Handbook
Using the App
Every screen in Uppies, in the order you'll meet them — from first launch to backing up months of training.
First run: the setup guide
The first time you open Uppies, a setup guide explains the program and the interface, then helps configure the current profile. Nothing in it is final — every choice can be changed later in Settings.
- The program. The guide starts with the Greyskull LP and Phrak foundation, the weekly lift rotation, working-set structure, AMRAP guidance, and the rules that determine the next weight.
- Profile name. Optional, but worth setting if two people will share the device. Leave it blank to stay "Me".
- Using the app. Interactive pages demonstrate draft reps, final-set confirmation, rest timers, history navigation, advancing a workout, Progress, and Workout Together.
- Units. Pounds or kilograms. Switching converts the profile's weights and rounding values for you, so it's safe to change your mind later.
- Starting weights. Set the bar weight at the top of the page. For each of the ten lifts, tap the checkbox to accept its suggestion or open the lift to enter a value directly. Supported barbell lifts can also estimate a conservative start from a recent hard set; bodyweight movements suggest bodyweight first.
Tap Skip at any point and unreviewed lifts keep their suggested values. A "Review starting weights" card appears on the Workout screen, and Settings → Finish setup guide reopens the walkthrough; lifts you already reviewed stay checked. Once all ten are reviewed, the Settings action becomes Review setup guide. Not sure what to pick? Start lighter than your ego suggests; the program catches up fast.
The Workout screen
The Workout tab shows one session at a time, with one card per lift. Each card has the lift's name, an info button for its movement guide, and the working weight for today in the header.
Set rows
Below the header, each prescribed set gets its own row — warm-up sets first (for bench, overhead press, squat, and deadlift), then the working sets — each with a checkbox. Check a set off as you finish it. Main lifts prescribe two straight sets of 5 and a final "5+" set; the deadlift is the exception with a single "5+" working set; accessories prescribe two sets of 12 and a final "12+".
The blue marker shows the next set to do. Main lifts still advance in program order, while each accessory has its own marker. You can alternate the arm and core movements as a superset or finish them in whichever order suits the gym.
The reps stepper
The final working set is an AMRAP — as many reps as you can with good form. Enter what you got with the Reps on last set stepper. The minus and plus buttons step the count, and it starts as a dash, not zero: "no entry" and "zero reps" mean different things in Uppies. Long-press the stepper to clear an entry entirely.
Draft vs. confirmed — the one concept worth learning
Reps you enter are a draft until you check the final set's checkbox. Only a confirmed final set counts as a result, and only then does progression read it.
Concretely: say your bench is at 100 lb with a 5-rep target. Before the result is confirmed, the blue line uses the unlogged planning projection — 102.5 lb in this example. You grind out 7 reps and tap the stepper up to 7. The outcome row stays blank, and typing alone does not recalculate that projection. Check the final set's box and the result becomes official: the card shows Target Met and confirms 102.5 lb as the next bench weight. Realize you miscounted and change the 7 to a 6? The checkbox clears itself, the result goes back to being a draft, and you confirm again when you're sure.
The checkbox on the final set stays disabled until you've entered reps — you can't confirm a result that doesn't exist yet.
Outcomes and the next weight
Once confirmed, the card labels the result:
| Label | Meaning (main lifts) | Next weight |
|---|---|---|
| Target Met | Hit the target, short of double | + one increment |
| 2x Target Met | At least double the target | + two increments |
| Target Not Met | Below the target | Deload (10% by default) |
Accessories work slightly differently — a ±2-rep band around the target holds the weight steady. The full rules live in The program.
A blue Next working weight line on every card always shows what that lift is prescribed at its next occurrence — met, missed, or still unlogged.
Volume and rep totals
Each card ends with a Loaded volume and Total reps row, and the bottom of the session sums them across every lift. Both count only sets you've actually checked off, and they finalize when you confirm the exercise's last working set — until then the card shows dashes. Totals are captured at completion, so a settings tweak next month won't quietly rewrite what you lifted today. Unloaded bodyweight sets (chin-ups or ab rollouts with no added weight) contribute reps but no loaded volume.
Rest timers
Checking off a warm-up or working set starts a rest countdown in the bar at the top of the Workout screen. Warm-ups and final sets use the short warm-up duration; other working sets use the working duration. The final exercise does not start another timer because the session is over. The defaults are 1:00 and 4:00, each adjustable from 0:30 to 5:00 in Settings → Rest timer.
- While a timer runs, +15s and −15s buttons nudge it, and the ring around the start/stop button drains as rest elapses.
- When time is up the bar shows Rest over and stays put until you dismiss it or check off another set — no vanishing message to miss mid-conversation.
- Checking off an accessory while a timer is already running leaves that countdown alone, so alternating accessories does not restart or shorten your rest.
- Turn on Notify when rest ends to get a notification even if you've switched apps or locked the phone. It's off by default and asks for notification permission when enabled.
- Don't want timers at all? The Rest timer toggle removes the bar entirely.
Navigating sessions and editing history
The chevrons in the toolbar move one session back or forward, and Complete session at the bottom advances from the current workout. After a trained session, Uppies shows a summary of the confirmed reps and loaded volume, then returns to the top of the next workout. On iPhone, tap the Week 2, Day 1 title to open History — a week-by-week list of every session so far, with a one-line summary of what you logged (like "Bench 102.5×5 · Row 52.5×6"), its totals, a green checkmark when complete, and the date. On an iPad in full screen, History lives in an always-visible sidebar instead. Tap any row to jump there.
If you try to advance past a session that still has unlogged lifts, Uppies asks first: Advance incomplete session?. That's because an unlogged lift projects its weight forward as if it went fine — advancing anyway is allowed, but it can raise future prescriptions for work you never did.
Editing a past session
Any old session can be corrected: navigate to it, fix the reps, and re-confirm the final set. Because every weight is recomputed from the log, fixing a three-week-old typo correctly rewrites every later occurrence of that lift. When an edit actually changes an upcoming weight, the card shows an orange caption so the change never happens silently — for example Rewrote next Bench: 102.5 lb → 105 lb — right under the blue next-weight line, which already shows the new value.
Profiles and Workout Together
Profiles let several people train on one device with completely separate program settings, history, and progress. Manage them from Settings → Profile → Manage Profiles: create with New Profile, and rename, export, or delete from each row's menu. Deleting removes that profile's settings and training history for good, and the last remaining profile can't be deleted. A brand-new profile is offered its own starting-weight setup.
Switch profiles from that same Settings picker, or from the profile menu in the Workout screen's toolbar.
Workout Together
Training with someone at the same time? Open the profile menu on the Workout screen and choose Workout Together… (with only one profile on the device you'll see Add a Partner… instead). Pick a partner and tap Start. A participant bar appears above the session; tap a name to switch whose workout is on screen. Each name shows that lifter's own rest countdown — "Sam · 1:23" or "Sam · Ready" — because each participant keeps an independent timer, along with their own session, weights, history, and totals. Nothing is ever mixed. Tap the X in the bar (or End Workout Together in the menu) when you're done.
When someone taps Complete session, Uppies stops that lifter's timer and hands the phone to the first participant who still has work remaining. Once everyone finishes, the team summary keeps End Workout Together fixed at the bottom of the sheet.
The Progress tab
Progress has two views, switched at the top.
Overview
Overview shows whole-program numbers: cards for all-time volume, total reps, completed sessions, and the latest session's volume, plus Volume by session and Reps by session bar charts. Like the in-workout totals, these count only confirmed work — a session you half-logged and abandoned doesn't inflate your history.
By Lift
By Lift focuses on one of the six main lifts; accessories aren't included in the chart picker. You get summary cards and two charts: Working weight over time, and Estimated 1RM computed from each confirmed AMRAP set using the Brzycki formula. Estimates from sets above 12 reps are drawn as larger orange points — the formula loses accuracy up there, so treat those as rough. A note below the chart explains the orange points whenever any appear.
Plate calculator and movement guides
Tap any set row on a barbell lift and Uppies shows exactly how to load the bar: the total weight, the bar itself, and each plate denomination with a per-side count. If the prescribed weight can't be built from standard plates, the leftover is called out rather than rounded away. The calculator uses your configured bar weight, and appears for the six bar lifts — bench, overhead press, squat, deadlift, row, and shrug. Chin-ups, ab rollouts, and the arm accessories don't load a full-size bar, so they don't get one.
The info button next to each lift's name opens its movement guide: Setup, Movement cues, Watch for (common mistakes), and A completed rep — what actually counts as a rep — plus a safety note where one matters.
Settings tour
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Profile | Switch the active profile; open Manage Profiles. |
| Units | Pounds or kilograms — switching converts every weight and rounding value. Also the adjustable Bar weight (warm-ups and the plate calculator both read it, so a 35 lb or technique bar works fine) and Warm-up rounding. |
| Training | Open Exercise Settings for the starting-weight calculator and the complete list of lifts. Each lift has its own Starting weight, Increment, Rep target, and Rounding; chin-ups and ab rollouts also have an Add weight toggle. |
| Appearance | System, Light, or Dark. |
| Rest timer | On/off, the warm-up and working-set durations, and the end-of-rest notification. |
| Progression | Reset after repeated failures — off by default. On, a missed target repeats the same weight instead of deloading immediately, and after your chosen number of consecutive misses (2–5) the weight resets to 90% of your best successful set. See The program for the trade-off. |
| Data | Export backup… and Import backup… for the active profile, plus Export full backup… and Import full backup… covering every profile on the device — see below. |
| About the program | Program attribution and a link to the official Greyskull LP book. |
| Tools | Reopen the setup guide or Reset all progress. The starting-weight calculator now lives in Exercise Settings. |
Backups
Uppies stores everything on your device — there's no account and no cloud copy — so backup files are your safety net. There are three flows, and each covers a different job.
The active profile
Settings → Data → Export backup… saves a single JSON file containing the active profile's settings, complete training log, and current session; save it to Files, iCloud Drive, or anywhere else you keep things that matter. Import backup… restores one. It replaces the active profile's current program, so Uppies confirms — Replace current program? — before it reads the file.
Any profile, without replacing anything
In Settings → Profile → Manage Profiles, each profile row's menu has Export…, which produces the same kind of single-profile file without switching to that profile first. The Import Profile button there goes the other direction: it brings a single-profile file in as a new profile — it never replaces an existing one. You're asked to give the imported profile a name, and the name must be unique; the dialog won't proceed until a name collision is resolved. This is the way to copy one lifter's data to another device, or to restore a profile alongside the ones already on the phone.
The whole device
Settings → Data → Export full backup… writes one file containing every profile on the device. Import full backup… restores it — and because restoring replaces all profiles on the device, Uppies shows an explicit warning first, with the option to abort before anything is touched.
Hand any of these importers the wrong kind of file and nothing is harmed: the import fails with a clear message telling you which flow that file belongs to.
Export before deleting the app, before moving to a new phone, and ideally every few weeks — a full backup captures every profile in one file. And note that Reset all progress clears the profile's logged reps (its settings survive) — export first if there's any chance you'll want that history back.
The widget and the welcome-back offer
Add the Uppies widget to your home screen and it shows the next session — the week-and-day label and the lifts with their prescribed weights — updating whenever your data changes. On a shared device it names whose session it's showing.
And if life gets in the way for a week or more, Uppies notices: a Welcome back dialog offers to ease your working weights down before your next session, scaled to how long you were away. Weights only ever move down, declining is always an option, and normal progression resumes from whatever you choose. The tiers and fine print are in the FAQ.
Still stuck? Email support.