Updated June 2026 · MyoAmigo

A progressive overload tracker that tells you what to lift next

Progressive overload is the simple idea behind all strength gains: to keep getting stronger, you have to keep asking your muscles to do a little more over time—more weight, more reps, or more quality work. The question most people actually have is "what app tracks progressive overload?"—and the honest answer is that most logging apps only show you charts of what you already did. MyoAmigo is built to close the loop: it pre-loads every set from last time, listens to how hard each set felt, and turns that into a concrete target for next week.

In other words, a chart tells you your bench has been flat for a month. A progressive overload tracker tells you what to do about it.

What progressive overload actually requires

Overload isn't "add weight every session and hope." Done well, it needs three things working together, and they're exactly the things a spreadsheet makes tedious:

• Memory. You can't beat last time if you can't see last time at the moment you're picking a weight.
• A signal of effort. Two lifters can both hit 5 reps; one had two in the tank, one barely made it. The next step is different for each, and the number alone doesn't say which.
• A rule for when to push and when to back off. Real progress isn't linear—lifts stall, and overloading a stalled lift harder is how people get stuck or hurt. You need to know when to deload instead.

MyoAmigo operationalizes all three so the decision is made for you, then handed back as a number you can override.

Every set, pre-loaded from what you actually did

Open today's session and each lift is already filled in with a target weight pulled from what you genuinely did last time on that exercise—not a generic template. The reference point for "beat last time" is sitting right there before your first rep, so you're never standing at the rack doing arithmetic against a memory.

Warm-up sets ramp toward the working weight and are kept separate from your stats, so a light warm-up never inflates your strength estimates or pollutes the trend the overload decision is based on.

Effort capture that feeds next week's targets

After a set, one tap records how it felt: Easy, Medium, Hard, or Fail. That single signal is what makes the progression honest instead of mechanical. An "Easy" set tells the app you left a lot in reserve and next week's target can move up meaningfully; a "Hard" set holds steady; a "Fail" pulls the next target back rather than digging the hole deeper.

The result is that your targets track your real capacity week to week, instead of marching up on a fixed schedule that ignores how recovered (or wrecked) you actually were.

Estimated 1RM trend—is the strength real?

Weight on the bar is noisy: rep counts change, you switch from 5s to 8s, you have an off day. To see whether you're truly getting stronger, MyoAmigo computes an estimated one-rep max (e1RM) for each lift from your working sets and tracks it over time. A rising e1RM trend is the cleanest single answer to "am I actually progressing?"—it normalizes across rep ranges so a heavy triple and a hard set of ten are comparable. If you want the math behind it, read what is e1RM.

A PR timeline so progress is visible

Every time you beat a previous best—heaviest weight, most reps at a weight, best estimated max—MyoAmigo records it on a PR timeline per lift. Overload is a slow accumulation of small wins, and seeing them lined up is both the proof that it's working and the motivation to keep going on the weeks it feels flat.

Stall detection with an actual prescription

This is where most trackers stop and MyoAmigo keeps going. When a lift stops moving for several weeks, MyoAmigo flags it as stalled and prescribes a concrete fix rather than leaving you to interpret a flat line:

• Push closer to failure if your effort logs show you've been leaving reps in reserve.
• Add a back-off set to get more quality volume at a manageable weight.
• Deload for a week when the pattern says you're overreached, then re-approach the weight fresh.

It also compares your lifts to strength standards by bodyweight, so a "stall" near a natural strength ceiling is read differently from one early in a beginner's run.

Programming, not just tracking

Overload is easier to sustain inside a structure. MyoAmigo includes a weekly plan manager (routines sit on weekdays, with catch-up logic if you miss a day) and an evidence-based plan generator that builds a program with starting weights and the reasoning attached to each choice—so the targets you're progressing against came from somewhere you can understand. It draws on an 881-exercise library plus your own custom exercises, works fully offline with no account, and can import or export your history as CSV. There's more on the features page.

And because MyoAmigo speaks MCP, you can connect your own AI assistant to your real training history and ask it to reprogram a stalled block from the actual numbers—your data, your assistant, not a chatbot bolted into the app.

The bottom line

If you want a logger that draws nice charts, plenty of apps do that. If you want a progressive overload tracker that remembers last time, reads how hard it felt, shows you whether the strength is real, and tells you what to do when a lift stalls, that's the loop MyoAmigo is built around. Get it on the App Store.

Frequently asked questions

What is progressive overload?

Progressive overload is gradually increasing the demand on your muscles over time—more weight, more reps, or more quality volume—so they keep adapting and getting stronger. Without it, training plateaus. A good tracker makes the "increase" decision concrete instead of leaving it to guesswork.

What app tracks progressive overload?

MyoAmigo is built specifically for it: every set is pre-loaded from what you did last time, a one-tap effort rating (Easy/Med/Hard/Fail) tunes next week's targets, your estimated 1RM trend shows whether strength is genuinely rising, and stall detection flags a stuck lift and prescribes a fix. Most other apps show charts but don't tell you the next step.

How does MyoAmigo decide my next target weight?

It starts from your last performance on that lift and adjusts using the effort you logged. Easy sets push the next target up more; hard sets hold; failed sets pull it back. Warm-ups are excluded from the calculation so they don't distort it, and it cross-checks against strength standards for your bodyweight.

Does it work offline and without an account?

Yes. All logging, the overload calculations, and stall detection happen on your iPhone and Apple Watch, fully offline, with no account required. Encrypted cloud sync is optional, and you can export everything as CSV.