u/Outrageous-Maybe2500

Quiet update:

We are beginning to work with a small number of fitness creators and lifters who already care about training properly.

Not the loudest people.

Not the most generic “fitness content” accounts.

Mostly people whose audience actually lifts, tracks their work, and would understand why things like progression, volume, recovery, and deload timing matter.

The goal is simple:

If someone genuinely likes the product and thinks their audience would benefit from it, we want to make it easy for them to share it in a way that feels natural.

No big public campaign.

No influencer circus.

Just a few good fits, tested slowly.

If you see creator codes or small collaborations showing up around VolumeLogic, that is why.

A lot of lifters judge a program by how destroyed they feel after a session.

That is not a great test.

A good program should make your next decision clearer. It should tell you what to train, how hard to train, how to progress, and when to back off.

Here is a simple checklist you can use on almost any routine:

1. Clear goal Is the plan for strength, muscle growth, general fitness, or a specific weak point?
2. Realistic schedule Can you actually repeat the number of training days with your sleep, stress, and calendar?
3. Balanced exercise selection Does it include enough pressing, pulling, squatting, hinging, arms, delts, calves, and trunk work for your goal?
4. Useful weekly volume Are most muscles getting a reasonable amount of hard sets per week, instead of random extra work?
5. Effort target Does the plan use RPE, RIR, or clear stop rules, so every set is not just a max test?
6. Progression rule Do you know when to add reps, add load, add sets, repeat the same work, or deload?
7. Recovery plan Are rest days, easier weeks, or deload triggers built in before fatigue becomes a problem?
8. Tracking method Are you recording sets, reps, load, effort, and recovery so changes are based on evidence?

A plan that scores well here does not need to be fancy.

Full body, upper/lower, PPL, bro split, PPLUL: most splits can work if the dose, progression, and recovery make sense.

The red flags are usually simple:

• no progression rule beyond “try harder”
• every set taken to failure
• missing back, legs, hamstrings, rear delts, calves, or trunk work
• weekly volume rising while performance falls
• exercises changing so often you cannot compare results
• a schedule you cannot realistically sustain

Soreness is not a score. A good program should leave a trail of useful data.

If you can look at last week and know whether to add weight, add reps, hold steady, reduce work, or deload, the program is probably doing its job.

A lot of people change their program too early.

They have one bad week, miss a rep target, feel weaker than last time, or stop getting a pump, and immediately assume the plan is broken.

Most of the time, it is not.

Training performance is noisy. Sleep, food, stress, rest periods, exercise order, soreness, and even how you warmed up can change how strong you feel on a given day.

Before you change your split, add more volume, swap exercises, or start a new program, run this checklist.

1. Did recovery drop?

Ask yourself:

• Did I sleep worse than usual for 2+ nights?
• Have I been eating less than normal?
• Did I miss protein targets?
• Is work, school, or life stress higher than usual?
• Am I carrying soreness from previous sessions?

If yes, the program may not be the problem. You may just be trying to train normally while recovering worse than normal.

In that case, keep the plan mostly the same and aim to match previous performance instead of forcing PRs.

2. Did execution change?

A workout can feel harder even when the program is identical.

Check:

• Did I rest less between sets?
• Did I rush warm-ups?
• Did I change technique?
• Did I train closer to failure than usual?
• Did I do exercises in a different order?

If your bench is weaker after doing heavy incline first, that is not a bench plateau. That is exercise order.

If your squat feels terrible after cutting rest from 4 minutes to 90 seconds, that is not necessarily a strength loss. That is fatigue management.

3. Did I increase too much at once?

Progression should be boring most of the time.

If you recently added weight, added sets, added exercises, trained more days, and pushed more sets to failure, do not be surprised if performance drops.

More work is only useful if you can recover from it.

A good rule: change one main variable at a time.

Add a little weight, or add reps, or add volume. Do not throw everything at the wall at once.

How to interpret it

One bad session = probably noise.

One bad week with an obvious cause = fix the cause and repeat the week.

Two to three bad weeks in a row = now you have a pattern worth adjusting.

Four or more weeks with no progress, good recovery, and consistent execution = the program may need a real change.

What I would do before switching programs

If recovery was bad:
Keep the plan, reduce expectations for the week, and get sleep/food back in place.

If execution changed:
Standardize rest times, warm-ups, and exercise order again.

If fatigue is clearly building:
Reduce sets slightly for a week or avoid taking everything to failure.

If progress has been flat for several weeks:
Then consider changing something meaningful, like volume, exercise selection, rep range, or progression method.

The main point:

Do not judge a program by your worst workout.

Judge it by trends. A bad day is information. A bad week is a clue. A repeated pattern is when you make changes.

A lot of people move past the beginner stage and immediately make their training more complicated than it needs to be.

More exercises. More sets. More days. More failure.

But the better intermediate question is usually:

“Am I doing enough recoverable hard sets to progress?”

Not “am I destroyed after every session?”

Here’s a simple framework.

A hard set means a real working set taken close to failure, roughly 0-4 reps in reserve. Warm-ups do not count. Easy sets do not count.

For most lifters trying to build muscle, a useful weekly range is roughly:

8-16 hard sets per muscle per week as a conservative intermediate starting point
10-20 hard sets per muscle per week as the broader hypertrophy range

That does not mean every muscle should instantly be at 20 sets.

Start lower. Add only when the data says you need it.

Good signs your volume is productive:

• Reps or load are slowly increasing
• Soreness clears before the next session
• Joints feel fine
• Motivation is normal
• You can repeat the week without feeling buried

If that is happening, you probably do not need more volume yet.

Signs volume may be too low:

• The target muscle never feels challenged
• Recovery is very easy
• Performance is flat for a few weeks
• Technique is stable, effort is honest, but nothing is moving

In that case, add something small. Usually 2 extra weekly sets for that muscle is enough to test.

Signs volume may be too high:

• Performance drops across multiple lifts
• Soreness overlaps into the next session
• Warm-ups feel weirdly heavy
• Joints start complaining
• You keep adding sets but your numbers get worse

In that case, the answer is probably not “train harder.” It may be to remove 2-4 weekly sets, reduce failure work, or take an easier week.

A very solid intermediate setup could be something like this:

4-day upper/lower

Upper A

• Bench press: 3 sets
• Row: 3 sets
• Overhead press: 2 sets
• Pulldown: 2-3 sets
• Lateral raise: 2 sets
• Triceps or biceps: 2 sets

Lower A

• Squat: 3 sets
• Romanian deadlift: 3 sets
• Leg press: 2 sets
• Leg curl: 2 sets
• Calves: 2-3 sets

Upper B

• Incline press: 3 sets
• Pull-up or pulldown: 3 sets
• Machine press or dumbbell press: 2 sets
• Cable row: 2-3 sets
• Rear delts: 2 sets
• Arms: 2-4 sets total

Lower B

• Deadlift, hip thrust, or hinge variation: 2-3 sets
• Front squat, hack squat, or split squat: 3 sets
• Leg curl: 2-3 sets
• Calves: 2-3 sets
• Abs: 2-3 sets

Run it for 4-8 weeks before judging it.

Do not change exercises every session. Do not add sets every time you have a bad workout. Look for the pattern over a few weeks.

The boring rule that works:

If performance is rising and recovery is fine, keep volume stable.
If performance is flat and recovery is easy, add a little.
If performance is falling and recovery is bad, do less.

I get asked for a beginner plan a lot so i'll just write down what i actually think works. it's nothing clever. full body, 3 days a week, and honestly the routine itself matters less than a few habits.

the split is just A/B/C rotated across mon/wed/fri (or whatever 3 non-consecutive days you can keep). everything gets hit about twice a week that way.

Day A: lunge or leg press 3x10-15, bench or machine press 3x10-15, seated row 3x10-15, hip thrust or leg curl 2x10-15, lateral raise 2x12-20, some abs.

Day B: light deadlift practice or leg curl 2-3x10, overhead press 3x10-15, lat pulldown or assisted pullup 3x10-15, leg press or split squat 2x10-15, curls 2x10-15, calves 2x10-20.

Day C: leg press or lunge 3x10-15, incline db press or pushup 3x10-15, one arm row 3x10-15, leg curl 2x10-15, triceps pushdown 2x10-15, rear delts 2x12-20.

that's it really. don't overthink which exercises, the machine versions are fine.

the part that matters more than the plan:

stop your sets a couple reps short of failure. you don't need to grind every set into the ground, especially early on. it just makes you sore and sloppy and you can't tell if you're improving.

add reps before you add weight. stay at the same load until you're hitting the top of the rep range cleanly on every set, then bump it up a little and start over lower. that's basically the whole progression model.

and keep the exercises the same for a while. if you swap stuff around every week you have no idea if anything's working.

volume wise, somewhere around 6-12 hard sets per muscle a week is plenty to start. start at the low end. i know it feels like you should be doing more but you really don't need to yet, and the extra sets mostly just dig a fatigue hole before your form is good enough to use them.

first couple weeks, go easy on purpose. like 1-2 sets per exercise, leaving 3 or so reps in the tank, just learning the movements. build up from there over a month or two. there's no rush and no point maxing out your effort before you can actually do the lifts well.

if you can only get to the gym twice a week, just run A and B and don't stress about it. a routine you actually stick to beats the perfect one you skip half the time.

Got more information on the website.

Hey!

Looking for the ”best” monitoring tool and you guys usually have great answers.

I got a mobile app on play/appstore (react native + some kotlin/swift).

I already use Sentry for monitoring. But I’d like some extra basic monitoring. For example at what screen users normally exit, and if they spent enough time to create a workout template, or even complete their first workout. No more, no less. So simple monitoring.

All monitoring is in react native code.

Meanwhile writing this I realize I might be able to tweak sentry into monitoring what I want….

Anyways, still appriciate your suggestions

Bench press is excluded!

Been hammering the same exercises for a few years now (in rotation) and looking to switch it up a bit but I need inspiration.

What are your 3 favorite exercises?

After talking to one of the newer guys at my gym, I realized how painfully obvious the different gym phases are.

0–4 months:
The beginner phase.
Constantly thinking everyone is watching/judging you.
Spends more energy worrying about looking lost than actually training.

4–12 months:
Confidence starts building.
Begins trying new exercises.
Finally realizes nobody actually cares what you’re doing.

1–3 years:
The over-optimization phase.
Suddenly becomes a biomechanics/nutrition/recovery expert.
Starts saying things like:
“Actually studies show…”

This was the phase the newer guy was in when he started explaining how I could optimize my routine. Honestly it was pretty funny because I remember being exactly the same.

3+ years:
You stop caring about the “perfect” routine.
You show up.
Train hard.
Go home.
Consistency > optimization.

I swear almost everyone goes through these phases.

Any other gym phases you guys have noticed?

I’ve been grinding both in the gym and in the codebase, and this update is a big one:

• Major UI improvements, especially on the workout home tab
• Much better support for cardio workouts
• New statistics tab for cardio (still needs alot of work and feedback from you guys)
• Stabilized outdoor cardio sessions with improved GPS handling
• Tweaked automatic calorie calculations (still slightly overestimates for very active users — I’m on it)
• Added basic HealthKit + Health Connect integration for heart rate + step count
  • Note: Wearables aren’t fully integrated yet, so heart rate still has a 5–10 min delay due to device–wearable sync protocols
• Continued bug fixes and deeper architectural upgrades

The update should roll out within a week or two — just finishing the last testing rounds.

As always, I love hearing your feedback. (support@volumelogic.se or just DM me)
Wearable integrations are on the roadmap, and I’m excited to tackle them next.

Full Body / UL / PPL / Bro Split (or other..?)

What do you run and why do you prefer it over the others?
Im doing PPL mostly becuase I like beeing at the gym 5-6 times per week so i get just the right amount of rest for all muscles before their second round of the week.

Been having plenty of issues with analytics the last few days, and today I can not even update my store screenshots. Anyone else having issues?

I’m Linus, solo founder & developer of VolumeLogic, a workout‑tracking app.

The app has now been live for ~2 months on iOS and 2 weeks on Android, and I wanted to share a quick update on what’s happened so far, what I’ve learned, and what I’m trying to figure out next.

So far:
- Surprising amount of early users (not in a positive way)
- ChatGPT's estimates in... everything... got completely nuked
- A few first paying users (yaay)
- Website "launched", more like 100% vibe coded but I needed a landing page (volumelogic.se)
- Been struggling hard with store screenshots (LLM told me to localize for better conversions, never listening to that one again) but I think its on track now
- Marketing is HAAARD (instagram + tiktok + linkedin + active on reddit)
- And a couple of meltdowns
- Users reaching out to the support email are worth their weight in gold
- Realised that you gotta put those AI-agents on a tight leash before they nuke your codebase

What im trying to figure out next:
- How to gain organic traction so I can grind less on marketing
- How to convert more free users to paid subscriptions
- When, how and with who I should form partnerships
- Wether to double down or if I should just let time do its thing

If you have made something similar I would love your input.
What channels worked for you? "I wish I knew this earlier" lessons?

My tracker is not unique, I solve the same "problem" that the rest of them do, so im not naive. Im just naive enough to believe I can do it better. And I built it to be hyper‑customizable because I think people actually want to decide for themselves how they track.

Well the title is really the only thing im interested in.

For me it might not be as much about "truth" turning out to be wrong but rather having too much focus on optimizing the workout rather than taking rest seriously. Started out doing mad levels of volume