Questions

TrainDash is a strength coach for the three powerlifting lifts. It builds you a periodized program — volume blocks, intensity blocks, deloads — and then adjusts it every session based on how you perform and how you feel, the way a coach would. Every adjustment comes with its reason.

It's built for the intermediate lifter who has outgrown adding 2.5 kg every session: you know the three lifts, you roughly know your maxes, and you'd hire a coach if that were realistic. It also handles coming back after a layoff, and it will take a newer lifter through a simple made-your-reps progression until that stops working.

It is not for you if you want to run somebody else's spreadsheet, if your goal is bodybuilding rather than getting stronger at squat, bench and deadlift, or if you want an app that just records what you did. This one has opinions about what you should do next.

A spreadsheet decides everything in advance: week 4's load was chosen before week 1 happened. TrainDash writes the same kind of plan, then keeps correcting it — the load you're handed is priced off your current estimated max, the volume moves with how the session actually went, and a bad day trims the session instead of breaking the program.

The other half is that it explains itself. Most apps that adapt do it silently, so you can't tell coaching from a bug. Here every change appears as a sentence you can read, disagree with, and learn from.

No — and that's the point. The coaching is a deterministic expert system: readable rules grounded in RPE, readiness and volume landmarks, the same heuristics a good coach runs in their head. That is why every change can be explained in a sentence, why the same session on the same day always gives you the same answer, and why nothing about your training is decided by a black box.

TrainDash installs to your home screen straight from the browser, on both iPhone and Android, and then behaves like any other app — full screen, its own icon, no browser bar. A packaged, installable-from-a-store version will follow.

It's built phone-first because that's where you log sets, but the same account opens on a laptop when you want the wide view of your program.

No effort rating required to start. If you're newer to training you begin on a simple made-your-reps / missed-your-reps progression. The app still asks how hard sets felt, so you learn RPE as you go, and it moves you to RPE-driven programming when your numbers show you're ready.

Not as a program, no — and that's a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. The coach is opinionated: it chooses the blocks, the sets and the loads, because that is the thing it's for.

What you can always do is train off-program. Start a free session, add whatever movements you want, and the Session Coach hands you sets, reps and a load for each one with a one-line reason — the same numbers a programmed lifter would get for the same set.

Those are the three lifts it programs — each on its own arc, so you can run squat and bench and leave the deadlift alone if that's what your year looks like. Accessories are fully supported around them: the program prescribes them, progresses them inside your volume landmarks, and you can log anything else you feel like doing.

What it won't do is periodize the overhead press or the power clean as a main lift. Keeping the model honest about three lifts is what makes the coaching specific.

Missed work is dropped, never owed. A session you didn't do doesn't reappear on top of next week's — the plan re-fits what's left and moves on, because a crammed week is how a good program turns into an injury risk and a guilt trip.

A longer break counts for what it is. Come back after two weeks off and the first sessions are capped and ramped rather than picked up where you left them, and the plan says so on the day. If you know a break is coming, tell it and the program is shaped around the dates in advance.

First it screens. You say what hurts and where, and it checks for the symptoms that mean stop the session and see a professional — see the safety page for that list. That screening and that guidance are free for everyone, permanently: nothing about your safety sits behind a payment.

Then, on Pro, the session adapts around it — lighter where the movement provokes it, a swap where a swap helps, and everything unaffected exactly as prescribed — with a graded way back to full load as things settle. It is a training app, not a medical one: it never tells you what is wrong with you, and it will tell you when the answer is a professional rather than a program.

It never prescribes conditioning — that's a deliberate non-goal, and a strength program that also tells you to run is usually a strength program that stops working.

What Pro adds is a circuit library you reach for yourself: pick a circuit, log the result, keep your bests. It stays out of your strength numbers by design — a circuit teaches the strength model nothing and never moves a prescription.

Everything reactive: the workout logger, the daily readiness check-in and its trend, estimated-1RM tracking per lift, and the Session Coach — which gives you sets, reps and a load with a reason for any exercise you add, off-program, forever. So is your data: export and account deletion are never paid features, and neither is the pain safety screening.

Pro is the proactive half — the periodized program itself: blocks and deloads per lift, the block-to-block adaptation, peaking, the full volume analytics, planned time off, pain-aware coaching and the conditioning library. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

€4.99/month, or €49/year if you pay for the year — a saving of 18% on the monthly price. Prices include VAT and are billed in euros. Cancel whenever you like: your training log stays yours, and you can export all of it at any time.

Because checkout isn't open. TrainDash is in early access, so everything — including everything listed as Pro — is available to every account for free while we finish. When billing opens you'll be told before anything changes, and nothing will be charged without you choosing it.

In the EU. The app is built and hosted in Europe, and your training log, your readiness answers and your account live on EU infrastructure — they are not shipped elsewhere for processing.

Nothing about your training is sold, shared or used to advertise to you, and the marketing site you are reading sets no cookies at all.

Both, from inside the app, in two taps, with no email to anyone. Export downloads everything we hold about you as a JSON file. Delete removes your account and your training data permanently — it cascades, so nothing is quietly kept behind.

Neither is a paid feature and neither ever will be.

Because how you slept, how sore you are and anything you say about pain count as health data under EU law, and that category needs your explicit permission before it can be stored. So we ask once, in plain words, and you can withdraw it later.

If you say no, the app still works: the program runs, the logger logs, and readiness simply degrades to a more conservative default instead of being personalised to you.