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See What a Program Trains Before You Run It
Most training apps can tell you which muscles you neglected, but only after you have spent six weeks neglecting them. Ægir Iron reads the program itself. While you build a program, and any time after, it shows the planned weekly sets for every muscle group against a target, counted the same way the app counts the sets you log.
Three places it shows up
The analyzer appears at three points, and they all use the same chart and the same math.
- While you build. The Program Wizard's Accessories & Adjustments step, and the exercises step of Write My Own Program, open with a chart called "What this week trains". It sits directly above your editable first week. Each time you swap an exercise, drop one, add an accessory or change a set count, the chart redraws, so you see what an edit does to the week before you commit to it.
- When you review. The last step, "What the whole program trains", reads every working week rather than just the first. Each muscle gets a range: the solid bar is the floor that every week clears, and the lighter tail reaches the heaviest week. Deload weeks are left out of the range so they don't drag the floor down, and the colour follows a typical week.
- After it is built. On the Program page, the Analyze button next to Print and Export opens "What this program trains" for any program you already have, including one you imported or one a coach wrote for you. A cycle picker switches between the whole program and any single week (deloads are marked), and Share as image turns the chart into a card you can post or send to a coach.
On the build step the chart has a second view. A switch at the top of "What this week trains" flips from Volume to Week layout, which sets the muscles aside and lays out every lift in the week by movement and day: squat, hinge, horizontal and vertical push, horizontal and vertical pull, then any accessories. Each lift shows its sets, reps and RPE, marked as a main lift, another compound lift or an isolation movement, so you can see where the squat and the deadlift fall and whether the leg press lands on squat day or the day before it. The days are the program's own Day 1, Day 2 and so on, in order, since the rest between them is yours to choose. Under the grid it names a movement with a main lift on two days next to each other (common with a rest day in between, harder on back-to-back calendar days) and any of squat, hinge, push or pull the week leaves out. For a program you already have, Analyze on the Program page has the same switch and lays out one week at a time, with the week chips choosing which.
Analyze waits for you to open it. A program you imported doesn't carry its discipline, so the app can't tell a peaking powerlifting block (which should read low on biceps) from a general one. The chart is there when you ask for it, and it never pops up to tell you a good program is bad.
How to read a row
Each muscle group gets one row, and the rows are sorted with the most undertrained at the top. The text reads planned / target, so 12/10 means twelve planned working sets in a week against a weekly target of ten. The black notch on the bar marks the target, and the colour says how the two compare:
| Colour | Planned sets against the target | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Low | Under half | Little direct work. Fine if it is deliberate, and worth a look if it isn't. |
| Building | Half to the full target | Real work, short of a full dose. |
| On target | The target to one and a half times it | A full weekly dose. |
| High volume | Over one and a half times | Still productive work, with smaller returns for each extra set. |
There are sixteen muscle groups: chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, abs, obliques, traps, lats, lower back, glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, adductors and neck. Neck only shows up when the program trains it. The targets are about 10 sets a week for the prime movers and the arms, 8 for abs, traps, lower back and calves, and 6 for forearms, obliques, adductors and neck. Where those numbers come from, and why 10 is a floor rather than a ceiling, is covered in How Many Sets Per Muscle Per Week?
A summary line above the bars names the muscles getting the least work. Under it, "How is this counted?" opens the method inside the app, so you can check it without leaving the wizard.
A worked example
Here is a first draft of a common three-day full-body week, built around the big lifts. Day A has back squat, bench press, barbell row and lateral raises. Day B has deadlift, overhead press, lat pulldown and hanging leg raises. Day C has squat, bench, pull-ups and triceps pushdowns. That is twelve exercises and 33 working sets. The chart below shows what the analyzer reports for it. Every number was produced by the app's own counting code; only the drawing is redone for this page.
Nothing in the draft is a bad choice. The gaps come from what it leaves out: no exercise names the calves, nothing trains the hamstrings as a prime mover, and the only direct trunk work is two sets of leg raises. Four additions on the Accessories & Adjustments step close them: calf raises on days A and C, Romanian deadlifts on day C, curls on day B, and a side plank on day B.
The point is not to turn every bar green. A three-day program has a limited number of sets to spend, and chasing ten sets for every muscle would mean longer sessions or less work on the main lifts. The chart lets you see that trade and make it on purpose.
What gets counted
The analyzer counts a program's sets the same way the Body Map counts a logged week. That means a planned program and the training you log against it can be compared directly.
- Working sets only. Warm-up rows are skipped, and cardio and mobility rows credit no muscle.
- Every muscle a set trains. A set credits every muscle it trains, weighted by how much each one is involved. One set of conventional deadlifts counts as about 4.9 effective sets spread over seven muscle groups. These weights come from a review of every exercise in the catalog, which How Ægir Iron Maps Every Exercise to the Muscles It Trains describes.
- Hard sets. A set the program prescribes well short of failure counts for less, down to half a set. Examples are a light percentage of your max, or RPE 6 or lower. Sets at RPE 7 or harder, AMRAP sets, and rows with no stated effort count in full. Without this, a high-volume percentage program like nSuns would read at three and a half times target, when much of its work is submaximal by design.
- Long fixed-load sets. A set of a movement whose load you can't change, such as forty air squats, tapers from full credit at twenty reps to a quarter of a set at forty.
- Unrecognised names. Any exercise name the app can't map, which mostly happens in imported spreadsheets, is listed by name under the chart rather than silently counted as zero, so a missing row never makes a program look thinner than it is.
A guide
The targets are general training targets, and the chart says so. A program that concentrates on one thing on purpose will read low elsewhere, and that can be exactly right. The chart is shown for every discipline, and the note under it changes with the program:
- A powerlifting program concentrates on the squat, bench and deadlift, so the smaller groups read low. That is what a specialized program looks like.
- A peak block, or any program written in percentages of a max, is expected to narrow onto the competition lifts, and the note says the low numbers on smaller muscles are the point of that block.
- An Olympic weightlifting program spends most of the week on the snatch, the clean and jerk and the squat, so upper-body accessory groups read low by design.
- Strongman events, carries and heavy singles don't convert cleanly into weekly set counts, so the bars show which muscles are covered rather than a full total.
- Calisthenics skill work is mostly holds and low-rep practice, so skill days count for less on the chart than they cost you in effort.
- In a sport program the lifting supports practice, so its totals are meant to sit under a general training target.
Two limits are worth knowing. First, the chart counts sets, and the set credit only adjusts for effort where the program states one. Second, the front, side and rear delts share one shoulders row. A pressing-heavy week can read well for shoulders while the rear delts get very little, so check rear-delt work by eye.
When the app builds the program
If you choose Build one for me in the Program Wizard, the generator works toward the same chart. For strength, hypertrophy, powerbuilding and general fitness goals, it points the accessory slots at the muscles the week is missing, and it respects the split, so a leg day's slots stay on the legs. Without that step, a three-day full-body plan gives every day the same slots, which triples whatever those slots train and gives the calves nothing. The main lifts are never touched. Powerlifting, weightlifting, strongman and sport programs aren't rebalanced, because they concentrate their work on purpose.
Common questions
Can I see what a program trains before I start it? Yes. In Ægir Iron, the Program Wizard and Write My Own Program show planned weekly sets for every muscle group while you build, redrawing with every edit, and the Analyze button on the Program page shows the same chart for any program you already have. Each muscle reads planned sets against a weekly target, counted the same way as the sets you log.
How does the app count sets per muscle in a program? Each working set credits every muscle it trains, weighted by involvement, so a deadlift counts toward glutes, hamstrings, lower back, traps, quads, forearms and adductors. Warm-ups are skipped, and sets prescribed well short of failure count for less, down to half a set.
Does the analyzer work on imported programs? Yes. Analyze reads any program on the Program page, including one imported from a spreadsheet or written by a coach. Any exercise name it can't map is listed by name under the chart rather than counted as zero.
My program reads low on some muscles. Is it a bad program? Not necessarily. The targets are general training targets, and a specialized program such as a powerlifting peak concentrates its work on purpose. The chart shows where the sets go so you can decide whether a gap is deliberate.