A workout tracker for getting back into the gym after a break

The first weeks back decide the restart

You remember what you used to lift. Your body needs a few weeks to catch up. Go straight back to your old weights, and you are sore for days, skip the next session, and the restart stalls. Stay too easy for too long, and you get bored.

The way back is a plan that starts below your old numbers and adds weight as fast as your sets allow.

What “Coming back after a break” changes

The experience question has 4 answers: coming back after a break, less than a year, one to three years, and more than three years. Pick the first, and Trackist tells the coach to start you as carefully as a beginner, with proven movements you get back fast.

You are not held to beginner movements, though. The coach can give you movements up to intermediate, such as front squats, Pendlay rows and power cleans, which a beginner's plan leaves out. You can still add any movement your equipment and joints allow yourself.

Until you log a squat, hinge, press or pull, your Strength Score is a start estimate from your answers. Your own sets replace it as you log them.

Let the weights climb back

The plan sets no starting weight. In your first session of each exercise, pick a weight you can finish for every rep, well under what you used to lift.

From your second session, a line above each exercise suggests what to try today. Hit the top of the rep range on every set at your heaviest weight, and it adds one step: 2.5 kg on a barbell, 2 kg on dumbbells, 5 kg on a machine or cable. Inside the range, it keeps the weight and asks for more reps. It adds one step at a time, however easy the sets felt, and that adds up: 6 squat sessions that hit the top of the range put 15 kg back on the bar.

Sessions keep feeling too easy? Tell Trackist. The first report is noted. If you say it again in a later week, the coach rewrites that day, or the rest of the plan.

Sore from the first sessions back? Before the first set, Trackist asks how you slept, how sore you are and how much energy you have, each from 1 to 5. Rate soreness 4 or 5 in the half of the body you train today, and it offers a lighter session: one set fewer on each strength exercise that has more than one, 30 seconds more rest and no finisher, at the same weights. It changes today only.

If an old injury speaks up, report the exercise, the joint and how bad it is, from 1 to 5. Trackist swaps in an exercise that spares the joint, usually for the same muscle, and later plans leave that kind of movement out.

If you used Trackist before your break

• Your plan does not pause. It runs by the calendar, so if it is still running, you pick up in this week, and the days you missed stay missed.
• If it ended while you were away, its recap opens when you come back. From there, build your next plan, where you can answer “Coming back after a break”, or restart the same plan.
• The numbers under each set and the suggested weight come from your last session of that exercise in the past 182 days. After a longer break, an exercise starts fresh until you log it once.
• Your records have no time limit, so a record from before the break is still the one to beat.

Keep showing up

Momentum counts the weeks in a row you trained or moved. One finished session, or 20 minutes of activity in one day, keeps the week. You start with a freeze that saves one empty week, and it comes back after 4 kept weeks in a row. With notifications on, Trackist reminds you on each training day.

What Trackist does not do

• no pause: a plan runs by the calendar
• no import of old workouts from another app or a spreadsheet, so your history starts with your first session in Trackist
• no field for your old maxes: the suggested weight starts from what you log
• no exercise videos: every strength exercise has written form cues and a muscle map

Start in 3 steps

1. Get your plan: answer 14 questions and pick “Coming back after a break”.
2. Start under your old numbers: in each first session, pick a weight you can finish for every rep.
3. Let it climb: from the second session, follow the line above each exercise, and report sessions that stay too easy.

Pick a first plan back

The full-body plan for beginners works as a first plan back, too. Our guide to progressive overload explains how the weight goes up, and how to stay consistent covers the habit. If you have never lifted before, see how Trackist works for beginners.

Trackist is on the App Store for iPhone, with no ads.