Generating a training plan

In the app, open the Workouts tab and tap the Generate a plan card. It takes under a minute.

No plan yet? The same generator also opens from More → Training plan: tap Prepare my plan. The card below it, I'll build it myself, starts an empty week instead, where you pick the exercises and training days.

The questions

1. What is your main training goal? Build muscle or strength. Build muscle is the plan most people want - more muscle and a better physique, also when cutting, for health, and with no equipment: more volume, 6-15 reps, pyramids on the big lifts. Not sure? Pick this one. Strength means fewer sets, 5x5 on the main lift of every session and longer rests; it needs weights, so it is not offered for training without equipment. (The question appears when both goals are available.)
2. Which areas should the plan prioritize? Whole body, chest, back, shoulders, arms, legs or glutes. On a strength plan the priority is also the lift every session opens with: chest means the bench press, back the barbell row, shoulders the overhead press. You can pick two. The first shapes the whole plan. The second gets extra direct work for each of its muscles, moves its exercises earlier in each session and gets its share of the extra sets in the later weeks (more below). Everything else stays in the plan.
3. How much lifting have you done? New to this, training regularly, or training seriously for two years or more. It decides how much work the plan asks for: a beginner's exercises are capped at three sets, and an experienced lifter gets an extra heavy set on the first big lift of each session that has room for it - a session already as long as the plan allows stays as it is. On a strength plan the answer changes nothing: 5x5 is the prescription, so the main lift stays 5x5 whatever you pick.
4. What can you train with? Gym, home or limited equipment, or no equipment. Pick home and tick what you own; the plan is built only from those movements, and a muscle your kit cannot train is never filled with something odd. Strength needs at least one piece of kit ticked.
5. How many days a week? Two, three or four. Pick the number you can keep to. Pick three and a Training style section appears underneath, asking How do you want to spread your workouts across the week? with two cards to choose from: Split - Different muscle groups on different days and Full Body - The whole body every workout. The first comes already selected and quietly marked Recommended at 3 workouts a week. On two or four days the section does not appear at all: the week is set automatically, the whole body on two days, muscle groups split across the days on four, and you just move on.
6. Which days do you train? We start from the spacing the plan was written with, so the hard days are not back to back. Move them to fit your week.

The preview is the plan

The last screen looks exactly like your training plan will. A strip across the top holds your training days by name - a three-day plan shows three, a four-day plan four - and you tap one to read it. Every exercise is written out in full, set by set, with the reps and the rest for each one. Nothing is saved until you tap Start the plan, and what you approve is exactly what you get.

Weights are left blank on purpose - what you can lift is not something a generator knows. Instead the screen gives you the rule for picking it, and the rule depends on the goal you chose: build muscle means the last reps of a set are hard but clean, with about 1-3 reps left in the tank; strength means heavier loads and fewer reps, leaving about 1-2. You only ever see the one that applies to your plan.

Why the same answers can give two different plans

Your experience answer is the reason. Two people who ask for the same thing usually get the same exercises on the same days - what changes is how much of each: a beginner's sets are capped so the first weeks are repeatable rather than heroic, and an experienced lifter gets a heavier top set where the session has room for it. Because a beginner's sets are capped, filling a gap can occasionally land on a different exercise for them than for someone more experienced.

The wizard asks every time, so you can answer differently as you get stronger - a plan you build in six months is not stuck with what you said today. We also store the answer on your account, which is what the plan falls back on if the step is ever skipped.

What the second area changes

Plans overlap, but pressing does not replace arm training. It works your triceps, and we take that work into account, but we do not count it as direct arm work. For the second area we check every muscle in it separately and count only the exercises that train it directly: arms means biceps and triceps each on their own, legs means the front and the back of your thighs each on their own. A chest plan works your triceps hard, but if it has no curl in it, picking arms adds one when your equipment and the plan allow it.

Every muscle of the second area gets at least one more exercise's worth of direct work than the same plan without it: three more direct sets a week, counted for each muscle on its own and in the week you actually train. If that still leaves it under the minimum for your number of training days, it gets a second exercise. Arms on two days, for example, means at least six direct sets for biceps and six for triceps where the plan without arms had three of each.

To make room we first swap a small isolation exercise for a muscle you did not pick, as long as that muscle keeps its minimum. If no swap fits, we add the exercise, preferably on a day that already works that muscle and in a session that has no direct work for it yet, so the work spreads over the week, and on a day that stays within its usual length. On a build-muscle plan, when no such day has room, a session gets longer: up to 27 sets and 8 exercises, roughly 70-85 minutes. On a strength plan we first try every day that stays within its usual length; a day that does get longer goes up to 23 sets and 7 exercises, and in weeks two and three it can be longer than in week one. Each muscle of the second area gets up to three changes, and a day gets at most one added exercise for the second area. Your first area's changes are counted separately: at most three, no more than one per day. We never touch the main lifts a session opens with.

In each session the second area's smaller exercises come right after those for your first area. In weeks two and three of the four-week block, your first area keeps every extra set it would get without the second area while it is below its target. Once it has its target, your first and second areas take the extra sets in turn, so both keep growing; the rest of the plan comes after them.

A muscle that already gets a lot of work from other exercises still gets its first extra exercise, because that is what you asked for; a second one can then only come from a swap. Now and then a muscle cannot get more: usually your kit has no movement worth prescribing for it, and rarely the week has no room left. The plan then trains it with the work it already has.

Your first area has the same minimum. On home and no-equipment plans we apply it the same way: we fill it before the second area gets anything, and picking a second area never takes direct work away from the first.

Every exercise comes from our library

The generator only ever picks from the hi.fitness exercise library, so everything in your plan has its instructions, video and history like any other exercise.

Starting a plan replaces the one you follow now

You follow one plan at a time. Before anything is saved we ask you to confirm, naming the plan that will be replaced, so a coach's plan is never swapped out by accident. Your training history is never touched, but the replaced plan cannot be opened again in the app - if you want to keep it, note what it contained before you start the new one.

Changing it afterwards

The plan is yours the moment you start it. Open More → Training plan to add, remove or reorder anything in the week, exactly like a plan you built by hand.