Workout history
Also known as: Training history
Workout history is the chronological record of completed training sessions. It typically contains the date, exercises, sets, repetitions, loads, and any saved notes, allowing a trainee to retrieve what was actually performed rather than relying on the current plan or memory. In a gym tracker, the same data may also be grouped by exercise to show previous performance at the point of logging.
A workout history is related to, but not identical with, a training diary. The history is the stored sequence of sessions; the diary is the broader practice of recording and interpreting them, often with contextual notes. It also differs from progress tracking: history supplies the observations, while progress tracking compares selected observations to answer a specific question.
The most useful history is complete and consistent. Keep ordinary sessions, not just personal records, and use stable exercise names. If a movement, machine, range of motion, or technique changes enough to affect comparability, record the distinction. Warm-up sets should not be confused with working sets, and corrected entries should retain the values that were genuinely performed. These details prevent an apparent increase from being caused only by a different setup.
Before an exercise, the previous few entries can help select a sensible opening load and repetition target. Across several weeks, the record can reveal missed sessions, repeated exercise substitutions, changes in volume, or a prolonged lack of improvement. However, history is descriptive. It does not determine why a result changed, and one poor entry is not sufficient evidence of lost strength. Fatigue, sleep, exercise order, and unfamiliar equipment are common alternative explanations.
In Alpha Progression, saved workouts create exercise and session histories that remain available while logging future training. They support personal-record detection and, in Pro, inform set-specific progression recommendations. The free version also provides CSV export, so the underlying training record can be archived or analyzed outside the app.