What the app does
You log your sets in the app while you train. After each session it works out what your training is doing to each muscle group, whether each lift is getting stronger, and what should change next time. Then it writes the change into your plan when you accept it. With Auto-pilot on, small changes like a load increase or a deload go in straight away.
Set up the app
The first screen offers both. Pick the CSV export from the app you log in now and Povver reads your last 12 weeks, your training days, equipment, goal and experience. If you already have an account, sign in from the same screen. How the import works
Goal, experience, training days, equipment, then anything the coach should know, like injuries, preferences or exercises to avoid. After an import they come filled in from your log. These set your starting volume targets and decide which exercises can be prescribed.
Onboarding builds the whole program before you make an account. After an import it is built around the training days your log shows, if you keep them, with the lifts you already do and starting weights and reps from your last few sessions. If you pick different days, or your log shows no steady split, you get a starter plan where your own lifts take a slot. Choose Let the coach adjust it for a different weekly layout, or Build it myself to start without a routine. You can ask the coach for a new layout any time.
Save the program with Apple, Google or email. That creates your account. Your training history and your MCP access both hang off it, and sign-in methods are under Profile → Security.
Analysis runs when you finish a session. The first time you do an exercise there is nothing to compare with, so that session sets the baseline. After that, one session can earn a heavier weight once every check passes.
Import your history
Povver imports a CSV export from another workout app, up to 20 MB, during setup or later from Profile → Imported history → Import history. It works out which column holds what. A spreadsheet you kept yourself sometimes needs one line of description, such as "column C is the weight in pounds".
Export from your app
- Hevy: Profile → Settings → Export & Import Data → Export Data → Export Workouts, then save the CSV from the share sheet.
- Strong and others: use the app's own export to a CSV (usually under Settings), then save it. Povver works out the columns, so the app does not have to be on this list.
After the upload
Each exercise name is matched to the catalogue. For a name it cannot place, you pick a close match, take its best guess, search, or leave it out. Every name Povver could not match is listed afterwards, so none disappear without you knowing, and timed and distance sets stay timed and distance. If older sessions have no bodyweight, the import asks for a rough range at the end. It never guesses one. Your newest 12 weeks come in first. The readout shows up to eight main lifts: which way each has moved, and its best set of the last three weeks. Older sessions follow in the background.
An exercise with no match in the catalogue can be created as your own from the review list, so its sets come with you. A set that does not fit its exercise is marked, and you can move it to the right one in the import review, the template editor or a past workout.
Your first week's weights come from those lifts. Povver takes the median estimated 1RM of your last three weeks and works it back to the reps and RIR the routine asks for. It rounds down to the plate step and stays at or under the heaviest weight you lifted on at least two sets. After a layoff the starting weights come down, and after more than twelve weeks without training it sets none.
Re-importing the same export never duplicates a session, and a session already logged in Povver appears once. To undo an import, open Profile → Imported history and remove the source. That deletes every workout it brought in and the uploaded file. Workouts logged in Povver stay. Until then, Povver keeps the uploaded file for up to 90 days.
The five tabs
A short brief on your next workout, such as "Lower A is up" with its set count and a Start button, and the message box underneath. The round button at the top left opens your conversations. This is where you ask for things.
Your next workout under NEXT UP, with the other workouts in your routine beside it. Start an empty workout, create one, browse exercises or manage your programs from here. The set grid you log into opens when you start.
Strength, this week's muscle volume, recovery and where you are in the block, the recommendations queue with the auto-pilot switch, and the latest insights.
Every session you have logged, openable set by set, under your twelve-week consistency grid.
Training (goal, experience, memories, rest timer), body stats, and your account: preferences (language, units, date and time format, week start), integrations, imported history, custom exercises and security. Help & Feedback is here too.
Terms you'll meet
The app uses the terms from the research it is built on. Here they are in plain words. The reasoning behind each one is on How it works.
A template is one workout. A routine is an ordered set of templates, and one routine is active at a time. A program is the routine the coach builds for you, and Save Program makes it your active routine. The plan is your training plan: the phases and deloads across your weeks.
A real set at a real weight, as opposed to a warm-up. The grid marks each set as a warm-up, a working set or a drop set, and a working set can be tagged as a failure. Warm-ups are left out of every total.
A working set you finished with three reps in reserve or fewer, or with no RIR logged. It counts in full for the muscle the exercise is built for and as half a set for each muscle that helps. Weekly hard sets per muscle group is the number your volume is judged on.
How many more reps you could have done. RIR 2 means you stopped two short of failure. Logged per set, 0 to 5. Timed and distance sets use RPE, 6 to 10, in the same column. It is the strongest single input to your next prescription, so guessing high inflates your progressions.
Any set turned into a single strength number from its weight and reps, so 5 reps at 100 kg and 9 at 85 kg can be compared. RIR does not change it. You never test a true max.
The fewest weekly hard sets that still make a muscle grow. Below it, the app adds volume before it adds weight. Every muscle group starts at 4 sets.
The band where most of your progress happens, above MEV and below the point where extra sets stop paying off. The default band is 10 to 18 sets a week.
The ceiling, 29 sets a week by default. Past it you build up fatigue faster than you recover from it, and nothing new gets added to that muscle group until volume comes down. Weekly volume bars show a separate colour once a muscle goes past it.
This week's training load divided by your average over recent weeks. Around 1.0 means you are training at your normal level. A sharp spike moves your state to overreaching (more fatigue than you are recovering from) and pauses progressions.
Reps climb inside a range first. The weight only moves once you reach the top of the range at the target effort. It is why some weeks you get an extra rep instead of an extra 2.5 kg.
A planned easier week. The automatic engine halves your working sets, takes about a fifth off the bar and asks for three reps in reserve. A plan you write sets its own cut.
Training runs in blocks of a few weeks. Accumulation adds volume, intensification pushes weight with fewer sets, then a deload. Your volume targets shift with the phase.
A lift whose estimated 1RM has gone flat or backwards while you are still training it. Emerging means the app suspects it. Confirmed means the app will act on it.
How much of a planned session you actually finished. A session you cut short still counts as data, but it cannot earn you a heavier weight.
When on, small changes like a load increase or a deload write themselves into your templates. Swaps and new exercises still wait for you. It pauses itself while your state reads overreaching.
Build a program
Ask the coach, on the Coach tab, in as much detail as you like: "four days a week, dumbbells and a rack at home, focus on shoulders". It writes a routine of named workouts, each with exercises in order, sets and reps, and a target RIR for each set.
It answers with a plan card. Save Program makes it your active routine, and nothing in your account changes until you tap it. To change a routine you already have, the card offers Update Routine or Save as New.
Everything it produces can be edited. Swapping an exercise keeps the prescription and the muscle group behind it. To manage programs by hand, open Train → Manage: set one active, delete one, or start a new workout or program.
One routine is active at a time. Making a new one does not delete the old one, and switching back keeps its history.
Log a workout
Open the Train tab. The card at the top says NEXT UP and shows the next workout in your routine. The app just takes the one after whatever you did last, and starts over at the end. There are no fixed weekdays, so a missed day does not put you out of step. Every other workout in the routine is listed underneath with when you last did it, and you can start any of them instead. Tap Start Workout to begin. If location is off, or you are at a gym Povver has not seen, it asks where you are training: pick a gym, type its name, or choose Start without a gym.
Each exercise is a card, and each card holds a grid: one row per set, with the set type, the load, the count, the effort and a tick.
The columns follow the exercise. A lift has weight, reps and RIR. A bodyweight exercise takes its load set by set: bodyweight, added weight, assistance or a band, so an assisted pull-up with 25 kg of help reads BW −25. A timed or distance exercise has time or distance, with RPE for effort, in metric or imperial, and a timed set has its own timer. If you stopped a timed set early, correct its time afterwards. When a workout has a bodyweight exercise and your bodyweight is missing or more than 14 days old, Povver asks for it, and you can skip it.
Greyed values are ghosts: what you did last time, or what the template asks for. They are suggestions until you mark the set done.
A number pad for weight and reps, with steppers for quick changes: 2.5 kg (5 lb) on weight, one rep at a time. Reps go from 0 to 100. A logged 0 counts as a failed attempt, not a skipped set. While you edit, a line under the editor shows the e1RM that set implies against your last best, and Apply to sets the change for this set, the remaining ones or all of them.
Only ticked sets count toward volume, trends and progression. Leaving a row unticked is how you tell the app you stopped there, and the app uses that. The tick in the grid header marks every set done at once.
0 to 5. Warm-ups do not need it. If you keep leaving it out, the checks that stop you progressing too fast have less to go on.
It counts down under the header with a +30 s button, buzzes and chimes when your rest is up, and can notify you with the app closed. Your rest goes in the log. Set the length per lift type, or turn it off, under Profile → Training → Workout → Rest timer.
Tap the set number to open Set Type: Warm-up, Working Set or Drop Set. A rep set also has a failure toggle under Modifiers.
Extra sets count. Everything you log is compared with what was planned, so the app knows the difference between doing more and doing less.
With no routine you can still log. Pick anything from the exercise catalogue and record it. Volume and history still build up. Progression needs a plan to compare against.
Your first session: where the numbers come from
The first time you do an exercise there is no history, so the grid shows the sets and reps your program asked for and leaves the weight to you. Pick something you are sure you can finish with two reps left in the tank. Going light on the first session costs you nothing. The app is looking for a trend, and it would rather start low and climb.
From the second session on, last time's numbers appear as ghosts, and Auto-fill sets will rebuild the whole exercise from what you actually did. That is the normal way to start an exercise you have done before.
Your gym
Each workout records the gym you trained at. Povver finds it from your location when you start, or you pick it from a list or on a map. A lighter weight on an unfamiliar gym's machines is then not read as lost strength. You can change the gym from the workout. Your position stays on your phone; the privacy policy has the detail.
Logging a session you did yesterday
Sessions are not locked to today. Edit the start time in the workout and it lands in the right week for volume and trends.
A workout left open for more than a day asks you to finish, resume or discard it. Sets logged offline are saved when you reopen the app.
A finished session can still be edited. Open it from History and correct a weight, a rep count or an RIR you got wrong. The analysis runs again on the corrected numbers.
How to judge RIR
Ask yourself, the moment you rack the bar: how many more could I have done with good form? That number is your RIR. Most people overestimate what they had left at first, so if you are not sure, log the lower number.
The last rep barely moved. Nothing left.
Hard. The bar slowed noticeably, but you could have squeezed out one or two more. This is where most working sets should land.
Solid work, still comfortably in control. Fine early in a block or on the first set.
Easy. The weight is too light to count for much.
Warm-up sets do not need an RIR. Their job is to get the movement ready, not to add up work, which is why they are left out of every total.
The exercise toolbar
Every exercise card has a strip of five icon buttons: History (a table), Auto-fill sets (a sparkle), Add warm-up sets (a flame), Swap exercise (two arrows) and More (a plus). Next to it is the e1RM readout.
Your past sessions on this exercise: a dot for each session's estimated 1RM, and the sets you did, with per-set e1RM and Load more for older ones. Greyed out when you have never done it before.
Fills the sets from your history: what you did last time, rebuilt as this session's plan.
Adds a ramp built from your working weight. Hidden on timed, distance and cardio exercises.
Ranked alternatives for the same muscles, or search the catalogue yourself. The prescription carries over.
Opens the action sheet below.
Add set · one more row.
Add warm-up sets · the same ramp, with how many sets it adds shown on the row.
Add or edit note · anything about this exercise today. The coach reads it.
Superset with … · pairs this exercise with the one below it, or lets you pick a partner. How groups work.
Exercise info · muscles worked, equipment, execution.
Swap exercise · as above.
Remove exercise · takes it out of today's session only.
The e1RM readout reads like 98 → 100 (+2%): your best working set's estimated max last time, today's, and the change. It is green when you are ahead, neutral while sets are still planned or level, and amber once the exercise is finished below where you were. Warm-ups never count.
Supersets and circuits
Pair two exercises into a superset, or three or more into a circuit, and you log them in rounds: one set of each exercise in order, then the next round.
Open More on an exercise and choose Superset with the exercise below it, or Superset with … to pick the partner. A third exercise makes it a circuit. An Undo appears straight after.
The group card shows how many rounds there are and which one you are in, with every exercise listed under it. Add round at the bottom adds another.
Set the rest between exercises and the rest after each round, or turn it off.
Reorder the exercises in a group, remove one from it, or ungroup to turn them back into plain cards.
Build groups in the template editor and the next session starts grouped. A group shows as one numbered row under NEXT UP.
Finish a session
The Finish workout button sits at the bottom of the session, under a short summary line: sets done, time taken, exercises. Tapping it opens the Finish Workout sheet with the duration, the sets you finished, the exercises and your session note. Complete Workout saves the session, and Discard workout, after a confirmation, drops one you do not want to keep.
If you changed the plan during the session (swapped a lift, added or removed a set, edited a target before doing it) the sheet offers Update template with today's changes, on by default. It saves the swap, the set count and the edited target. It does not save the weights, reps and effort you actually got. Those stay in the workout, where the analysis reads them.
Finishing saves the session and queues the analysis. You do not need to keep the app open. Unfinished sets are kept and marked not done, so the app can tell a short session from an easy one. The completion screen says which it was: Session Complete, Session Logged, Session Ended Early or Session Saved.
Logging works offline. The grid saves locally first, so it stays quick in a basement gym and syncs when you have signal again. If a set never reached the server by the time you finish, the finish screen says so.
Read the analysis
Intelligence tab. Six things live here.
Your strength gain over time as a percentage: a bold line for the middle of all your lifts, with each lift drawn faintly behind it. Read it for the direction.
Which lifts gained and which stalled, each with its own percentage. Tap through for the trend and the explanation.
Weekly hard sets per muscle group as horizontal bars, with a tick at your MEV. A separate colour appears once a muscle goes past its MRV.
Your training load against your own baseline, the fatigue state that implies, and where you are in the current block.
What the app wants to change next, and what it already changed. Only shown when there is one.
Short reads on what changed in your training, with See all for the rest.
Early on you will see "Establishing baseline" and "Not enough data yet" in places. The Strength card wants three lifts over three weeks before it draws a line.
From the Strength card, See all opens every lift with its verdict, and a lift opens its own trend. Muscle volume opens a page per muscle, and Recovery and plan opens the week-by-week plan.
Recommendations and auto-pilot
Each recommendation names the exercise or muscle group, the change, and why. Accept it and your template updates. Choose Not now and it goes away. The app remembers what you turned down. Turn down a swap and the lift stays where it is.
Low-impact changes, such as a load increase, a deload or a small rep change, are applied for you after each session. Swaps, new exercises and volume changes still wait for your review. The card counts what was applied this week and what needs you, and Undo, or ask why opens the coach.
Nothing moves until you accept it. This is the default.
Set automatically while your state reads overreaching. It will not add weight on top of built-up fatigue, even with auto-pilot on.
Weight moves in plate-sized steps: 1.25 kg up to 40 kg, 2.5 kg above. A session you cut short cannot earn a heavier weight. No progression during a deload week, or once your block has run past its planned length.
Ask the coach
Available from the Coach tab, and from the Coach button in the session header during a workout. It has your routine, your history and your memories, and it can act as well as answer. On the Coach tab a change comes back as a plan to save (Save Program, Update Routine or Save as New), and nothing in your account changes until you tap it. During a session it can swap or add an exercise, add or remove sets, log a set and finish the workout, and those changes apply to that session only.
On the Coach tab you can also add a photo to your message, and it can draw a chart or a table.
Worth asking: why a prescription changed, what to do about a lift that has stopped moving, how to work around a niggle for a week, whether this week's volume is where it should be.
Nothing pops up mid-set. The coach speaks when you ask it something, or when you tap one of the actions on an exercise.
Memories
Profile → Training → Memories. Goals, preferences, injuries and training notes the coach keeps between sessions. Tell it once that your left shoulder does not like behind-the-neck work and it uses that when it builds or changes your plan.
A moderate or severe injury also blocks recommendations that would load that area, and a severe one adds a deload. Lifts that load the area are swapped for ones that train the same muscles, or flagged on the plan. After three pain-free sessions an injury drops to watching, and after three more it is resolved. You can close it yourself at any time. The list is yours to read, and a memory's wording can be edited or deleted, in the app or by asking.
Routines and templates
A template is one workout: its exercises and what is planned for each. A routine is an ordered set of templates, and one routine is active at a time. Progressions are written into templates, which is why editing one mid-block changes what you are given next session.
- Reorder exercises
- During a session, in reorder mode. The finish sheet writes the new order to the template. Order does not affect the analysis.
- Edit a prescription
- Your edits stand. The next recommendation starts from your number, not the one it replaced.
- Exercise note
- A note on the plan itself ("pause at the chest", "the 12.5s, not the 15s"), written in the editor, by the coach when it builds a program, or by a connected client. It shows on the card while you train, above any note you add about the day. Your note records what happened today. This one is the plan.
- Progression step
- In the template editor, set how far a lift can rise: the step raises that lift by at most this much each time.
- Supersets and circuits
- Group exercises in the template editor, and the next session starts grouped. How groups work.
- Your own exercises
- If one is missing, create it from search, with its muscles and how you count it (reps, time or distance). Edit, archive or delete your own exercises in Profile → Custom Exercises. Creating one needs a connection.
- Delete a session
- From History. Deleting it also takes it out of your volume counts and trends, which is what you want after logging the same workout twice.
- Units and week start
- Profile → Preferences. Weights are stored in kilos and shown in your unit. Date and time format follow your phone or your choice. The week starts on Monday, or on Sunday when you turn that off, and that decides where your weekly volume resets. Language switches the app between English and Finnish.
Subscription
One plan, with a 14-day free trial that includes everything below.
The set-logging grid.
The exercise catalogue.
Your own routines and templates.
Full history, kept.
Post-session analysis.
Weight and rep recommendations.
Program generation and periodization.
The coach, and the MCP server.
€9.99/month or €79.99/year. Prices vary by region. The subscription is an Apple one, so it is managed and cancelled in your iPhone's Settings under your Apple account, not here. If you reinstall, Restore Purchases is on the Subscription screen in Profile.
If the trial ends and you do not subscribe, nothing is deleted and logging carries on as normal. The analysis and the coach stop. If you subscribe later they start again, and the sessions you logged in between are included.
Connect Claude or ChatGPT
Povver runs an MCP server at https://mcp.povver.ai/mcp. Connected clients read your training data, write routines, templates and your training plan, and can start a workout and log it while it runs. Everything that comes after a logged session can be driven from a conversation.
Works during the 14-day free trial and on a subscription, checked on every request. Povver is listed in both Claude's and ChatGPT's plugin directories: install it, sign in, ask.
Claude: Povver in Claude's directory, then Connect to Claude. ChatGPT: Povver's plugin page, then Install plugin.
No key needed on this path. For Claude, Profile → Integrations → Claude in the app then shows this month's reads and writes, a fourteen-day activity strip, your last reads and which tools it used, and can disconnect it. An expired connection says expired, not "not connected", and offers to sign in again.
The get_context tool (with view: connection) returns your account and confirms the tools are live.
Can't install from the directory, because an admin switched plugins off or your plan doesn't allow it? Or on Gemini? Add the server URL yourself and sign in the same way. Claude: Customize → Connectors → + Add → Add custom connector. ChatGPT: Plugins → Add → Add custom MCP server, with Authentication set to OAuth. Gemini: Connectors → + Custom → Connect to an MCP server. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google each decide which plans can add one. The app shows the URL with a Copy button, and the Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini guides have the screens.
https://mcp.povver.ai/mcp
Other clients and scripts
For clients that cannot sign in through a browser (Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, your own scripts) use an API key instead. Profile → Integrations → Advanced → Developer access: name a key, generate it (it is shown once), then set up your client with the server URL and that key.
You can have up to five keys. They are listed with the name you gave them and when they were last used, and any of them can be revoked on the same screen. A revoked key stops working straight away.
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer pvk_your_key_here" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
-d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}' \
https://mcp.povver.ai/mcp
Treat a key like a password. It reads your full history and can delete workouts, routines and templates. Keep it out of repositories, shared configs, and anything you paste in public.
What it exposes
Fourteen tools, one for each kind of thing. Each read tool takes a view and each write tool an action. Reads cover your whole history, everything the analysis worked out from it, and the workout you are in the middle of. Writes cover your routines, templates and training plan, finished workouts, the session in progress, injury notes and their status, and accepting or dismissing a recommendation. Nothing here touches your subscription or your account. The server reference documents every tool's arguments.
- get_context
- read_plans
- read_workouts
- analyze_training
- exercises
- read_memory
- read_periodization
- read_live_workout
- whats_new
- save_plan
- log_workout
- live_workout
- manage_periodization
- manage_memory
- submit_feedback
- delete
Resources and prompts. Clients that support them get your training status, active routine, last ten workouts and latest analysis as attachable context, any single workout or template by id, a guide to using the tools well, and the evidence behind each of Povver's training rules (the same cards the in-app coach answers from). Four ready-made prompts: a weekly review, what to train today, a single lift's progress, and a program critique.
The workout in progress: when no session is running, an assistant can start one, either the next workout in your active routine or a template you name. It never replaces a session you already have running. While a session runs, an assistant can read it, log sets, change a planned set, swap or add an exercise and finish it, several steps in one call. It can pair a superset only in a session you started in the app, because a session started from a conversation has no supersets. It cannot remove a set you have logged, and only you can discard a session, in the app. A session you have already finished can be written in one call, up to 25 at a time.
Examples
Four worth having once you are connected. Paste any of these as written.
A second opinion on your week, deeper than the app's own summary.
Pull my last 7 days of training from Povver. Tell me which muscle groups landed in range, which fell short, and whether any lift is stalling. Do not suggest changes yet.
It drafts, writes it to your account, and the app picks it up. It can also write your training plan (phases, how to progress, how often to deload), which steps the automatic engine aside until you pause the plan. Your first routine is set active for you. Later ones are not, so you can review before switching.
Read my current routine and my last 6 weeks from Povver. Draft a 4-day upper/lower block that keeps my squat and bench progressions and adds side delt volume. Show me the templates first, then create the routine.
Runs on its own, on a schedule, with an API key instead of a browser sign-in.
Every Monday: pull last week's Povver sets and muscle group volumes, compare against the prior 4-week average, and write training/<date>.md with what changed and anything that needs attention. Read-only.
Povver reads training only. Connect a watch or scale server in the same assistant and one conversation can read a late heavy session, a short night and a jump in morning weight as the same event.
Read my last 7 days from Povver, my watch and my scale. Before labelling any lift stalled, check whether a bad night or a jump in bodyweight lines up with it. Tell me what, if anything, to change.
