An exercise library, reusable training programs, and a workout log, in one widget. Plans are organised as Program -> Session -> Exercise: a program is a training block such as Push/Pull/Legs, a session is one day of it, and each session lists the exercises it works through. All data — categories, exercises, programs and every logged workout — lives in one persisted JSON note, so it's a single note you can back up, inspect, or migrate.
- Install the addon and enable it.
- Open its launcher note (
workout-manager@beatlink) to use the widget. - Optionally, open the addon's settings screen to pick weight/distance units, a default rest time, whether the rest timer chimes, and how many workouts a week you're aiming for.
The Exercises tab is the library everything else refers to. Each exercise has a name, how it is measured, optional equipment, the muscles it works, categories, and free-text notes.
Measured as decides which fields a set of that exercise carries, everywhere it appears:
| Measured as | A set records |
|---|---|
| Weight & Reps | reps and weight |
| Bodyweight Reps | reps |
| Duration | duration in minutes |
| Cardio | duration in minutes and distance |
Every set also has an optional RPE. The measurement is a property of the exercise, so changing it changes which fields are shown for sets already logged — the recorded numbers themselves are never touched.
Add Exercise opens a form with a search box that queries the public wger exercise database — around 850 exercises, no account and no API key needed. Picking a result prefills the name, equipment, muscles and the wger category (as a Trilium-side category tag), and guesses the measurement: anything in wger's Cardio category becomes Cardio, anything needing no equipment becomes Bodyweight Reps, everything else Weight & Reps. Everything is still editable before saving, and exercises can always be typed in entirely by hand instead.
wger's API has no substring search endpoint, so the whole English exercise index is fetched once per page load (a few seconds on the first search, instant afterwards) and searched locally. If wger is unreachable, the form says so and manual entry carries on working.
The Programs tab holds the plans, two levels deep. A program is a named training block that groups the sessions belonging to it. A session is one day of that program: an ordered list of exercises, each with a number of sets, the targets those sets aim at, a rest time, and an optional note. Which targets a session entry offers follows the exercise's own measurement — a Weight & Reps exercise asks for reps and weight, a Cardio one for duration and distance.
Type a name and Add Program to create a program; Add Session inside one adds a session to it. The arrows on a session move it up and down, and that order is the order the program runs in. A session belongs to exactly one program, so putting the same day in two programs means copying it.
Categories are tagged on sessions rather than on programs, so a session can be filed under Push or Upper without the whole program having to be.
Start Today on a session creates a workout in today's log, pre-filled: one entry per session
exercise, with that entry's sets already created at its target numbers. Logging is then a matter of
correcting what actually happened. The logged workout is named after both, as Program - Session.
Programs and sessions are plans only. Editing or deleting either never changes a workout already logged from it, and a plan only moves on its own if the exercise has a progression.
A session exercise can carry a progression: a rule that reads what you actually did and moves that exercise's own targets for next time. The three rules are the ones Liftosaur builds in, and they behave the way its own scripts do.
| Progression | Parameters | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Linear | increase, after N successes, decrease, after N failures | Adds weight once you hit every set at its target reps N workouts running. Optionally takes weight back off after N missed workouts. |
| Double | increase, min reps, max reps | Walks the reps up one per workout inside the range. On reaching the top, adds weight instead and drops the reps back to the minimum. |
| Sum of Reps | total reps, increase | Adds weight whenever the reps across all sets clear the threshold, however they were split up. |
Both weight steps can be an absolute amount or a percentage — the dropdown beside the number
switches between kg/lb and %.
All three move weight, so a progression is only offered on a Weight & Reps exercise. Progression belongs to one exercise in one session: the same exercise in two sessions of a program progresses separately, each with its own targets and its own counters.
- A workout meets the target when at least the prescribed number of sets were logged and every logged set reached the target reps. The weakest set is what counts.
- An increase is applied to the weight you actually lifted, so a set logged heavier than planned carries that into the next target. A decrease comes off the weight that was planned.
- Sum of Reps ignores whether individual sets met their target — only the total matters.
- Linear counts attempts across workouts, and a missed workout leaves the success count standing
rather than resetting it. The Finish report shows where the count stands (
2/3 successes).
Progression runs when you press Finish on a logged workout, which appears on any workout started from a session. Finishing:
- Compares each exercise against the targets recorded when the workout was started, so a plan that has moved since does not change the verdict.
- Rewrites the session's targets and counters.
- Marks the workout finished, so pressing it again does nothing.
A report under the workout header says what moved (Bench Press: 60 → 62.5 kg) and what did not
(Squat: unchanged (1/3 successes)). Finishing is one-way: deleting the workout afterwards does not
put the session's targets back, so correct them by hand if you finish one by mistake. Editing a
finished workout is still allowed; it just will not progress the plan a second time.
The Log tab is one day at a time — arrows step a day, the date field jumps anywhere, Today comes back. A day holds any number of workouts, each of which can be started from a session (the picker groups sessions under their program) or created empty and filled in as you go.
Workouts started from a session get a Finish button, which applies that session's progressions — see Progression. Everything else in a logged workout is edited in place and saved as you type: its name and note, the exercises in it, and each set's numbers. Add Set copies the previous set of the same exercise, since sets usually repeat the previous load. The workout header totals its sets, its volume (weight × reps, for weight-based exercises), and any duration and distance in it.
Deleting an exercise from the library leaves workouts that used it alone — those sets stay in the log and show as Deleted exercise rather than silently disappearing.
Every set row in an unfinished workout has a timer button. Pressing it starts a countdown for that exercise's rest — the rest its session entry planned, snapshotted when the workout started, or the Default Rest from settings for an exercise added mid-workout. The countdown sits at the bottom of the workout card and can be paused, resumed, extended by 30 seconds, or stopped.
It runs off a wall-clock deadline rather than counting ticks, so a phone that sleeps between sets comes back showing the time that actually remains. When it reaches zero it says so on screen and plays a short chime, which the Rest Timer Chime setting turns off. A finished workout gets no timer.
Everything the log adds up to, in four parts.
Weekly totals — volume, sets, workouts, duration or distance per training week (weeks start Monday), as a bar chart over the last 8, 12, 26 or 52 weeks, with the same numbers in a table underneath and each week's workout count marked against the weekly target from settings.
Leaders — the top five exercises by total volume, heaviest set, best estimated 1RM, most sets and most sessions. Exercises that never scored on a board are left off it rather than filling it with zeroes, so a cardio exercise does not appear under volume. Any name on a board opens that exercise's report.
Per exercise — pick an exercise for its records as cards (best weight, best estimated 1RM, best set volume, most reps in a set, total volume, sessions, total sets, last done — whichever of those its measurement means), a line chart of one metric per session, and the full history, newest first. Which metrics are plottable follows the measurement: top set, estimated 1RM, session volume, reps and sets for weight training; best set and reps for bodyweight; duration for timed work; distance and duration for cardio. Several workouts on the same day fold into one point on the chart.
Personal bests — every exercise ever logged, newest first, with the best result that means
something for its measurement: heaviest weight plus estimated 1RM (Epley: weight × (1 + reps / 30))
for weight training, most reps for bodyweight, longest duration, or furthest distance. Also total
sets, total volume, and when it was last done. Its chart button opens that exercise above.
Charts are drawn as inline SVG and plain elements — a render note runs under a content policy that will not fetch a charting library, so there is none to load.
Exercises and sessions share one set of categories, which nest with /: Push/Chest is Chest
inside Push. The category list is the union of the categories you create here and any typed straight
into an exercise or session form, so nothing is ever hidden. Renaming a category takes its subtree
with it, and renaming onto an existing name merges the two. Deleting a category removes it (and its
subcategories) from everything tagged with it; the exercises and sessions themselves are kept.
Weights and distances are plain numbers labelled with the units chosen in settings (kg/lb, km/mi). Switching a unit relabels what is displayed — it never converts or rewrites recorded numbers.
Export JSON downloads the whole database as one file. Import JSON merges such a file back in by id: exercises and programs are added alongside what's already there, sessions are merged into a program already present rather than replacing it, and workouts already present are skipped, so importing the same file twice changes nothing and nothing is ever wiped.
A file exported before programs existed is upgraded on the way in: each routine it holds becomes a session, and all of them are gathered into one program named Imported, which you can then split up. Workouts logged from those routines keep pointing at the right session.
Import Liftosaur takes either file Liftosaur exports and merges it in the same way:
- the full JSON backup — Settings → Export data to file, saved as
liftosaur-YYYYMMDD.json - the history CSV — Export history to CSV
Both bring in every workout, its exercises, and each performed set's reps, weight and RPE. Ids are derived from the Liftosaur data rather than generated, so re-importing a newer export adds only the workouts that weren't there before.
Which file to prefer: the CSV names exercises the way the app displays them (Bench Press, Barbell) and carries target/synergist muscles for every exercise. The JSON identifies built-in
exercises by their internal id, so their names are reconstructed from it (benchPress → Bench Press) and only custom exercises bring muscles along. The CSV therefore gives a tidier library; the
JSON is the complete backup.
What is not imported:
- Warmup sets and sets that were never performed — both are counted in the summary message.
- Programs. A Liftosaur program is Liftoscript, which computes sets and weights per workout, so
programs and sessions are left to you to write. Its three built-in progressions are available
natively though — see Progression — so
progress: lp(5lb)on a Liftosaur exercise becomes a Linear progression on the matching session exercise.progress: custom()scripts have no equivalent. - Everything Liftosaur logs is reps and weight, so imported exercises come in as Weight & Reps, or as Bodyweight Reps when no set ever carried weight. Change an exercise's measurement afterwards if it should be Duration or Cardio.
Liftosaur stores every weight with its own unit. The import converts them all onto one unit and the summary says which — if that isn't the unit set in settings, change Weight Unit to match, since this addon labels weights rather than converting them.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Weight Unit | Label shown beside every weight (kg or lb). |
| Distance Unit | Label shown beside every cardio distance (km or mi). |
| Default Rest | Rest seeded into a new session entry, and used by the rest timer for an exercise added mid-workout. |
| Rest Timer Chime | Whether a finished rest timer plays a chime. The on-screen message is shown either way. |
| Workouts Per Week | The target each week in the Reports tab is measured against. |
| Render Note | An existing note to turn into a second view of the widget. Selecting it converts that note into a render note; clearing it reverts the previous one to a text note. |
Exercise data comes from wger, licensed CC-BY-SA 4.0.