Four Plates for iPhone
How Four Plates works
In Four Plates: Settings › How Four Plates Works.
Logging a set
One set at a time. Each set starts with last time's numbers, or your routine's targets; change the weight or reps with − and +, or type them, then tap Log Set. Each logged set fills a plate in its muscle's colour and starts your rest. Tap any plate to change that set.
Kinds of set, and how it felt
Working sets, drop sets and sets to failure count towards everything. Warm-ups are kept in your history but never count towards volume, e1RM, records or medals. How a set felt (Easy, Solid, Hard or Max) is your own note: it never changes a number.
Volume
Weight × reps, added up over every counting set: 100 kg × 5 is 500 kg. Bodyweight sets add their reps but no weight. Big totals are shown in tonnes; 1 t is 1,000 kg.
Estimated one-rep max (e1RM)
An estimate of the most you could lift once, from any set of 1 to 12 reps, using the Epley formula: weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30). So 100 kg × 5 gives about 117 kg, and a single rep is its own weight. Beyond 12 reps the estimate stops meaning much, so Four Plates doesn't give one. It's for following your progress; Four Plates never suggests a weight.
Records
A record is a new best e1RM, or a heavier weight, for an exercise, set with 3 to 12 reps. Singles and doubles still show as your best on Progress, but they're never celebrated or counted for a medal: Four Plates rewards getting stronger over time, not one-off attempts. The first time you do an exercise isn't a record, as there's nothing to beat yet. Each lift's page also shows its rep records: the heaviest weight for each number of reps from 3 to 12, where a set of 8 also counts as a set of 5.
Medals
Five medals add up over months and years: Heavy lifting (tonnes lifted), The climb (0.5 m for each rep), Sessions, Consistency (weeks you met your goal) and Records. Each has ranks from Paper to Diamond, and Meteorite beyond with Four Plates Pro. A medal only changes when your history does: adding, correcting or deleting a session. Changing a setting never takes one away.
Your weekly goal
The ring on Today fills as you train this week, towards the goal in Settings. Each session keeps the goal it was finished under, so a new goal never changes a week that's already done.
Supersets
Press and hold an exercise's name during a session, or choose Rearrange and Superset, to change the order and link neighbouring exercises. In a superset you do one set of each in turn, and rest after the round.
Importing and exporting
Export Workout History (CSV) saves one row per set: date, session, exercise, set, weight, reps, notes, effort and superset, the layout most lifting apps export, which any spreadsheet opens. Import Workout History reads the same layout, so you can bring your history with you; Four Plates lists anything it skips and why. Routines have their own file: New Routine › Import from File, with a template to fill in.
Backing up
Back Up Everything saves one file with every session, routine, custom exercise, note and goal. Restore from Backup shows what it will add, then adds only what's missing: nothing already in Four Plates is changed or deleted.
Your data
Your training is stored on your iPhone. If you use iCloud, it syncs through your private iCloud database, end-to-end encrypted, so only your own devices can read it: not us, and not Apple. There's no account, no ads and no analytics. Your widgets and Apple Watch get what they need straight from your iPhone.
iCloud sync
Settings shows what Four Plates knows: Syncing…, Last synced 5 minutes ago, Waiting for a connection, or iCloud storage is full. Your training stays safe on your iPhone either way, and sync catches up by itself.
Apple Watch
Part of Four Plates Pro. The Watch follows the session on your iPhone: the next set, the Digital Crown to change the weight or reps, Log Set, and a rest ring that taps your wrist when it ends, while Four Plates is open. Your iPhone keeps the record; the Watch keeps none of its own. To keep Four Plates on screen through a session, choose Settings › General › Return to Clock › Four Plates › After 1 hour on your Watch.
Four Plates Pro
Logging, history, routines, supersets, import, export, backup and sync are free. Pro adds the Watch app, the long view on Progress, bigger widgets, the Lock Screen rest timer and more to collect. If Pro ends, nothing you've logged or earned goes; long-range charts go back to the free view.