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 — per lift, so the bench that's years ahead of your squat doesn't have to wait for it.

It is not for you if you want to run somebody else's spreadsheet, or if you want an app that just records what you did — this one has opinions about what you should do next. And the program itself is squat, bench and deadlift: if those aren't your lifts, the paid half isn't for you, though the free Session Coach will still compose and price whatever session you do train.

The program isn't: it periodizes squat, bench and deadlift, and it will not periodize a push day. The Session Coach is — and that is the free half. Start a session with nothing planned, tell it the kind of day you're doing (Push, Pull, Legs, Upper, Lower, Full body, one muscle group, or a single lift) and it composes the session: one movement per pattern rather than three rows for the same muscle, the muscles nothing else on the sheet is covering first, and about as much work as a real training day holds. Every row is yours to change, drop or add to.

From there it behaves like a coach rather than a picker. Each row comes with sets, reps and a load off your own estimated max and your own last outing on that movement, rounded to the equipment you actually have, with one line saying why. Your week is counted per muscle and per pattern against your own minimum-effective, adaptive and maximum-recoverable targets, so a fourth hard chest session in one week is dosed as a fourth. And your main lifts walk a rolling arc — the top set gets harder across the weeks, the rep scheme rotates when a run has done its work, and a light week arrives when you've earned one.

What you give up by staying free is the horizon: nothing is written in advance, so there's no block, no deload on the calendar, no peak and no next week. For a lifter who trains by feel and just wants the numbers to be right, that is often exactly the right trade. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

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.

Yes. A lift that's new to you runs the simple method: the same sets and reps every session, a little more weight each time you make your reps. There are no effort ratings to learn — making the reps is the whole test.

When the bar stops moving, it takes smaller jumps, resets about 10% once to build the run-up back, and then offers to move that lift onto block training. It asks rather than switching on you, and it asks per lift — so your squat can move on while your bench keeps adding weight.

Yes — the method is chosen per lift, not per person. If you benched for years in a gym split and barely squatted, the bench can run blocks while the squat simply adds weight every session, which is what each of them actually needs.

You choose it when you build that lift's program, and it isn't a setting you flip later — the two are genuinely two different programs, not two settings on one. Your coach makes the one move that matters: when the simple method has run dry on a lift, it offers to take that lift onto blocks. To change it any other way you'd abandon that lift's program and build a new one — and your logs and your max are kept either way.

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, and that is not a bare logging screen. Start a free session and either add the movements yourself or name the kind of day you're doing — Push, Pull, Legs, Upper, Lower, Full body, a muscle group, a single lift — and the coach composes it. Either way every row comes back with sets, reps and a load and a one-line reason, and it is the same numbers a programmed lifter would get for the same set. What it won't do is write the weeks ahead of today.

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. Everything else you train is the Session Coach's job instead — it composes those sessions, prices every set and progresses them week to week, on any account.

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, the whole Progress tab — weekly volume per lift and per muscle against MEV/MAV/MRV, load monitoring, recovery, relative strength — and the Session Coach, which is more than a suggestion box: name the kind of day you're training and it composes the session, prices every set with its reason, doses it against your week, and progresses your lifts from one week to the next. 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 three things the coach above deliberately never does. A horizon: blocks, deloads and a peak written weeks ahead and laid on the days you train, next week included. A terminus: a taper and a re-tested max on a date you name. And a memory across blocks: it reads the block you finished, names what held you back, and reshapes the next one. Planned time off, pain-aware coaching and the conditioning library come with it. The full comparison is on the pricing page.

€9.99/month, or €99/year if you pay for the year — a saving of 17% 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.

From the app: Profile → Subscription → Manage billing, which opens the billing portal where you can switch between monthly and yearly, update your card, download invoices or cancel. Cancelling keeps Pro until the end of the period you've already paid for — nothing further is charged.

When it ends, your program is paused, not deleted: every block, every logged set and every number you built stays exactly where it is. The logger, the Session Coach, your readiness check-in and your estimated 1RMs keep working for free, and re-subscribing plus one tap on Resume picks the program back up — priced off how long you were actually away, not off the calendar.

Yes — there's a code box on the checkout page, and one on the upgrade screen in the app that pre-fills it. A code can take a percentage off, take an amount off, or make a stretch free; what it does is shown before you confirm, and afterwards on your subscription card.

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.