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 makes that change in your plan, ready for your next session.
You do not have to read a chart. The app tells you what to do next.
The set-logging grid.
900+ 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 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.
Set up the app
About three minutes, then you can train.
Your training history and your MCP access both hang off it. Sign-in methods are under Profile → Security.
Goal, experience, training days, equipment, then anything the coach should know, like injuries, preferences or exercises to avoid. These set your starting volume targets and decide which exercises can be prescribed.
Onboarding builds one and shows you the week before you start the trial. You can ask the coach for a different weekly layout any time, or log without a routine.
Analysis runs when you finish a session. Weight changes need a few sessions of history behind them, so the first two weeks are mostly about setting a baseline.
The five tabs
One screen with what is true right now, the evidence behind it, and one or two things to do about it. The message box sits underneath. This is where you ask for things.
The next workout in your routine and the set grid you log into. Also where routines and templates are edited.
Strength climb, this week's muscle volume, recovery and where you are in the block, the recommendations queue with the auto-pilot switch, and the insights behind them.
Every session you have logged, openable set by set, under your twelve-week consistency grid.
Goal, experience, memories, body stats, preferences (units, week start, timezone), integrations, security.
Terms you'll meet
The app uses the words from the research it is built on instead of making up friendlier ones. Here they all are, in plain terms. The reasoning behind each one is on How it works.
A real set at a real weight, as opposed to a warm-up. Warm-ups are marked separately in the grid and left out of every total.
A working set you finished with three reps in reserve or fewer. It counts in full for the muscles doing the work. 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. It is the strongest single input to your next prescription, so guessing low inflates your progressions.
Any set turned into a single strength number, adjusted for how close to failure it was, so 5 reps at 100 kg and 9 at 85 kg can be compared. 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. Chest starts at 8 sets, glutes at 4.
The band where most of your progress happens, above MEV and below the point where extra sets stop paying off. Chest's default band is 12 to 20 sets a week.
The ceiling. 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.
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 hold 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, accepted recommendations write themselves into your templates. 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.
Everything it produces can be edited. Swapping an exercise keeps the prescription and the muscle group behind it.
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.
Each exercise is a card, and each card holds a grid: one row per set, four columns, and a tick.
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 30. A logged 0 counts as a failed attempt, not a skipped set.
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.
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.
Extra sets count. Everything you log is compared with what was planned, so the app knows the difference between doing more and doing less.
No routine? Log anyway. Pick anything from the 900+ 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.
Logging a session you did yesterday
Sessions are not locked to today. Pick a date when you log, and the workout lands in the right week for volume and trends.
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 five-button strip. The order is deliberate. The first two show what happened before, the middle two change this exercise, and the last one opens everything else.
Previous sessions on this exercise, as you logged them. Greyed out when you have never done it before.
Set-by-set numbers over time and the trend for this lift. A coloured dot appears once there is enough data to say how it is going.
Adds a ramp scaled from your working weight. The row tells you how many sets it will add before you tap it.
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 as the toolbar button.
Add note · anything about this exercise today. The coach reads it.
Auto-fill sets · fills the prescription from your history. The row names the source it used.
Exercise info · muscles worked, equipment, execution.
Swap exercise · as above.
Remove exercise · takes it out of today's session only.
Next to the toolbar is the e1RM readout: your estimated max on this lift and how today compares with last time. It stays neutral while sets are still planned, and only turns amber once the exercise is finished below where you were.
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 a sheet with the duration, the sets you finished, the exercises and your session note, plus a Discard button for a workout 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: complete, logged short, or ended early.
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. Five 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 reasoning.
Weekly hard sets per muscle group as horizontal bars, with a tick at your MEV. Green means in range. Amber means below your minimum, which is what a week looks like before it is finished.
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.
Early on you will see "Establishing baseline" and "Not enough data yet" in places. The app says so rather than guessing. The climb wants three lifts over three weeks before it draws a line. The tab is Premium. The free tier sees one preview card with example insights, not your real numbers.
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.
Changes are applied for you after each session. You still see every one, and you can undo it.
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 by the step for that kind of exercise, 2.5 kg by default. 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 during a session. It has your routine, your history, your equipment and your memories, and it can act as well as answer: ask for a swap and the routine changes.
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.
It will not interrupt you. 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 → Coaching → Memories. Injuries, preferences and training notes the coach keeps between sessions. Tell it once that your left shoulder does not like behind-the-neck work and it stops prescribing it.
A recorded injury also blocks recommendations that would load that area, until you say it has cleared up. You can read the whole list and delete anything in it, 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.
- 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. The week can start on Monday or Sunday, and that decides where your weekly volume resets. Language switches the app between English and Finnish.
Connect Claude
Povver runs an MCP server at https://mcp.povver.ai/mcp. Connected clients read your training data and can write routines, templates and your training plan. Logging stays in the app. Everything that comes after a logged session can be driven from a conversation.
Premium only, checked on every request. In the app, the whole thing lives under Profile → Integrations → Claude, which walks you through the same three steps and updates itself when the connection lands.
No key needed on this path. The app has a Copy URL button on the same screen.
Authorising makes the connection. Profile → Integrations → Claude then shows this month's reads and writes, a fourteen-day activity strip and which tools it used, and can disconnect it. An expired connection says expired, not "not connected".
The check_connection tool returns your account and confirms the tools are live.
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 → Developer access: name a key, generate it (it is shown once), then set up your client with the server URL and that key.
Keys 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" \
-d '{"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.
Bring your training history with you
There is no import screen and no list of supported apps, because there does not need to be one. Export your history from whatever you were using, in whatever format it gives you, hand the file to Claude with Povver connected, and ask it to bring the workouts across. It reads your export, works out how the columns map onto sets, weights, reps and dates, and writes them in.
Weekly volume per muscle group and the strength trend on every lift are worked out again across the imported weeks, so you start with real numbers instead of an empty first month. The post-session analysis, with its recommendations, starts with the next session you log, or with the most recent imported one if it is under a week old. It does not rewrite what was imported.
Works with a CSV from Strong or Hevy, a spreadsheet you kept yourself, or a JSON dump. Ask it to show you a few mapped workouts before it writes the rest.
Here is my workout export from another app. Map it onto Povver's schema and import it. Show me how you interpreted the first three sessions before writing the whole file, and flag anything ambiguous instead of guessing.
Check the exercise mapping. Your old app's names will not always match the catalogue exactly. Ask which exercises it matched and which it had to guess at, because volume per muscle group depends on getting that right.
What it exposes
Reads cover your whole history and everything the analysis worked out from it. Writes cover your routines, templates and training plan, finished workouts (which is how an import lands), the memories the coach keeps, and accepting or dismissing a recommendation. Nothing here touches your subscription or your account. The server reference documents every tool's arguments.
- check_connection
- get_user_profile
- get_training_snapshot
- list_routines
- get_routine
- list_templates
- get_template
- list_workouts
- get_workout
- search_exercises
- get_strength_climb
- get_training_insights
- get_muscle_state
- get_recommendations
- get_muscle_group_progress
- get_exercise_progress
- query_sets
- list_trained_exercises
- get_training_status
- list_memories
- get_memory
- get_recent_suppressions
- get_periodization_plan
- preview_periodization_plan
- review_recommendation
- create_routine
- update_routine
- set_active_routine
- create_template
- update_template
- create_workout
- update_workout
- update_memory_status
- save_injury_memory
- set_periodization_plan
- pause_periodization_plan
- resume_periodization_plan
- delete_workout
- delete_routine
- delete_template
Resources and prompts. Clients that support them get your training status, active routine, last ten workouts and latest analysis as attachable context, and any single workout or template by id. Four ready-made prompts: a weekly review, what to train today, a single lift's progress, and a program critique.
Not exposed. Logging a live workout set by set. That belongs in the app, next to the grid. A session you have already finished can be written in one call, up to 25 at a time.
Examples
Three 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 puts the automatic engine on hold until you pause the plan.
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 but do not activate it.
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.
