User Guide

Workout Plans: Create, Edit, and Run

By NexusWorks · Updated July 2026 · 7 min read

Freestyle logging is fine, but structured training is where strength is built: the same lifts, in the same order, with weights that climb week after week. Herculog's Plan tab handles the whole lifecycle — build a plan, run it with tap-to-log checkboxes, adjust it mid-workout, and nudge the weights up between sessions.

What a plan is

A plan is an ordered list of exercises, each with its set-groups — sets × reps × weight — plus optional extras per exercise: a plan note and an RPE target. Think of it as the workout written on the whiteboard before you touch a bar.

Two things to understand about how plans relate to your log:

• Plans are templates. A plan on its own logs nothing. Running a plan is what creates real entries in your history, one for each set you check off.
• Editing or deleting a plan never touches your history. Workouts you logged from a plan stay logged, exactly as performed, no matter what happens to the plan afterward. Rework it, rename it, delete it — your record is untouched.

Three ways to get a plan

1. Build from scratch. Tap New on the Plan tab and assemble it exercise by exercise — the next section walks through it.
2. Add a ready-made one. Discover ships a library of beginner-to-advanced programs you can add in one tap — see Discover: Ready-Made Training Plans.
3. Save a logged day. Already trained the workout freestyle? Open that day on the Home calendar and tap Save as Plan to turn it into a template — covered in The Home Calendar & Summaries.

Building a plan from scratch

From the Plan tab, tap New:

1. Name it. Enter a Plan Name — "Upper A", "Deadlift Day", whatever you'll recognize in the list.
2. Add exercises. Tap + Add exercise to open the exercise editor. For each exercise you can set:
   • Name — with autocomplete, so "ben" finds Bench Press.
   • Muscle group.
   • Sets × reps × weight for the working sets.
   • RPE target — the effort you intend, shown while you run the plan (new to RPE? see RPE Explained).
   • Warmup sets.
   • Plan note — "Instructions shown while running this exercise." Use it for cues: "pause at the chest", "elbows tucked", "seat position 4".
3. Add more sets. Tap + Add Set inside an exercise when one set-group isn't enough — say, 3×8 at one weight followed by a back-off set.
4. Arrange the order. Use Move Up / Move Down to reorder exercises, and remove any exercise you've changed your mind about.
5. Save. Tap Save Plan. A plan needs its essentials in place before it will save — at minimum a name and its exercises filled in.

Prefer a big screen and a keyboard for this part? The free desktop plan builder on herculog.com builds the same plans in your browser, ready to import into the app.

Reading the plan list

Every plan appears as a card in the Plan tab. At a glance, each card shows:

• Exercise count — how many exercises the plan contains.
• Estimated duration — figured at roughly 2.5 minutes per set, so a 20-set plan reads as about 50 minutes.
• Muscle groups the plan covers.

Cards also carry status badges: IN PROGRESS on a plan with an unfinished run, and FINISHED on a plan you completed today.

Each card offers three actions:

• Start (or Resume, if a run is in progress) — begin the workout.
• Edit — open the same editor you built the plan in.
• The ··· menu — Duplicate (great for making a variant), Reorder, and Delete.

Running a plan

Tap Start and the run screen lays your workout out as a checklist: each exercise with its sets in SET / WEIGHT / REPS / RPE columns, a checkbox per set.

• Tap a set row to check it off — that logs it for real. The set lands in your history immediately, just as if you'd entered it on the Add tab. Tapped the wrong row? Uncheck it to undo the logged entry.
• Leave whenever you need to. Your progress persists — take a call, switch apps, even come back hours later. The Plan tab automatically resumes an in-progress run.
• Adjust on the fly. Mid-run you can edit an exercise (the bar felt heavy — drop the weight), add a set, reorder exercises, or remove one entirely. Sets you've already checked off stay logged.
• Finish. When the last set is done, tap Finish to end the run — and see any personal records you hit along the way.

The progressive overload workflow

A plan you never make harder is a maintenance program. The engine of strength is progressive overload — small, regular increases in what the plan demands — and Herculog gives you two easy ways to run it:

1. Edit the plan's weights between sessions. Squats moved fast at 100 kg on Monday? Open Edit, make it 102.5, and next Monday's checklist already asks for more.
2. Lean on history bubbles while editing. When you edit an exercise, your recent logged weights for it are right there — so "what did I lift last time?" never requires leaving the editor, and the next target is one glance away.