Questions, answered at the length they deserve

These are the ones that actually get asked, plus a few that ought to be. Where the answer is "no", it says no.

Does Trainora record my runs?

No, and that is the design rather than an omission. Record with whatever you already use — the Workout app on Apple Watch, a Garmin, a Wahoo, Strava, a Coros. Every one of those writes into Apple Health, and Trainora reads from there. That is why there is no account to make and no service to link: reading Health needs no backend, no OAuth and no server holding your training. A direct Strava integration would need all three and would still only cover Strava.

I connected Health and nothing appeared.

Three causes, in order of likelihood. First, the other app is not writing to Health — Strava and Wahoo each need Health writing switched on in their own settings, and if the workout is not visible in the Health app itself then Trainora cannot see it either. Second, the permission. iOS will not tell an app whether read access was granted, so Trainora genuinely cannot check this for you; look in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices → Trainora yourself. Third, the sport: only running, cycling, swimming, hiking and the two strength categories are recognised, so a yoga session or a walk will not arrive.

Why is there a dash instead of a number?

Because the model has seen fewer than seven days of your recorded training and will not print a figure it cannot stand behind. Below that floor it shows Still learning, and the Today card says Still learning your response — this session is a starting point, not a verdict. Importing your history is the quick way past it; otherwise it resolves itself in a week.

Do I really have to enter three heart rates?

For heart-rate-based load, yes — max, resting and threshold, all three. The method works in heart-rate reserve, so a threshold with no max and no resting has no denominator to sit over. There is no partial credit and no clever guess: without all three, imported sessions carry no load at all and the Progress tab stays empty, and the app warns you before the import rather than after.

If you have a threshold power on file instead, that alone is enough, and it is the higher-confidence route anyway.

Threshold, incidentally, means the effort you could hold for about an hour. Not your maximum. The app repeats this wherever you can type one, because getting it wrong shifts every zone and every load figure in the app.

What about pool swims and strength sessions? There is no useful heart rate there.

Perceived effort. You say how hard it felt on a five-point scale, and that becomes an intensity against an anchor of "hard" as threshold. It is honest and it is coarse, which is why a session scored this way is always marked low confidence — the app tells you so at the moment you save it: how it felt is real, but it is not a measurement.

My form is negative. Should I be worried?

Almost certainly not. Form is fitness minus fatigue, and fatigue moves about 5.7 times faster than fitness does, so any honest block of hard training runs negative through its middle. The app's own note on the figure says it plainly: Negative is not a warning and positive is not permission: a hard block is supposed to run negative. What would be worth attention is a negative that keeps deepening across a whole block without a down week — and that is what the recovery week in every fourth position is for.

Why does the plan only go four weeks?

Because a plan the app cannot justify is a plan it should not write. With little history and no measured thresholds there is nothing to periodise from, so it produces the block a sensible coach would start anybody on and then stops. When it runs out you have given it evidence, and the next block is generated from what you have actually been doing — not from where you started, and not from an ambition you typed in during setup.

I trained more than it asked. Does it notice?

It notices and it counts, but it does not react immediately. Unplanned sessions are counted separately from missed ones — deliberately, so that an extra easy run can never paper over a skipped key session. They raise your recorded weekly volume, and that volume is what the next block is built from. The adjustment happens at the block boundary rather than mid-week, and it is slow on purpose.

There is a brake in the other direction too: complete less than two thirds of a block and the next one does not add its ten per cent, and the key session does not gain a repetition. Volume holds until you are on top of it.

Can I write my own sessions?

Yes. There is a builder with warm-up, effort, recovery and cool-down steps, repeat blocks you can wrap and dissolve, open-ended steps that run until you tap, and an undo. Strength work is first-class rather than an afterthought: sets, reps or seconds, weight in kilograms, reps in reserve and a tempo, planned alongside the running instead of in a second app.

Can I move things around?

A session can be dragged a day earlier or later, or removed. A whole block can be pushed back by a few days or a week from the calendar, and when you do, sessions already in the past stay where they are — they are the record of what happened. Every change is undoable, and the plan keeps a log of who changed what.

Is there a subscription? What does it cost?

Version 1.0 contains no in-app purchase and no subscription of any kind. There is no purchase code in the app, no store configuration, and nothing in it is gated behind a payment. If that ever changes, it will change in a release with notes that say so.

Does it work offline? Do I need an account?

There is no account. Everything the app computes, it computes on the device, and none of it requires a network. iCloud sync is the only thing that uses the network at all, it is Apple's CloudKit talking to your own private database, and if you are not signed into iCloud the app says so and keeps everything local.

What languages does it speak?

English and French, both complete — including the notification text, which is the part most apps forget. Some of the screenshots on this site are French for that reason.

Will it nag me?

You can switch on up to three reminders and there are no others. The evening before, at 8pm, when there is still time to prepare. Shortly before a session starts. And afterwards, so you can log it. The settings screen states the whole scope: Nothing else — no marketing, no streaks. If you grant no notification permission, nothing is lost but the reminders.

My trail runs show up as road runs.

They do, and there is nothing to be done about it from here. Apple Health has no trail-running workout type, so a trail run arrives as running and the distinction Trainora draws internally does not exist on the other side of that boundary.

Can my coach see my training?

Not in 1.0. The sharing is built — a share on your own iCloud zone, granted by you and revocable by you, with no server of mine in the middle — but the coach's half is a Mac app that has not been submitted, so an invitation would be one nobody could accept. Rather than ship a control that cannot complete its purpose, the whole feature is withheld, including the transport under it. The profile card reads No coach has access to your training, and that is literally true.

Is there an Android or web version?

No, and none is in progress. The app is built on Apple Health, WorkoutKit and CloudKit, none of which exist elsewhere.

Why doesn't it use the terms I know from other training platforms?

Trainora's vocabulary is load, fitness, fatigue, form and intensity. The equivalent terms on the large commercial platforms are trademarks, and this app deliberately does not use them. The underlying models are open literature and map across without difficulty; the numbers will not match exactly, because the estimators are not identical.

How do I get my data out, or delete it?

Export produces one JSON file with sessions, plan, thresholds, goals, notes and movements — readable, and re-importable into a fresh install. Deletion is one action that removes everything locally and in your iCloud, states exactly what it removes, and states what it cannot: your Apple Health samples belong to Health and are untouched. Neither needs a support request. See privacy for the rest.