GymMaster 2.0 · Training log for iPhone and iPad
User Guide
From your first exercise to a season of recorded training — logging, history, statistics, and the data that stays yours.
Operating model
How GymMaster works
GymMaster records what you actually did, keeps the meaning of every recorded measurement, and calculates everything else from that record. Nothing is estimated on your behalf.
- Library
- →
- Routine
- →
- Workout or Day Log
- →
- Sets
- →
- History
- →
- Statistics
Three ideas carry the whole app
Exercises are definitions
An exercise says what gets measured — repetitions, load, distance, duration — and in which units. Editing it corrects every past occurrence's name and attribution, but never rewrites what you recorded.
Sets are evidence
A completed Set stores its own measurements, units, and load meaning. Later edits to the exercise can't change what a recorded Set means.
Statistics are derived
Volume, muscle attribution and personal bests are recalculated from Sets. There's no separate score to repair or get out of date.
Two ways to log
An Active Workout is a single session you start, work through, and finish. Only one can exist at a time. A Day Log is everything you did on a given calendar day, and it closes itself at midnight. You can have both at once — starting a workout while a Day Log is open is normal.
When a calculation needs something you didn't record — a body weight for an assisted set, for example — GymMaster reports that value as unavailable rather than substituting a guess. A subtotal never looks complete when part of it isn't.
What GymMaster deliberately does not do
- It does not prescribe training, suggest weights, or score your effort.
- It does not require an account. There is no GymMaster server holding your data.
- It does not read or write body-composition data in Apple Health.
- It does not ask you to manage synchronization — no manual sync, no conflict review, no outbox.
Getting started
First launch and the five tabs
The first launch decides where your training data lives. Everything after that happens in five tabs that never change.
Choose how your data is stored
- Open GymMaster.
You'll see Opening GymMaster while it prepares local storage.
- Choose iCloud or local-only.
With iCloud on, your library and history sync automatically across your devices. Continue Locally and Keep Sync Off keep everything on this device, and stay in effect until you explicitly reconnect.
- Set your units.
In Settings → Measurement and Appearance, pick
lb/mileorkg/meter. This sets defaults for new exercises; it never rewrites units already recorded. - Enter your body weight.
Bodyweight and assisted exercises need it to calculate volume. Without it, those sets record fine but their volume reads as unavailable.
| Tab | What it holds | You go there to |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Live sessions, your chosen cards, optional statistics | Start or resume training |
| Plans | Routines and planned workouts | Start a prepared session |
| History | Activities and Stats segments | Review or correct what you did |
| Library | Every exercise and its configuration | Add or edit an exercise |
| Settings | Units, appearance, Health, iCloud, Training Focus, data | Configure anything |
Card layout, Training Focus setup, units, and data controls all live in Settings. Screens elsewhere show your training; they don't hold their own preferences.
Preparation
Build your exercise library
An exercise defines what gets measured and how. Getting this right once means every later Set, chart and personal best is meaningful.
Create an exercise
- Open Library and add an exercise.
Give it the name you'll recognize in history and search.
- Choose its Intent.
Strength, Timed, Cardio, Class or Hybrid. Intent decides how the exercise is counted in Training Load — Strength is excluded from duration-based load, the others contribute their recorded time.
- Choose tracked metrics.
Repetitions, Load, Lengths or Distance, Count, Duration. Only what you track appears when logging.
- Set units and increments.
Load units and step sizes, distance per length for pool work, and whether load is total, added, weighted bodyweight, or assisted.
- Set its rest duration.
New exercises start from the saved New Exercise Rest in Settings. Each exercise then keeps its own.
- Save.
Name, configuration and Favorite state commit together.
Load meaning matters more than the number
GymMaster distinguishes a total load, a base-plus-added load, an added-bodyweight load, and an assisted load. That distinction is stored with every Set you record, so a weighted pull-up and an assisted pull-up never get compared as if they were the same lift, and a later edit to the exercise can't retroactively change what an old Set meant.
A Cardio exercise may track Duration alone and save with no distance unit. A distance unit is required only once Distance is actually part of what you log.
Setup and notes
Seat, Handle, Range and Setup notes record how the machine was configured. They're saved per workout, so changing a machine setting next week doesn't rewrite last week's record. General exercise notes appear in the exercise header every time you train it; Notes for This Exercise are specific to the session you're in.
Correcting an exercise's name or primary muscle updates every place it appears — history, search, progress, shares — including imported history. Recorded measurements, units and completion are untouched.
Workflow · training
Log a workout
An Active Workout is GymMaster's one exclusive live session. It survives leaving the app, locking the phone, and relaunching.
Start and work through it
- Start from Home or Plans.
Start New Workout opens the exercise selector; a routine or planned workout starts with its exercises already in place.
- Log your first Set.
Repetitions and compatible load are prefilled — the first Set from your most recent comparable history, each later Set from the one before it. Copied values appear in your Emphasis Color; editing a field clears that cue for that field only.
- Complete the Set.
A completed Set gets a solid green bar on its leading edge. Rest starts automatically if the exercise is configured for it.
- Add Sets as you go.
Add Set scrolls to the new current Set once it's saved. Repeat taps can't create a duplicate.
- Finish the exercise.
Exercise Done marks it complete and opens the Exercise List so you can pick the next one.
- Finish the workout.
At least one completed Set is required. The Workout Complete panel shows your totals and offers the three share formats.
Rest, Stopwatch and Total Time
Rest
Counts down in the exercise header. It keeps running when you leave the screen, and delivers a notification if you've left the app. One timer produces one cue — no double alerts.
Stopwatch
Times the exercise as a whole. Stopping it can feed Total Time, which is what appears in history and progress.
Total Time
For an exercise with one timed Set, GymMaster copies that Set's duration to Total Time automatically. With two or more, they stay independent.
Fix an exercise mid-session
Wrong units, a missing metric, or the wrong rest duration doesn't require removing and re-adding the exercise. Open Workout Actions → Edit this Exercise to open the library editor over the logger. Saving applies the new name, tracking, units, load options, goals, setup fields and default rest to the live exercise immediately. Your logged Sets and their recorded measurements are unchanged.
It takes the new duration but keeps its elapsed time and running or paused state. If the new duration has already passed, that rest simply ends.
Pause, resume, and leaving
Return Home leaves the workout live and takes you to the Home root. Pause Workout pauses and returns home; Resume Active Workout on Home puts you back exactly where you were. Nothing is lost by closing the app.
Starting another one — or duplicating a workout from history — while one is active shows Active Workout Already in Progress with an Open Active Workout action, and creates nothing. A Day Log does not occupy this slot.
Workflow · training
Keep a Day Log
A Day Log records everything you did on one calendar day. It has no finish button — the day ends it.
How it differs from a workout
| Active Workout | Day Log | |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | One session | One calendar day |
| Ends | When you finish it | At midnight, automatically |
| How many | One at a time | One per day |
| Apple Health | Can be saved | Never eligible |
| Discard | Confirmed discard | Confirmed discard |
Logging inside a Day Log is identical to a workout — the same Set editor, prefill, rest, Stopwatch, notes, Exercise List and Edit this Exercise. Only the lifecycle differs.
- Start it.
Start New Day Log on Home, select at least one exercise, and it opens on the first.
- Return to it any time.
Once today's Day Log exists, Home shows Open Day Log and goes straight there — no repeated exercise selection.
- Add to it from a routine.
A plan's Add to Day Log creates today's record if it doesn't exist and appends to it if it does.
- Let it close.
At midnight in the time zone stored with that Day Log, it completes: timers close, unfinished Sets are removed, and the completed Summary appears.
The Day Log keeps the time zone it was created in, so crossing time zones can't extend or shorten it unexpectedly. A rest timer due after midnight produces no late alert.
Workflow · preparation
Routines and planned workouts
A routine is a reusable list of exercises. A planned workout is one you intend to do. Both live in the Plans tab.
- Create it in Plans.
Add exercises in the order you'll train them. Order is preserved when you start.
- Start it as a workout.
The exercises arrive configured and in order, with no Sets. You log from there as usual.
- Or add it to today's Day Log.
Useful when you're logging a whole day rather than a discrete session — it works whether or not an Active Workout also exists.
From a completed workout in History, Duplicate as Active Workout recreates its exercise order, setup and notes with no Sets copied, using each exercise's current name and settings.
Workflow · training
Personal bests
A small green up-arrow marks a completed Set that beat every comparable Set you've ever recorded for that exercise.
Recognition is calculated from your recorded Sets across completed workouts, completed Day Logs and both live loggers. There is no stored achievement to repair — correcting a value, completing, uncompleting, deleting, importing or syncing recalculates it.
| Basis | Compared against | Qualifies when |
|---|---|---|
| Total load | Total load | Heavier |
| Added load | Added or weighted-bodyweight load | Heavier |
| Assistance | Assistance | Less assistance |
| No-load reps | No-load or unassisted-bodyweight reps | More repetitions |
A Set carrying load must record at least six repetitions to earn recognition or to count as a baseline. A heavy single doesn't become your benchmark, and it doesn't block one either.
Rules worth knowing
- Loaded Sets compare mass only — more repetitions at the same weight is not a new best.
- Body weight is never added to or subtracted from the comparison.
- Equal quantities in different units tie; kilograms and pounds are compared canonically.
- The first comparable Set sets the baseline without being marked. Every later strict improvement stays marked — 135 then 145 both improve on an earlier 130.
- A duplicated Set that ties its source earns nothing.
Workflow · review
History and corrections
History holds two segments under one title: Activities is the chronology, Stats is the analysis. Switching between them keeps your place.
Activities
One chronology of completed workouts, completed Day Logs at their stored boundary, included Apple Health workouts and InBody reports. Search and collection sharing belong here; search never filters Stats, and relaunch starts with an empty query.
Correct a completed workout
A completed workout is fully reconstructable without becoming live again. You can add, remove and reorder exercises; add, edit, duplicate, delete and reorder Sets; and correct setup, notes, Total Time and workout metadata.
The workout already supplies its own date, so a corrected Set uses it. Changing the workout's start date or time shifts its end and its contained timestamps by the same amount; changing active duration alone doesn't move those facts.
A completed Day Log is a narrower correction surface: existing Sets can be edited, reordered, deleted and given a corrected performed time, and setup, notes and Total Time remain correctable — but adding new content doesn't reopen it. A closed Day Log never becomes live again.
See an exercise's whole story
View Progress, from a library exercise or from a completed workout's exercise, opens that exercise's complete progress history — not just the workout you came from. Selecting a record there opens the exact recorded exercise, with its Sets, setup, notes and timing, without loading the whole workout.
Share a workout
| Format | File | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Native package | .workoutlog.zip | Moving real records between installs — reimportable |
| Readable Summary | Markdown | Sending someone a legible account of the session |
| AI Readable | Markdown | Handing an assistant structured context |
Workflow · review
Statistics
Everything in Stats is calculated from your recorded Sets for a date range you choose. New in 2.0: any of it can also appear on Home.
The Training Overview
History → Stats opens with the complete overview. Its date range starts at the last 28 days each launch, and both From and Through are independently adjustable.
| Panel | Shows |
|---|---|
| Training timeline | Your activity across the range, with the date controls |
| Totals | Recorded volume, Workouts, Completed sets, Exercises — plus what's included in volume |
| Weekly training volume | Recorded volume per week |
| Most trained muscle groups | Volume credited to each recorded primary muscle |
| Muscle distribution | A front and back anatomical view with a named muscle selector |
| Leading exercises | Up to three exercises with the highest recorded volume in the range |
Stats cards
Training Load
Recorded work by week or by type. Includes durations for Timed, Cardio, Class and Hybrid exercises; excludes Strength.
Heart Rate Zones
Zone time from imported Apple Health workouts, using the actual zone count — three through nine — without padding to five.
InBody
Imported body-composition reports and their trend.
Training Focus
One card per active Focus, showing progress toward its goal.
Put statistics on Home
Settings → Stats Screen is the only place to change this. A Training Overview section has six toggles — one per panel above — and each Stats card row has its own Show on Home toggle.
- On iPad, every selection is on by default.
- On iPhone, every selection is off by default.
- Selected statistics appear on Home after your live sessions and your five Home cards.
- Showing something on Home never changes whether or where it appears in Stats.
- Home and Stats share one date range and one muscle selection for the session.
If you put overview panels on Home without the timeline, the active range appears as a caption above them. Add the timeline and you get the full date controls instead — there's never a second date editor.
Workflow · goals
Training Focus
A Training Focus is a named goal scored from workouts you've already logged. You configure it once in Settings; it calculates itself from then on.
| Type | What you configure |
|---|---|
| HYROX Singles Open · 2026/27 | Men's or Women's division, one or more of your exercises mapped to each of the nine official events, and an optional goal time per event. |
| Challenge | A name, one benchmark exercise, any number of supporting exercises in order, and one goal: Repetitions, Longest Duration, or Distance in Time. |
- Create it in Settings.
Choose the type first — it can't change afterwards. The name always can.
- Select your exercises.
GymMaster checks that each one actually records the measurements the goal needs, and won't save a mapping that can't be scored.
- Train normally.
Progress comes from your ordinary logged Sets. There's nothing extra to record.
- Pause it when it's not your focus.
Pausing keeps all configuration and history, and hides the Focus card and its milestone feedback until you reactivate it.
A confirmed deletion permanently removes the Focus and its configuration. Your exercises and logged workouts are untouched — only the goal is gone.
A Challenge card lists each supporting exercise separately across the current and prior three weeks. Where a week mixes measurements that can't be combined, that week reads as unavailable rather than being merged into a misleading number, and the current week is labelled so far.
Integrations
Apple Health and InBody
GymMaster reads workout summaries from Apple Health and can write your completed workouts back. It never touches body-composition data.
Reading workouts in
- Turn on Read workouts.
Reading starts at the beginning of that calendar day and goes forward. That start date is kept across refreshes and relaunches.
- Backfill if you want earlier history.
Backfill Apple Health is explicit. A successful backfill permanently extends the range you read from.
- Review them in History.
Imported workouts appear in Activities with their energy and heart-rate detail, and their zone time feeds the Heart Rate Zones card.
Imported workout data and the related read state are removed. Your own recorded workouts are not affected.
Writing workouts out
Completed ordinary workouts can be saved to Apple Health — Day Logs never are. The duration GymMaster exports is your active training duration, not the wall-clock span from start to finish. Later edits and synchronized deletions reconcile the copy GymMaster wrote.
If GymMaster can't confirm a save, it says so and keeps ownership of that record across relaunch. Retry looks for the existing saved result before writing again, so you don't get duplicates.
InBody reports
Imported InBody tests appear in Activities and in the InBody card, with individual reports available in detail. You can exclude a report from trends without deleting it.
Data
iCloud sync
Synchronization is automatic and silent. There is nothing to review, retry or refresh.
Your library, workouts, Day Logs and plans sync through your own iCloud account. GymMaster has no server of its own and no account to create. Settings shows a concise status, and offers a recovery destination only when something genuinely needs your decision — a library-identity conflict or a reset performed on another device.
If you log on your iPhone and iPad on the same day, they converge into one record for that day, keeping the distinct exercises and Sets from each. Later edits and deletion act on that shared record.
Staying local
Continue Locally and Keep Sync Off persist across relaunches and automatic triggers until you explicitly reconnect. Resetting while sync is off clears local data without contacting or deleting anything in iCloud.
A partly downloaded library isn't made available for editing — that would risk uploading an incomplete picture. If a download stops, you'll see that it didn't finish, with Retry Download resuming from where it got to.
Data
Back up, import, export
Every native export is a single .workoutlog.zip file you can send anywhere and import back.
| Export | Contains |
|---|---|
| Full backup | Everything — library, history, plans, settings, Device preferences |
| Exercise Library | Your exercises and their configuration |
| Plan or Routine | One plan, or a collection, with every exercise it references |
| Workout or Day Log | One session and its Sets |
| History | A range of completed records |
Importing
- Open the package.
Share it to GymMaster or open it from Files. It's staged as an immutable copy before anything is read.
- Review what it will do.
The review screen tells you what's new, what already exists, and anything that will be normalized on the way in.
- Choose full restore or Library Merge.
Merge keeps your local settings and Device state, inserts what's missing, and leaves existing records as yours.
- Confirm.
Nothing is written until you do.
Importing content you already have doesn't duplicate it. But a package isn't inert either — if a record in it was deleted since export, importing restores it.
Reset offers a pre-reset backup. Take it. Reset is a full factory reset: library, history, plans, Device preferences and diagnostics. Apple Health cleanup is optional and limited to copies GymMaster itself created.
Reference
Settings reference
Where each control lives and what it reaches.
| Setting | Section | Affects |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | Measurement and Appearance | Light, Dark or System across every screen |
| Emphasis Color | Measurement and Appearance | Prefilled Set values, Health titles and linked indicators |
| Distance/Weight Unit | Measurement and Appearance | Defaults for new exercises — never rewrites recorded units |
| Body weight | Measurement and Appearance | Bodyweight and assisted volume calculations |
| Start Day of Week | Measurement and Appearance | Training Load weeks, heart-rate periods, Focus weeks, the overview |
| Default Rest | Measurement and Appearance | Rest for exercises without their own |
| New Exercise Rest | Measurement and Appearance | The rest each newly created exercise starts with |
| Home Screen | Personalization | Visibility, order and options of the five Home cards |
| Stats Screen | Personalization | Stats card order, and every Show on Home selection |
| Training Focus | Training Focus | Creating, configuring, pausing and deleting goals |
| Apple Health | Integrations | Reading workouts, backfill, saving, export behavior |
| Notifications | Integrations | Rest alerts when you've left the app |
| Diagnostics | Data | Local, user-controlled recording; excludes workout content |
| Reset All Data | Data | Full factory reset with one confirmation |
On the Home Screen page, this resets only the five Home cards, their order, visibility and options. It leaves your Stats order, card options, Focus status, Show on Home selections and Start Day of Week alone.
Reference
When something fails
GymMaster distinguishes loading, failure, and retained data on purpose. A screen never quietly shows you stale numbers as though they were current.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Loading | The first read hasn't finished | Wait — no data is missing |
| Last known, with Retry | A refresh failed; what you see is the previous successful read | Retry when convenient; nothing was lost |
| Unavailable | A calculation needs something that wasn't recorded | Add the missing detail, such as body weight |
| Failed, with Retry | An operation didn't complete | Retry; your saved data remains authoritative |
| Personal bests unavailable | Recognition couldn't be calculated from recorded Sets | Retry from the exercise detail |
When a write fails, the previously saved value stays authoritative and is what you see. GymMaster won't report a save it didn't make, and it won't discard your draft.
Common situations
Volume shows as unavailable
An assisted or bodyweight Set is missing the body weight recorded with that workout, or the assistance value. Enter your body weight in Settings; new workouts will record it.
A workout won't finish
At least one completed Set is required. Complete or remove the unfinished one.
A Focus card is missing
Its Focus is paused. Reactivate it in Settings → Training Focus.
Home shows nothing
All five Home cards are hidden and no statistics are selected. Both are fixed in Settings → Personalization.
Reference
Glossary
GymMaster uses these terms precisely, so configuration and history stay readable.
- Active Workout
- One live training session. Only one can exist at a time, and it survives leaving the app.
- Day Log
- Everything logged on one calendar day. It closes itself at midnight in the time zone it was created in.
- Set
- One logged effort, labelled
SET #. A completed Set carries its own measurements, units and load meaning. - Intent
- Strength, Timed, Cardio, Class or Hybrid. It decides how an exercise's recorded duration is counted in Training Load.
- Load meaning
- Whether a recorded weight is a total, a base plus added weight, added bodyweight, or assistance. Stored per Set.
- Recorded volume
- Mass times repetitions from your recorded Sets, using each workout's recorded body weight where the exercise needs it.
- Prefill
- Repetitions and compatible load copied into a new Set — shown in your Emphasis Color until you edit the field.
- Total Time
- The time attributed to an exercise as a whole, as opposed to an individual Set's duration.
- Training Focus
- A named goal — HYROX or Challenge — scored from workouts you already logged.
- Show on Home
- A per-card and per-panel choice, made in Settings → Stats Screen, that also places a statistic on Home.
- Package
- A
.workoutlog.zipfile containing real records, reimportable into any GymMaster install. - Last known
- Data from the most recent successful read, shown and labelled as such after a refresh fails.
Define your exercises so they measure the right things, log Sets as you train, correct history when you need to, and let every statistic be recalculated from that record.