows bear on the rules directly, and none of these studies tested this app.