Before anything else
Putting it on your phone
There is no app store. RinkReady lives at rinkreadytraining.com/app and runs in the browser, which is why it updates itself and never asks you to download anything.
Put it on your home screen once and it behaves like any other app: its own icon, no address bar, and it opens straight into today.
- On an iPhone: open the app in Safari, tap the share button at the bottom (the square with the arrow), scroll down, tap Add to Home Screen.
- On Android: open it in Chrome, tap the three dots, tap Add to home screen or Install app.
- Open it from the new icon rather than the browser from then on.
Rinks and basements are bad for phones. Everything you type is saved on the phone first and sent up when there is a connection again, so a dead bar in the gym never costs you a session.
Getting going
Your first week is already built
Nothing to set up and nothing to design. Answer a few questions the first time you open it — your position, how long you have trained, what you are training for, what equipment you can actually get at — and it picks a plan and lays the whole week out.
Every day arrives with its exercises, in order, with sets, reps and roughly how long it will take. Home opens on today.
If you would rather choose yourself, Plans has eleven of them, from a first off-ice block to advanced power. Preview any one before you switch. Nothing you have already logged is ever lost by changing plan.
Doing the work
Three ways to look at a session
The same session, shown three ways. Pick whichever suits the moment — it is a setting, not a mode you have to keep choosing.
- One at a time — a single exercise filling the screen, with arrows to move on.
- Scroll — the whole day in a list. Good for seeing what is coming.
- Simple — names and boxes, nothing else. Sweaty hands, forty seconds of rest.
Change it from the chip on the day bar, or from the ··· menu. Turn the phone sideways and it goes to two columns instead of falling apart.
Doing the work
Logging what you actually did
Two ways, and you can mix them in the same session.
- Tap the circle when you did the exercise exactly at its target. That is the whole interaction — no typing.
- Type the real numbers when you did something different. Weight and reps, set by set.
There is a Sync button to copy one number across all your sets, and Autofill to drop the target into every box so you only change what was different.
Perceived effort at the bottom of each exercise is worth filling in. It is how the app tells a heavy day from an easy one when it reads your numbers back to you later.
Change a number after you have handed a session in and a bar appears offering to update it. Nothing is locked.
Doing the work
Where the weight on the bar comes from
Every lift arrives with a target, and the target moves itself.
- Hit every prescribed rep and next week asks for more.
- Come up short and it holds you at the same weight until you clear it.
Under the target it tells you why it picked that number — “week 3 came up short of 3×6 — same weight again”. You never have to remember what you did in week three, and you never have to decide on the gym floor whether to add ten pounds.
A deload week drops everything to about 80% on purpose. That is planned, not a mistake, and the next week picks up where you left off.
Doing the work
Focus mode
Tap Focus on the day bar and everything else goes away: one exercise, big enough to read from the floor, a ring counting down, and one button that is always the obvious next thing.
What the ring counts changes with the exercise, which is the point of it.
- “3 × 60 sec” — it counts the work, then the rest, then the next round, and buzzes at each handover so you are not watching the phone.
- “5 min” — one countdown, straight through.
- “3 × 6” — nothing counts while you lift. Two big boxes, weight and reps. You say when the set is done, and then it counts the rest.
- “50 shots” — no clock at all, just a way to say you did it.
While a rest is running you get + 30 sec and Skip rest. Round dots under the clock tick off as you go. Up next names the exercise coming and takes you there.
The speaker button beside Exit turns the sounds on and off: a short whistle when an exercise is finished, a single note when the next round starts. Your choice is remembered.
Numbers you type in focus mode are the same numbers in the same place — come out and the day screen already has them. Exit puts you back exactly where you were.
Doing the work
The rest clock
Put both numbers into a set on the ordinary day screen and the rest clock starts by itself, because that is exactly when the rest begins.
It sits pinned above the bottom bar so it does not scroll away, says which exercise it is for, has +30 if you need longer and an × if you do not, and buzzes when the time is up.
How long it gives you is not a guess: two minutes for sets of six or fewer, ninety seconds above that, a minute for timed work. Going back to correct a rep does not put you back on the clock. Every lift also has a 2:00 rest button if you would rather just ask.
When life happens
Moving a workout, and skipping one
The week never goes to plan. None of this breaks anything.
- Move a workout to another day. ··· menu › Move to another day. It asks whether you mean just this week or every week from now on.
- Skip a workout. Marks the whole day skipped rather than leaving it hanging. Undo it any time.
- Recovery mode for a day you are too sore or too tired for what was planned. It swaps the session for something easier instead of you doing nothing.
- Injury mode trains around a sore shoulder rather than skipping the session. Tell it what hurts and it swaps the exercises that would aggravate it.
- Readiness asks how you slept and how sore you are, and will take 10% off the day if you need it.
When life happens
Power Play — the ten-minute version
For the night the real session is not going to happen. Plans › Power Play has eleven short workouts sorted by how long you have got: ten minutes, fifteen to twenty, or twenty-five to thirty.
Kitchen, garage, hotel room, with whatever is lying about. Nothing here progresses and nothing here replaces your plan — they are what you do instead of nothing.
Pick one and it asks whether to run it as today's session or add it on top of one. Either way it goes in the log, so a bad week does not break a streak.
Knowing what to do
The exercise library
128 exercises. Every one carries written cues and a note on the mistake people actually make, and every lift is drawn — start position and finish — so nobody has to guess what a hex bar deadlift or a Copenhagen plank is meant to look like.
- Search takes words in any order: “bar deadlift hex” finds it.
- Filters narrow by muscle, by gear you actually have, or by what fits your plan.
- Swap an exercise from its ··· menu when the rack is busy or you have no kit for it.
- Add your own if you have something the library does not.
- Every time you have done this in that same menu shows every past session for that one exercise, so you can see the line rather than guess at it.
Seeing it work
Progress, and what it reads back to you
The Progress tab is the point of logging anything.
- Your lifts — personal bests and estimated maxes, week over week, with the direction of travel on each.
- Coaching advice written from your own numbers — what is climbing, what has stalled, which day keeps getting skipped, and what to do about it.
- Body weight — log it whenever you think of it. Once a week, same time of day, is plenty. It is yours alone and is never shown to anyone else.
- Sessions — everything you have done, in order.
At the end of a week you get a card that helps you decide the one thing worth deciding: move on, or run the week again.
Seeing it work
Goals, and the puck rack
Set a number you want and watch it fill. Progress › Goals › Set a goal. Four kinds, as many as you like at once:
- A lift — “225 lb hex bar deadlift”
- A count of workouts done
- A run of weeks in a row
- A body weight
Each one gets a bar that fills as you log. Hit it and the goal light goes off — and a puck lands in your rack with the number and the date engraved on it. The card waits for you to tap Continue rather than flashing past.
Your pucks stay in the rack. A year from now it is a row of exactly what you did and the day you did it.
Seeing it work
Badges, rank and the calendar
Badges come for things worth marking — a first session, a streak, a personal best, a block finished. Each is worth points, and points are what move your rank.
The Calendar is the week and the month at a glance: what you did, what is coming, and your games. Add a game and the app keeps your legs fresh around it — that is the only reason it asks.
Training with people
Your squad
Add teammates who are on their own phones and see how their week is going. Then say something about it — hype them up, or talk smack, with lines built from their actual numbers.
How the privacy works, because it matters:
- Nobody is searchable. You find a player only by the handle they hand you.
- Sessions, bests and badges are each shared only if that player ticks them.
- Your training log itself is never readable by another account. Not by a teammate, not by anybody.
Making it yours
Settings worth knowing about
Profile › Settings.
- Pounds or kilograms. Switch whenever you like. Everything is stored in pounds whatever you pick, so a season logged in one and a season logged in the other are the same numbers underneath. Switching costs you nothing and follows you to another phone.
- Focus mode sounds — the whistle and the beep, on or off.
- Appearance and colours — dark or light, and the team colours.
- Backup and restore — copy all your players and logs out as text, or bring them back. Worth doing before you change phones.
- Which version you are on — and a button to check for a newer one.
After a session you can make a picture of it to share. It is drawn and saved on your own phone and never uploaded anywhere.
If you are stuck
Asking, and getting an answer
Everything in here is answerable by a person, and that person is Perry. There are two ways to ask, and the first one is better.
- In the app: Profile › Account & data › Get help. Two boxes — what it is about, and what is happening. It sends your name, the address you signed in with, which version of the app you are on, what you are paying and what sort of phone you have, so that nobody has to ask you any of that first. It sends nothing out of your training log; he cannot read that, and neither can anyone else.
- On the website: the form at the bottom of the front page, if you cannot get into the app at all.
Either way the answer comes back as an email to the address you gave. If you asked from inside the app, the reply also appears in that same Get help screen, under What you have asked — so you can see it arrived, and what was said, without going looking through your inbox.
What you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead. “Monday will not open” is already enough to start on; “it is broken” means somebody has to write back and ask.