A workout planner that keeps the plan after week one
Writing a plan is the easy part. The hard part is the version of it you are still running in March, after a gym change, a missed fortnight, and one lift that stopped moving. Lift stores your split, puts the workouts on the days you train, and works out the next target for each exercise from what you actually logged.
- Build your own split, or have one generated from your equipment and goals
- Arrange workouts across the days of the week, with rest days
- See today's session on the home screen, with the week beside it
- Get the next weight and rep target per exercise from your own history
Features on this page were checked against Lift's public feature inventory on 30 August 2026. We publish Lift, so read this as product documentation rather than an independent review.
Why the plan you wrote in January stops fitting
A plan copied out of an article is built for a week that does not change. Yours does.
- Your training days move. The plan assumed Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and now Wednesday is gone.
- Your equipment changes. A new gym has no hack squat, or a home setup has no cables.
- One lift stalls while the rest keep moving, and the plan has nothing to say about it.
- You take two weeks off and come back with no idea which weights to restart at.
- The plan lives in a notes app, so nothing in it knows what you actually lifted.
None of these are planning mistakes. They are the normal life of a training plan, and they are the reason a plan needs somewhere to live that can change with it.
How a plan gets built
A plan in Lift has three layers: exercises, workouts, and a split that arranges those workouts across your week. You can build all three yourself, start from Lift's library, or import a public split and edit it.
Pick exercises from the library, or add your own
Filter by equipment, muscles trained, and difficulty. Create your own exercise with its muscle groups, equipment, tracking method, and instructions when the library does not have it.
Build the workout
Add, remove, duplicate, swap, and reorder exercises, and set the sets, rep or time targets, weight, RPE, rest time, and instructions for each one.
Set progression per exercise
Auto-progression is configured per exercise, so a heavy compound and a cable accessory do not have to share a rep range or a weight increment.
Plan across weeks
Choose a prebuilt periodization schema or save your own multi-week cycle, including planned sets, reps, intensity, and which week you are in. Periodization is free.
Or have the split generated for you
If you would rather not make every decision yourself, Lift can generate a personalized split. It takes five inputs:
What the generator asks for
- Your training experience
- The equipment you have available
- The muscle groups you want to prioritize
- Your goals
- Anything else, in your own words
What comes back is a split like any other in your library, which matters more than it sounds: you can open it, reorder it, swap an exercise you dislike, change the sets, and keep the rest. It is a starting point you own, not a program you are locked into. AI split generation is a Premium feature.
Try the idea first, without an account
The free workout plan generator on this site builds a week from your days, equipment, experience, goal, and session length using fixed rules that are published on the page. It is a different thing from the app's generator, which works from your own history and preferences, but it will show you what a structured week looks like before you install anything.
Open the free workout plan generatorYour week, as a schedule
A split is not a list of workouts, it is workouts arranged across days. That is what turns a plan into something you can follow without deciding anything on the way to the gym.
- Put each workout on a day of the week and add rest days where they belong
- Reorder or move workouts without rebuilding the split
- Keep several splits in your library and choose which one is active
- Open the workout calendar to see scheduled and completed training days together
The home screen shows today's scheduled workout, the week around it, your exercise goals, and your calorie progress in one place. Start an active split when a block begins and end it when the block is over.
When the week changes
This is the part a written plan cannot do, and the reason to keep one in an app at all.
A training day disappears
Move the workout to another day in the split rather than skipping it. The schedule updates; the plan does not need rewriting.
The gym does not have the machine
Swap the exercise inside the workout. Its history stays with the exercise you swapped to, so the log keeps making sense.
One lift stalls
Change that exercise's progression settings on its own, without touching the rest of the plan. What to change, and in what order, is covered in the reading below.
You come back after a break
Previous performance is on screen while you log, so you can pick a restart weight from a number rather than a guess.
What Lift's planner does not do
It does not screen you for injury or illness, and nothing in it is medical, physiotherapy, or dietetic advice. If you have pain, a current or recent injury, a medical condition, or you are pregnant or recently postpartum, speak to a qualified professional about what training suits you before starting a plan.
It does not coach your technique. It records what you did; it cannot see how you did it.
A generated split is a starting point built from what you told it, not a program written for your history. Expect to change it.
It will not make a plan work that you were never going to follow. Two days a week you actually train beats five you do not.
What planning costs
Building and scheduling a plan works on the free tier, within these creation limits. Logging is unlimited either way.
| Custom splits | 2 |
| Custom workouts | 5 |
| Exercise goals | 2 at a time |
| Periodization schemas | Included free |
| AI split generation | Premium |
| Automatic progression targets | Premium |
A split is a schedule holding workouts across the week, so two splits is not the same as two workouts. Importing a public split into your library also counts toward the split limit. Free allowances, prices, and catalogue contents can vary by platform, region, and release; the app is the only reliable place to check yours.
Planning or progressing?
This page is about building a plan and holding it: the split, the week, the exercises. If your plan already exists and the question is how to make the weights go up, the progressive overload page covers that side, including previous-set history, automatic targets, and personal records.
Tools for the decisions a plan needs
Free, no account required, and each one shows its formula and its limits.
Choose your training days, equipment, experience, goal, and session length. The generator returns a split, the exercises for each day, and the weekly sets each muscle receives, using fixed rules that are published on this page.
Enter the exercises that hit one muscle, the sets you do per session, and how often you train them. The calculator returns weekly sets for that muscle, keeping direct and indirect work apart so you can see what you are really counting.
Estimate how much weight you can lift for one repetition based on the weight and repetitions of a completed set.
Enter the weight and reps from your last working set, your rep range, and the smallest weight increase you can load. The calculator returns a target for each of your next sessions and shows when the weight goes up.
How to make the decisions yourself
Every choice a planner makes for you is one you can make better once you know what it turns on.
A workout plan is six decisions, made in order. This walks through each one with a defensible default, says what the default depends on, and ends with a complete three-day plan you can start on.
Training frequency looks like a big decision and mostly is not. Once your weekly sets are the same, spreading them over more days changes very little. Frequency is a scheduling tool, not a growth lever.
Around 10 or more hard sets per muscle per week is a defensible target, and more tends to produce more growth with diminishing returns. The useful question is not the number but how you get there and how you add to it.
Periodization is planned variation in load and volume over weeks and months. When studies match the total amount of work, it buys a small edge in maximal strength without a clear average advantage for muscle size, so it is better treated as a way to manage fatigue and peak for a date than as a requirement for progress.
Progressive overload means gradually increasing the demand on a muscle so it keeps adapting. Adding weight is one way to do that, not the only one. Here is what each progression variable actually does, when to use it, and how to tell whether it is working.
Lift's free tier is a complete workout, bodyweight, and calorie tracker with a few creation limits. Premium adds AI plan generation, automatic progression, expanded limits, full charts, reviews, and several tools. This page lists both sides and says when the upgrade is worth paying for.
Questions
Can I build a workout plan in Lift for free?
Yes. Creating exercises, workouts, and splits, scheduling them across the week, and using periodization are all part of the free tier, within the free creation limits of two custom splits and five custom workouts. AI split generation and automatic progression targets are Premium.
Is the AI-generated split editable?
Yes. A generated split lands in your library like any other, so you can reorder workouts, swap exercises, and change sets, reps, and rest without regenerating it.
Can I use Lift as a workout calendar?
Yes. A split arranges workouts across the days of the week, including rest days, and the workout calendar shows scheduled and completed training days together. The home screen shows today's session with the week beside it.
What happens if I miss a training day?
Nothing breaks. You can move a workout to a different day in the split, or simply train it when you get there. The plan is a schedule you control, not a streak you lose.
Do I need a plan before I install the app?
No. You can import a public split and make it active immediately, generate one with Premium, or build your own. If you want to see what a structured week looks like first, the free workout plan generator on this site will build one in your browser.
Can I run more than one plan at a time?
You can keep several splits in your library and choose which is active, but only one split is active at a time. The free tier holds two custom splits; Premium raises or removes that limit.
Build the plan, then keep it
Lift is free to download, and building and scheduling a plan does not require a subscription.