Welcome to NextRep! We’re excited to have you onboard!
We’re really passionate about giving you the best experience with NextRep, so if you need help with anything, something isn’t working how you’d like or you have any feature requests or improvements, please let us know!
In summary, it’s recommended to setup your exercises and templates before you arrive at the gym, then start a workout from your template when you get to the gym.
Basics
At the foundation of NextRep are templates. Templates allow you to build out workouts that you use regularly. For example, you may have three templates for the three routines that you do every week - push, pull and lower body.
As you adapt your workout routines, you may choose to update your existing templates, or create new ones and keep the older ones around for later on. NextRep will try and surface the template it thinks you’ll do next, so it’s fine to keep around templates that you no longer use.
For one-off workouts, where you’re not following a regular routine, you can choose to start an “empty workout” from the home screen of the app. You can add the exercises you complete as you are going, however we recommend using a template where possible.
Exercises
NextRep does not come with any exercises by default, so you may want to spend some time adding the ones you use most regularly to the “exercises” tab on the home screen. However, you can also add exercises as you go.
When you create an exercise, you’ll give it a name, measurement type and optionally a description. The measurement type defines what NextRep will take as an input, which can be one of:
- Weight & Reps - this simply tracks weight and number of reps performed. This is usually what you would need for most exercises.
- Timed - this just tracks duration, useful for exercises like planks.
- Cardio - this tracks duration and distance, useful for any cardio exercises like treadmill or bike.
At the moment, cardio tracking isn’t a core feature of NextRep, so if it’s an important part of your workout, you might want to consider using another app to track that part.
The description of the exercise can be left blank, but offers you a place to keep notes about machine settings, seating positions, etc… or instructions about how to complete the exercise.
Creating a Template
Head to the home screen and hit the plus icon to create a new template.
You can rename the template by hitting the menu icon in the top-right, and choosing “rename” to give it an appropriate name.
Next, use the plus icon at the bottom of the screen to add some new exercises. Long press the new exercise to give it more or less sets, edit the notes or swap it out for something else.
The notes on an exercise in your template are specific to that template. It’s useful for keeping track of a target number of reps, and it’s surfaced when you’re completing the workout, so it’s also useful for seating positions that might vary template to template.
If you are not doing progressive overload training, and tend to do the same weight and/or reps each time, you can also set default values for each set which automatically populate the workout when you start it. Edit default values using the “edit” item in the menu.
At the bottom of the page, you can use the plus and minus icons to increase and decrease the rest time for all exercises. Going all the way to zero will disable the rest timer for this template.
To remove exercises anywhere in NextRep, simply keep removing sets until you reach zero, where the exercise will be removed from the template or workout.
Finally, you can also use the edit button at the top to select exercises to group together as a superset, or adjust the ordering of exercises.
Once you are done, you can simply press the back button as the template automatically saves.
Starting a Workout
Going back to the home screen, you can tap on a template to start a new workout from it.
You can tap the circle to the left of each set to mark it as complete from an overview. This is great if you are using the default values as part of your template. You can always tap on the exercise to enter new values too.
Long press any sets to change them, for example adding or removing sets, or swapping them out for a different exercise.
Tap on any set to enter the active exercise screen, this allows you to have a focused view of the current set.
Once you have more workouts under your belt, you can see basic statistics for this exercise like the last completed set, the best set you ever did and your average over the last month. This can give you the knowledge you need for what you would like to aim for. For example, if your average is 10x18kg, you may feel that you need to lift 16kg in order to hit your target of 12-14 reps.
When you have finished the set, enter your weight and reps, then hit the next button to continue to a rest timer, or your next set. NextRep automatically saves the inputs as you go.
When you reach the end of the workout, the next button becomes a finish button. Alternatively, you can also hit the checkmark icon in the overview page to finish. NextRep will show you a summary of your workout, and offer you the chance to set the effort you felt you put in to the workout.