reckonerQuestions people ask before they sign up.
All seventeen, answered in full and in the order people actually ask them. If yours is not here, the board is open.
Do I need a Garmin watch?
No. Everything works in a browser on your phone, and plenty of people never pair anything. A Garmin only means you can leave the phone in your bag.
Does Reckoner work with Garmin?
Yes. The Connect IQ app is free and runs on more than 70 models, including watches Garmin stopped selling years ago. Your week arrives over the air, and sets you log on the wrist come back to the site.
Is it a workout tracker or a workout planner?
A planner first. It writes the session before you get there, then you log against what it wrote. If you only ever want the tracker half, that half is free for good.
What does it cost? Is there a subscription?
Nothing today, and a good part of it never will. Writing your own plan, logging it on the phone or the watch, the exercise library and the calculators are free and stay free. The reckoning, meaning the part that writes and rewrites your week for you, is what will eventually be a paid plan.
What happens if I stop paying?
The block you are in finishes as written, and it is still reckoned every week to its last. From the next block the reckoning stops, so nothing writes a new plan for you and you go back to writing it yourself. Your log, your whole history and your export stay yours, and stay free.
Do I need to know what RPE or RIR means?
No. After a set it asks, in plain words, roughly how many reps you had left. That is all the engine needs. The words are written out on the how it works page if you want them.
Can I use it for hypertrophy as well as strength?
Yes. Your goal is one of the seven questions at the start, and it changes the rep ranges, the set counts and how fast load climbs. Same engine underneath, different arithmetic. In your first six months the main lifts run 3 sets of 8 to 12 whatever the goal.
What is a block?
Six weeks of training aimed at one thing, ending in a lighter week before the next one starts. Reckoner plans a block at a time, and the next one is written from how this one went.
Which split does it use? PPL, upper lower, full body?
Whichever fits the days you told it you have. Two or three days is full body, four is upper and lower, five adds push, pull and legs, and six runs push, pull and legs twice. On a strength goal, three days is a squat day, a bench day and a deadlift day. It is chosen for you rather than picked off a list.
Does it work for beginners?
It is built for the first year above all. Opening loads are set deliberately light, every lift it can prescribe is written up in plain English, and the first session corrects anything the questions got wrong.
Does it work in pounds?
Yes. Kilos or pounds throughout, and it rounds every prescription to plates you actually have rather than a number you cannot load.
Is there an app to download?
Not for the phone. It is a website, and you can add it to your home screen so it opens like an app. The Garmin watch app is the only thing you install.
How many sets per muscle per week does it give me?
It depends on the muscle and on your goal. Building muscle runs from 4 to 16 hard sets a week depending on which muscle it is, and it moves inside that band on what your logs say about recovery. It is not a fixed number held the same all block.
What if I train in a busy gym and the rack is gone?
Every lift carries a swap list. Pick the substitute, it is logged as a substitute, and next week is written knowing that is what you actually did.
Does it replace a coach?
No, and it does not pretend to. Nobody is watching your form or talking you through a bad month. What it replaces is the programming: the spreadsheet, the arithmetic and the guessing about next week.
Can I edit what it wrote?
Any of it. Change the weight, the reps, the lift or the whole day. An edit is treated as data about you rather than a mistake to undo, and the next week is built from what you did.
What do you do with my data?
Your training is yours. It is not sold and it is not shared. You can export all of it whenever you like, and deleting your account deletes it, founding member number included. The number itself is retired rather than handed to anybody else.
Do the logging yourself for free. Go premium when Reckoner does the thinking.
Plan and log your training, keep your full history, use the calculators and build around your own equipment. Go premium when you want Reckoner to adapt the plan, change loads, call deloads and decide what comes next.
Free, and staying free
No account for most of it- Write your own plan, your split, your lifts, as many as you like
- Log every session, on the phone or from the watch
- Your whole history, lift by lift, and an export of it whenever you ask
- 146 of the 148 movements written up, and every guide, with no account
- The plate and one rep max calculators
- One gym profile, so what you write rounds to the plates you actually have
- A swap for every lift, written up, for when the rack is taken
- Kilos or pounds, whichever you think in
The reckoning, one day
Not charged for yet- The reckoning: your week written, then rewritten from what you actually lifted
- The reason printed beside every number it changed
- The load stepping down on its own when you come in short
- Deloads called for you
- The reckoned week pushed to your wrist over the air
- Progress read properly: estimated maxes, volume per muscle, fatigue over time
- Fuel targets set from how many days a week you train
- More than one gym, so home and travel round to the plates you have there
Premium isn’t live yet, so there’s nothing to pay today. Your first training block will be on us when it launches. The founding 100 get their first year free and keep the intro price for life. And whatever happens, your training history stays yours.
Still not answered?
Reckoner is small, and that is the good part. Ask on the board and you are talking to the person who writes it.