Metrics, Charts & Personal Records
Logging is only half the job — the payoff is watching strength climb. The Metrics tab turns your log into a radar chart of where your work is going, awards for the records you've set, and a per-exercise view of weight, volume, and estimated 1RM over time. This guide explains every chart and number on it, so you always know exactly what you're looking at.
The duration filter
At the top of the Metrics tab sits the duration filter: 7d, 30d, 90d, Year, and All. It sets the time window for what you see — the Muscle Split radar, the Awards row, and the exercise charts all draw from the period you've selected. Use 7d or 30d to check whether this training block is balanced, and Year or All to see the long arc. One deliberate exception: the Personal Records table ignores this filter entirely, as explained below.
The Muscle Split radar chart
The radar chart plots your logged items per muscle group across six axes: Core, Chest, Back, Legs, Arms, and Shoulders. The further the shape stretches toward an axis, the more entries you've logged for that group within the selected duration.
Behind your current shape sits a grey Previous overlay: the same chart for the prior period of equal length. With 30d selected, the overlay is the 30 days before that; with 90d, the 90 days before, and so on. That comparison is where the chart earns its keep — it makes drift visible. If Chest reaches further than last period while Back has shrunk, your pressing is quietly outrunning your pulling. A lopsided radar is the earliest, cheapest warning of an imbalance: rebalance the plan now, not after the mirror or your shoulders complain.
The Awards row
The Awards row shows PR cards for records you earned during the selected period, each labeled with its window: Lifetime, 1Y, 6M, or 3M. A Lifetime card means you beat everything you've ever logged for that exercise; a 3M card means you beat your best of the last three months — a comeback milestone, not an all-time one. Change the duration filter and the row updates to show the awards earned within that window of time.
The exercise detail view
Tap an exercise to open its detail view, headlined by a progress chart with three series:
| Series | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Sets (grey) | How many sets you did each day — your volume of work. |
| Max Wt | The heaviest weight you lifted that day. |
| 1RM | The day's best estimated one-rep max. |
Read the three together: Max Wt climbing means heavier bar weight; 1RM climbing while Max Wt holds still means more reps at the same weight — strength gained without touching the loading pins; the grey Sets bars tell you how much work bought the trend.
The 1RM series uses the Epley formula: weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30). Do 100 kg for 8 reps and Herculog estimates a single at 100 × (1 + 8/30) ≈ 127 kg. It's an estimate, not a measurement — the formula assumes every rep in reserve converts to the same slice of extra weight, which holds well at low-to-moderate reps and gets fuzzier at high reps, so treat it as a consistent trend line rather than a promise of what you'd hit on a max attempt. For the fuller story on estimation formulas, see the 1RM calculator guide, and for how effort ratings relate to true max attempts, RPE explained.
One more rule that keeps every chart honest: warmups are excluded. Any set you flagged with the Warmup chip when logging it stays in your history but never counts toward metrics or PRs — an empty-bar set of 20 would otherwise "estimate" a nonsense 1RM and pollute your records.
The Personal Records table
Below the chart, the Personal Records table shows your best marks in four windows — 3M, 6M, 1Y, and Lifetime — with two columns each:
- Max Wt — the heaviest weight you actually lifted in that window.
- Best 1RM — the highest Epley estimate any set in that window produced. This can come from a lighter set at higher reps, which is why the two columns often disagree.
Unlike everything else on the tab, this table ignores the duration filter. Records are always all-time within their own window: the 3M row is your best of the last three months whether the filter says 7d or All. Your records don't shrink because you zoomed in — a PR stands until you beat it or it ages out of its window.
A Lifetime PR can sit untouchable for years — demoralizing when you're rebuilding after a layoff. The 3M and 6M windows give you honest, nearer targets: beat what recent-you did, and the app celebrates it. Every legend keeps a log; the windows make sure the log keeps cheering.
The History list
The exercise detail view also includes a History list: every past entry for that exercise, ready to review. Tap an entry to open the same edit form you'd reach from the Home calendar — fix a typo'd weight, adjust the reps, or delete a bad entry, and every chart and record on the tab recalculates from the corrected data. It's the fastest way to audit one lift's story without scrolling the calendar.
How kg and lb mix
Herculog lets you log each entry in kg or lb, so your history can legitimately contain both. Metrics handles the mix in two steps: entries are converted to a common unit so the math is always comparing like with like, and each display picks its unit by majority — whichever unit most of the entries in the period use is the one the numbers are shown in. Log mostly in kilograms with an occasional pound session and your charts read in kg, with the lb entries converted in; nothing is dropped and no record is missed because it was logged in the other unit.
Every legend keeps a log
The charts only get interesting once the entries pile up. Herculog is free, private, and takes seconds per set — start logging and let the radar fill in.