What does Base show after a workout?

Total volume against the same session last week, any new personal records with their estimated one-rep-max change, the RIR picture across the session, session duration, and a prompt for a progress photo. It reveals in stages rather than all at once.

Is total volume a good measure of a session?

It is the right measure of what changed since last week, which is the question you have immediately after a session. It is not the measure that drives hypertrophy — that is hard sets per muscle per week, and it lives in the weekly view rather than the session one.

Why does Base prompt for a progress photo after training?

Because consistency is the entire value of a photo series and post-session is the most repeatable moment there is — same time of day, same state, same light if you use the same place. An inconsistent series produces apparent changes that are lighting.

Does Base compare my session to other people?

No. Comparing your session volume to other people's compares their bodyweight, their exercise selection and their training age. Your own previous session is the only reference that means anything.

What if my volume is lower than last week?

Sometimes that is correct — a deload week, a session cut short, a change in exercise selection. The screen reports it without judgement. What matters is the pattern across several weeks alongside your RIR drift and your strength trend, not any single session.

The Workout Summary: What the Session Actually Produced

Volume against last week

Total tonnage — sets times reps times load — for this session, compared to the last time you did the same session.

Two things about that choice.

Tonnage is the right measure of what changed since last week, which is the question you have immediately after a session. Did I do more work than last time? It answers that directly and it needs no interpretation.

Tonnage is not the measure that drives hypertrophy. That is hard sets per muscle per week, and it lives in the weekly view rather than the session one. A session that swapped an exercise or changed a rep range can show a large tonnage change that means nothing about the stimulus.

The screen shows tonnage because it is the honest answer to the immediate question, and the weekly volume view exists separately because it is the honest answer to the important one. Where that lives.

New records

A PR fires here with its estimated one-rep-max change attached: Bench 195×6 (e1RM 234, +4).

The e1RM delta is the part worth reading. A new rep record at the same weight and a new weight record are different achievements, and the e1RM number places both on the same axis so you can tell which one moved you further.

This is also the one place the app is deliberately loud — confetti, a success haptic, a badge. Everything else in the interface is quiet. The PR is not, because it is the thing you were training for and treating it identically to every other set is a log that has forgotten what it is for.

The RIR picture

Across the session: how many sets landed at the target RIR, how many were above it, how many below.

This is the most diagnostically useful part of the screen and the least dramatic. Three patterns worth recognising:

Pattern	Reading
Most sets at target	The loads are right. Progression rule will do its job
Most sets above target (further from failure)	Loads are too light. Expect the rule to jump them
Most sets below target (closer to failure)	Loads are too heavy, or you are more fatigued than you thought
Drifting up across the session	Normal within a session
Drifting up across weeks at fixed load	Accumulated fatigue. One of the four deload signals

That last row is the one that matters and the only one you cannot see from a single session — which is why it appears in the weekly check-in rather than here. How the deload trigger reads it.

The photo prompt

Post-session is the most repeatable moment in your week: same time of day, same state of fed-ness, same place if you shoot in the same place.

Consistency is the entire value of a progress photo series. An inconsistent series produces apparent changes that are lighting, hydration and time of day, and those changes are indistinguishable from real ones. A consistent series catches things the scale and the tape both miss.

It is also the only record that survives your memory, which is unreliable in a specific and consistent direction — you remember looking worse than you did before a block and better than you did after it.

Photos are archived to an album in your own photo library rather than only in app storage, because the operating system erases everything an app stores when the app is deleted, and a photo series is the one record you genuinely cannot reconstruct. How that works.

Duration, and the watch disagreement

Session duration is reported, and when a watch recorded the same session with a different duration, both are shown rather than one silently winning.

That happens routinely — you started the app before the warm-up and the watch when you started the first set, or the watch auto-paused and the app did not. Neither is wrong. Presenting one number when two exist would be presenting a resolution that was never made, and the honest version is to show both and say which came from where.

The same principle applies across the app: no silent failures, and no silent reconciliations either.

What the screen deliberately does not show

No comparison to other users. Session volume compared across people compares bodyweight, exercise selection and training age. Your own previous session is the only reference that means anything.

No calorie estimate for the session. Lifting energy cost is genuinely low — a set is thirty seconds and the rest is three minutes, which averages to roughly 5 METs across a session. Showing a large number there would encourage eating it back, and it would be counted twice against a measured maintenance figure that already contains it.

No judgement. Volume down from last week is reported, not scolded. A deload week should look like a deload week without the app treating it as a failure.

No streak that punishes a rest day. Rest days are training.

What to do next

The insights screen holds the weekly volume view, which is where hard sets per muscle per week actually lives, and the weekly check-in is where the RIR drift across sessions turns into a decision.