Programs and routines
Random workouts give random results. A program decides your exercises, sets, reps and weights in advance, so every session builds on the last. Durata ships 50 proven programs with the progression built in — pick one, set your starting numbers once, and the app calculates every workout from then on.
Prefer to train your own way? The Routine Editor builds any session from scratch, down to individual set types and percentages. This guide covers both.
Last reviewed 2026-08-01 · matches app v0.9.0.69
The Training hub
The Training hub has four tabs — Routines, Programs, Discover and History. Routines is your library of standalone sessions, Programs is the multi-week plans you've added, Discover is the curated catalog, and History shows every program run — anything still active first, then finished and ended runs.
The Programs tab groups plans into Active, Favourites, Programs and Archived; each card carries a one-tap Start control and a favourite star, with Program Overview and the Weekly Planner a tap away (inline buttons on bigger screens, the ⋯ menu on a phone).
Swipe left or right anywhere in the hub to move between the four tabs — same gesture as the Analytics screen.
Discover: the program catalog
Discover holds 50 curated programs: classics like 5/3/1 For Beginners, Boring But Big, nSuns LP, GZCLP, Metallicadpa PPL, PHUL, Texas Method and Madcow 5x5, plus home dumbbell plans, glute specialisation and time-boxed fat-loss challenges. Every card shows cover art, level, days per week, goal and a session time estimate (like "~45-60 min/session") — computed from the program's volume, then replaced with your real average once you've logged enough sessions.
A community star rating appears once enough people have rated a program. Search matches names and common aliases — typing "stronglifts" or "madcow" finds the right program even where the listed name differs. The Filter drawer narrows by level, days per week and goal; sorting offers Recommended (beginner-first) or Highest rated, a weighted average so one 5-star vote can't outrank a heavily-rated 4.6.
Every star comes from someone who ran the plan — you can only rate a program you've started.
Not sure? Use the Program Finder
Tap "Help me choose" in Discover and answer three quick questions: your main goal, your experience, and the days per week you can train. The finder scores the catalog against your answers and returns a shortlist, best match badged as Top pick — and it re-ranks instantly if you change an answer. Tap any result to open its detail page and start it there.
How progression works
You never work out the weights yourself. When a program uses training maxes, the app asks for them once at the start — suggesting values from your logged history at 90% of your best estimated 1RM. From then on, every session's targets are computed for you.
There are four main models. Linear progression adds a fixed amount — typically +2.5 kg upper body, +5 kg lower — every time you hit your reps, and drops the weight around 10% after repeated misses so you never stay stuck. Training-max programs like 5/3/1, nSuns and Texas Method work off a percentage of your TM and only bump it when you beat the AMRAP set's target — some per cycle, some per week. Double progression holds the weight until you reach the top of the rep range on every set, then adds. Stage programs like GZCLP don't cut the weight at all: miss your reps and you drop to the next rep scheme on the same bar — 5×3 becomes 6×2, then 10×1 — and only when you run out of stages does that lift start a fresh cycle. Deload weeks are built in where the program prescribes them, and each detail page describes its rule in plain language.
Deloads always move the bar. On a light accessory, 10% can be less than the smallest plate you own — so when the percentage wouldn't change the weight at all, Durata drops it by one full step of your Weight Rounding instead of handing you back the weight you just failed. It won't go below the empty bar on a barbell lift, and it never rounds a lift up: dumbbells, cables and machines simply keep stepping down.
Progression judges what you actually lifted, not just your reps. Log a session noticeably lighter than prescribed and it counts as a miss — repeat it and the deload steps in, exactly as if you'd missed the reps. Go heavier than prescribed on a working day (within reason) and the app adopts your weight as the new working weight instead of dragging you back. Light days, back-off sets and deload weeks are judged against their own prescribed weights, so following the program lighter on purpose is never punished.
Some linear programs carry a double-jump rule: smash the AMRAP set hard enough (Greyskull-style) and you earn a double-size weight increase that session.
Skipped the starting-weights step? Progression picks up your working weight from the first session you log — the lift starts climbing from what you actually lifted.
Need to correct a working weight later — one that drifted, or was never set? Open the program's ⋯ menu and choose Working Weights to adjust any lift's starting weight at any time, the same way Training Maxes works for percentage programs.
The week planner
Every program has a Weekly Planner — a week-by-day grid of your sessions, opened from the card's ⋯ menu on a phone or its Weekly Planner button on bigger screens. Life moves — so drag any session to a different day of the same week. Dropping it on a day that already has a session asks whether to add both to that day or swap the two days' contents. Moving days never touches exercises or progression.
Days can also be set without dragging: in the program builder, every session row carries a training-day chip — tap it to pick the day, or days, that session runs on (the picker is multi-select, so a conditioning session can sit on Wednesday and Friday at once). A session added without a day shows a highlighted Set Day chip until you give it one, and the planner lists any day-less sessions under an Unscheduled heading with the same Set Day shortcut — nothing silently disappears.
Tap the planner's Rotate button to flip into landscape: the days run across the top and each program week becomes a row, so you can read the whole plan at a glance.
Long-press any session tile for quick options: edit the session, swap one of its exercises, or jump into the program builder for that week.
The Program Report
Open a started program and choose View full report: your adherence percentage, a week-by-week adherence chart, total volume and completed sets, current training maxes, and a Training Max Progression chart showing each lift climb over the run. The report stays available from History after a program ends.
Swapping exercises
Squat rack taken — or no cable row at your gym? Every exercise line in a program preview has a swap button. It opens the exercise picker with a Recommended section on top — alternatives ranked by how closely they match the original's muscles, movement pattern and equipment — so the substitute still does the same job. The same picker is reachable from the planner (long-press a session tile, then Swap an Exercise) and from the routine editor's per-exercise Swap.
Programs repeat their lifts, so after you pick the replacement Durata asks how far the swap should reach: if the exercise appears in several sessions across the program's weeks, an Apply Swap sheet offers This Session Only or All Weeks of This Program. Replace an exercise in the routine editor and the same question appears as an Apply to All Weeks? offer once you've made the change. Either way, any progression or working-weight state the old exercise had carries over to the new one automatically — the program keeps computing your weights without missing a session.
Start, pause, archive
Starting a program asks for training maxes (if it uses them) and a start date, then it goes live on your dashboard and logger. Program weeks run Monday to Sunday, so the date picker suggests the next Monday for a clean week 1 — you can still start today, and it shows exactly which session you'd begin with.
Status reads at a glance from the card itself: an active program's card glows with a green outline, a paused one with amber, and a not-yet-started program keeps the plain border. Multi-week programs show which week you're in with a progress bar; a started single-week plan shows its next session instead — 'Tomorrow — Full Body A' — so the card always tells you what's coming. The round button over the cover's corner is a one-tap shortcut — ▶ starts or resumes, ⏸ pauses — and the card's progress bar fills with the work you've actually completed, not just the week you're on. When a fixed-length program finishes its final week it completes itself: you get the trophy screen and it moves to the History tab automatically. The ⋯ menu keeps one route per action: Program Overview (the workout preview), About this Program (ratings and description, for catalog programs), the Weekly Planner, training maxes, end early, archive or delete — archiving a program that's in progress asks first, and archived programs can always be restored.
Building your own routines
The Routines tab holds sessions you design yourself. The Routine Editor works like the logger: add exercises, then set each set's type — Warm Up, Normal, Top Set, Backoff, Drop Set, Intensity, AMRAP, Rest Pause, Partials and Unilateral — with reps, rest and weight. Sets can use an intensity percentage of your training max instead of a fixed weight, and cardio sets get a Steady/HIIT tag per interval. Timed holds — dead hangs, wall sits, side planks and friends — swap the weight × reps columns for a single mm:ss duration field.
You don't have to start from a blank page: open any past workout in History and choose Save as Routine to turn a session you actually did into a template.
Tap a routine card to preview the whole session before you commit — every set with its type, weight, rest and effort targets, with supersetted exercises joined by colour-coded SS chips — then hit Start Workout or Edit straight from the preview. The share icon on the card exports the routine as text for a training partner.
Routines don't have to stay standalone, either: once you've saved a few, Create a program on the Programs tab offers to bundle them into a weekly plan, and Copy to Program on any routine's menu copies it into a program you already run — you pick its training day (or several) as part of the flow, and the original stays in My Routines. See the Build your own program guide for how both work.
In the reps field, type a range like "8-12" for a rep range, or add a star — "5*" — to mark the set as AMRAP.
Long-press a set's type badge to delete the set; a tap opens the set-type picker.
Tags, sources and filters
Coming from Strong or Hevy, where you file routines into folders? Durata organises by labels instead — no folder shuffling. Every routine can carry type tags (push, pull, legs, upper, lower, full, cardio, core) and a free-text Source for where it came from: your coach, a YouTuber, a programme you're adapting.
Open a routine's menu and choose Organize to set both in one sheet; tags show as chips on the routine card. Sessions that belong to a program are grouped under that program automatically, so your library never turns into one long list.
The payoff is the filter bar: filter by type tag, by source, by favourites, include archived, and sort — so "all my pull days" or "everything from my coach" is two taps, even with a big collection.
Favourite (star) the routines you run most and they surface first; duplicate one from its menu to build a variation without touching the original.
Set Preferred Days on a routine's menu and it shows up on your dashboard and Up Next on those days — a lightweight weekly schedule with no program needed.
Common questions
Do I have to calculate my own weights?
No. Set your training maxes once when you start a program (Durata suggests them from your logged history) and every session's target weights are computed automatically from the program's progression rule.
What happens when I miss my reps?
Nothing dramatic, and it depends on the program. Linear programs hold the weight and deload 10-15% (whatever the program prescribes) only after repeated misses. Training-max programs simply hold your TM until you beat the AMRAP target. Stage programs like GZCLP never cut the weight — you drop to the next rep scheme on the same bar, and only after the last stage does that one lift restart its cycle on a fresh weight the app works out for you. Accessory work judges the whole session: get close to the target reps and the weight stays put, fall well short and it drops one plate. Lowering the bar well below the prescription counts as a miss too — hitting easy reps at a lighter weight never earns an increase. The program keeps moving either way.
Can I move my training days around?
Yes — open the Weekly Planner from any program card and drag sessions between days of the week, or tap a session's day chip in the program builder to move it directly. If the target day is taken, Durata asks whether to stack both sessions or swap the days.
If I delete a program, do I lose my workout history?
No. Deleting a program removes the plan and its scheduled sessions, but every workout you logged stays in your history and analytics.
Can I change an exercise in a built-in program?
Yes. Use the swap button next to any exercise (in the preview, the planner or the routine editor) to pick a replacement — the picker recommends alternatives that match the original's muscles, movement and equipment. If the lift appears in several sessions, Durata asks whether to swap it in that session only or across all weeks of the program, and its progression state follows the new exercise either way.
Can I organise routines into folders like Strong or Hevy?
Durata uses tags and sources instead of folders: label a routine by type (push, pull, legs and so on) and by where it came from, then filter the library on either. Program sessions are grouped under their program automatically. One routine can carry several tags — something a single folder can't do.
Put it into practice
Durata is free during beta — 50 proven programs, automatic progression, rest timers and PR tracking, all on your phone.