Which workout app tells you what to lift after time off?

The short answer

One test: you walk in after a month away, open the app, and it names today's weight without you doing arithmetic.

• SayLift, $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year): reads the gap per exercise at 14 days and drops that lift to 90 percent of your own last top weight. Nothing to reset by hand.
• Alpha Progression, $79.99 a year: per-lift progression inside a planned block, so your way back is programmed rather than reacted to. The most rigorous option here, and the most setup.
• Fitbod, $79.99 a year: covers the problem by taking over the program. It writes the session and the loads, so you are not choosing the weight because you are not choosing the exercise either.
• Hevy ($23.99/yr) and Strong ($29.99/yr): show your last session beside the empty field. Good memory, and how much lighter to go stays your call.
• JEFIT Elite, $69.99 a year: the deepest history to look back through, with the number still yours to pick.
• A notebook: take ten percent off what you last did and add it back as the reps come good. The apps above are really about whether you will keep doing that in a rest period.

What each app does when you come back after a month off

What SayLift puts on the bar on your first day back

The coach gives one action per exercise, worked out on the phone from your own logged sets. Six actions exist, and the one that handles time off is called restart. It fires when 14 or more days have passed since you last trained that exercise with a weight.

The number is simple. Restart weight is the top completed weight from your last session of that lift, minus 10 percent. If your last squat session topped out at 100 kg, today says 90 kg. The reason line under it names the gap, along the lines of "First time back in 23 days, start a touch lighter and build back up." Short, specific, and it does not ask you to remember anything.

Then the ordinary rules pick it up again. Hit the top of your rep range and the coach adds 2.5 kg on upper body or 5 kg on lower body, which is 5 lb and 10 lb if you train in pounds. Land mid-range and it keeps the weight and asks for one more rep than your lowest working set last time. The road back up is the same mechanism that got you there before you stopped, so most people are at their old numbers inside a few sessions. More on that loop: how the coach picks your next weight.

One honest sentence about the ten percent. It is arithmetic on your own last logged weight, not a physiotherapy judgement. The app does not know you were out with a torn hamstring or a chest infection, and it cannot feel your first rep. After an injury, do what your doctor or physio told you and treat the number as a ceiling rather than a target.

Per exercise, not per session, is the useful part

Time off is rarely tidy. You keep benching while a knee settles down. You travel, do press-ups in a hotel room, and touch nothing heavy for three weeks. A session-level reset would take ten percent off everything, including the lifts you never stopped.

SayLift counts days per exercise. Eight weeks away from the gym and every lift restarts. Three weeks of skipping leg day while your upper-body sessions carried on, and the squat and the Romanian deadlift restart while the bench press keeps climbing on schedule. Nothing gets reset by hand, and you do not have to remember which lifts you kept doing. That last part is worth more than it sounds, because the lifts you dropped are exactly the ones you are least likely to recall accurately.

A lift with no history is a different case. There is nothing to take ten percent off, so the coach gives it calibrate and asks for one logged session with numbers before it advises a weight. That covers a brand new exercise or a routine you have never run, and the page that owns it is workout apps that set your starting weights.

Also worth saying plainly: coming back is not starting out. You have a history, on your phone or on paper, and a rep range you already know suits you. If you have never trained at all, the beginner page is the better place to begin.

How to set it up in SayLift

1. 1Install SayLift and start the 3-day trial. iPhone only, iOS 17 or newer, and there is a guest mode if you would rather not hand over an email yet.
2. 2Get your old routine back in. Paste it from a note, a message or a spreadsheet and the importer reads messy text, bullets and day headers, or build the days yourself on the Profile tab. Dictating the plan out loud works too.
3. 3If you were already logging in SayLift before you stopped, you are done: open the Today tab and every lift untouched for 14 days or more is already sitting on restart, ten percent lighter, with the gap named in the reason.
4. 4On a fresh install there is no history to read, so each exercise starts on calibrate. Train one session at a weight you can clearly control and log it. You can speak the whole session at the end instead of typing it, which needs a connection.
5. 5From the next session, the coach has your numbers and moves each lift on its own. Top of the rep range earns the next increase. Mid-range holds the weight and asks for a rep.
6. 6Take your next break and the restart handles it, lift by lift, with nothing for you to adjust.

Who SayLift is for

• You trained seriously before, stopped for a few weeks or months, and want a number for today: this is the case the restart action was written for.
• Your break was uneven: you kept some lifts and dropped others, and you want only the dropped ones to come back lighter.
• You already have a program: SayLift follows the routine you set rather than replacing it. If you want the training planned week to week instead, Alpha Progression at $79.99 a year does that properly and SayLift does not try to.
• You train where the signal dies: the targets are computed on the phone, so they are there in a basement gym. Voice logging is the part that needs a connection, and it is capped at 10 recordings an hour and 20 a day.
• You would rather talk than type after a layoff: say the session out loud at the end and check the review screen before it saves. $4.17 a month (billed $49.99 a year), $7.99 a month or $3.99 a week after the trial.
• Not for you if: you are on Android, iPad or Apple Watch, you need Apple Health sync, or you want supersets grouped as a pair rather than logged as two exercises with a note. The app is also new enough to have no App Store ratings yet, so judge it on the trial rather than on reviews.