Setup Next: plate maths and saved machine settings

One sheet per exercise

The sheet opens with the exercise name, the sets you have left, and the load. On a barbell lift that means the total in big type, what goes on each end, and a drawing of the bar with the real plates in their real colours, so you can check the picture against the rack instead of reading a list. It only uses plates you've told it you have, and it subtracts the bar you've selected, so the answer is one you can actually load. Tap the Bar row to switch to the EZ bar, the hex bar or a custom one, and the maths redraws underneath.

Other equipment gets its own version of that. Dumbbells show a pair, with what the two add up to underneath, or a single bell on a single-arm lift, so the picture matches what you'd actually carry to the bench. A kettlebell shows one bell, a loadable plate what's in your hands rather than what's on two ends, a band its colour and anchor height, a suspension trainer a strap notch, and a weighted chin-up what's hanging off the belt. Machines have their own section further down.

Under the load sits everything you can save for this exercise: the positions that type of machine has, a bench angle if the movement uses one, your kit, your own note, and a form cue with the demo clip. There's no Save button and nothing to cancel. Every control writes as you touch it, which is why the only button on the sheet says Close.

Four ways in

There's no Setup button buried in a menu. The sheet opens from four places, each one where the question actually comes up.

In the logger, every exercise card has a chip at the bottom right. Once the next set has a weight on it, the chip stops saying Setup and shows the answer instead: 20 · 20 · 1.25 a side, or Pin 12, or 2 × 30 kg. Tap it to open the sheet. The chip only ever uses one line, so on a very heavy bar with a long plate list it goes blank and lets the sheet carry the detail, rather than showing you half a load.

On the rest screen, when the next thing up is a different exercise, a Setup Next pill appears under its name with the same preview on it. Between sets of the same exercise there's no pill; the screen just tells you if the weight is changing. In a planned session, every exercise row has a setup button, and it lights up when that exercise already has something saved. On an exercise's own page, the Setup cell in the ⋮ menu opens the same sheet without the load section, because there's no workout behind that screen to have a weight in it.

1. In a workout: tap the chip at the bottom of any exercise card.
2. During rest: tap Setup Next when the next exercise comes up.
3. Before a session: open the planned session and tap the setup button on any row.
4. Anywhere: open the exercise from the library, open the ⋮ menu, and tap Setup.

The rest screen does the sums for you

Finish the last set of an exercise and the rest screen tells you what's next. It now also tells you what that next thing needs. The Setup Next pill carries the preview line on its face, so on a barbell lift the job is usually done without a tap: read the plates, walk over, load it.

Tap the pill and the full sheet opens over the countdown. The timer keeps running underneath, and the preview on the pill updates as you change things, so switching to the EZ bar or fixing the machine's load type while you rest costs you nothing.

Between sets of the same exercise there's no pill, because there's nothing left to set up. The bench is set, the pin is in, the kit is on. The only thing that can have changed is the weight, so that's the only thing the screen mentions. If the next set is a different weight from the one you just did, a plate line appears under Set 3 of 5. If it's the same weight, nothing appears. Straight sets never see it. Pyramids, drop sets, backoffs and warm-up ramps are where the sums are real, and that's where it shows up.

It sits alongside the coaching hint rather than pushing it out, so an AMRAP target or a progression cue still gets its say. If a plate line is too long for one line it drops out instead of trailing off, for the same reason the chip does.

Machines: pin stacks, plate-loaded and added weight

Machine covers two very different things. Most machines are a selectorised stack with a pin in it. Leg presses, hack squats, pendulum and belt squats, iso-lateral arms and every Smith bar are loaded with plates and have no pin at all. That matters, because the headline number on the sheet is which plate the pin goes in, and on those machines there isn't one.

So the sheet asks. The Loaded By row offers Pin Stack, Plate Loaded or Added Weight. Durata guesses from the exercise name and gets the obvious ones right, and the row is there so a wrong guess takes one tap to fix. Your choice is saved for that exercise, like everything else here.

A pin stack is drawn as a stack with the pin in place, and the sheet says which plate that is. It assumes 5 kg a plate. If your gym's stacks run in tens, or in something odd, the row under the stack changes it, and you only have to say so once. Plate Loaded draws the weight as plates and splits it over two pegs, which is what most of them have. Some don't: plate-loaded leg extensions and leg curls are often built with a single horn, and being told to put 20 a side on one of those loads it to double. The Loaded On row under the plates says Both Sides or One Side, and on One Side the sheet shows the whole load in one place. Smith lifts don't get that row, because a carriage runs on two rails. Added Weight is for the weighted chin-up and the weighted dip, where the number isn't a stack at all but what's hanging off you.

Under the hero sit the positions: seat height, back pad, thigh pad, chest pad, foot plate, handle and range limiter. They're steppers with no keyboard, because a seat notch isn't a unit. The number means whatever that machine's own scale means, which is all you need written down.

Smith machines and what the carriage weighs

A Smith carriage runs on rails and is usually counterbalanced, so it weighs nothing like a barbell in your hands. Commercial machines range from almost nothing up to a full bar, and no two brands agree. There's no sensible default, so the default is zero: Smith lifts count the plates you put on and stop there, and the Smith Bar row reads Counterbalanced until you change it.

Tap that row and set what your machine's carriage actually weighs. From then on it comes off the total before the plates are worked out, on every Smith lift. The same number lives in Settings under Plate Calculator if you'd rather set it there. Hang a luggage scale off the carriage if you want it exact.

The carriage isn't an entry in your bar roster. The roster decides the weight every free barbell lift is judged against, and a counterbalanced carriage shouldn't be rewriting that, so the carriage weight is kept as a separate number that only Smith lifts read.

Bench angles and seat notches

Any lift with incline, decline or bench in its name gets a bench card, and the bench is drawn at the angle you've set rather than just named in a label. Nudge it with the plus and minus buttons and the drawing follows.

The back pad angle isn't a new setting. It's the same saved incline the logger and the exercise page already use, so changing it here changes it everywhere, and last session's angle is offered as a one-tap suggestion if you haven't set one. The seat pad is separate, because most adjustable benches number the seat rather than marking it in degrees, so it is saved as a notch for that exercise alone.

Kit, and the thing you always forget

Kit is what you pick up on the way: belt, sleeves, straps, chalk, wraps, shoes. Each piece is a drawn glyph with its name under it, rather than the plain text chips it used to be, because the question here is what to carry over and a picture of a belt answers that faster than a row of words. Built-in gear gets a proper icon. Anything you've added yourself gets a monogram tile, since the app can't draw a name it's never seen. The list of kit itself lives in Settings under Equipment Tags.

What you used last time is offered, not assumed. If you had straps on for deadlifts last week, the card says so and puts them one tap away instead of quietly switching them on. During a workout the kit shown is what you're using today; outside a session it's the saved default for that exercise.

Your note is the free-text half: a cue, a hole number, which rack in the corner has the good bar. It sits under the kit, it's saved per exercise, and it shows on the logger card too. Below it the sheet shows a form cue and the demo clip. On an exercise you've never set up it leads with the first few how-to steps instead, because on an empty sheet those are more use.

Where the numbers come from

Everything the sheet draws comes from equipment you've described once. Settings, then Plate Calculator, holds your bars and your plate inventory. Add a custom bar, tick the ones your gym has, untick the plates it doesn't, and every plate drawing in the app narrows to what you can really load. The Smith carriage weight is on the same screen. Settings, then Equipment Tags, holds the kit list, including anything you add yourself.

Positions, angles, kit and notes are saved per exercise and sync with your account, so a machine you set up on your phone is already set up on the tablet. None of it is per workout and none of it expires. Set the seat once and it's waiting every week.

1. Settings, then Plate Calculator: bars, plate inventory and the Smith carriage weight.
2. Settings, then Equipment Tags: the kit list, built-in and custom.
3. Everything else is set on the sheet itself, per exercise, and saved as you touch it.