Zyra Workouts is in development and not yet on the App Store; screens may change before release.
Zyra Workouts ships with 61 exercises. When yours is not among them — a specific machine, a variation, a cable angle — you create it once, and from then on it is a first-class exercise: it appears in the picker, counts toward its muscles on the dashboard and Levels, gets its own history page, and works with Smart Progression. This guide is the form and what each field does.
What it does
The New Exercise screen is one scrolling form with a Save button that stays disabled until it has a name and a primary muscle.
| Field | Options | What it drives |
|---|---|---|
| Name | free text, required | Picker, history, export |
| Muscles | 11 chips; tap-cycle primary → secondary → off | Dashboard muscle credit (primary 1, secondary 0.5), Levels (primary), body map |
| Equipment | barbell · dumbbell · machine · cable · bodyweight | Smart Progression step (barbell 2 × smallest plate, others 2 kg, bodyweight reps), plate-loadability check on barbells |
| Type | compound · isolation | Rep ranges and set counts when a generator or program uses it |
| Default rest | 1:00 · 1:30 · 2:00 · 2:30 · 3:00 | Auto-start rest timer after a working set |
| Unilateral | checkbox | Marks the exercise as one side at a time |
The 11 muscle groups are chest, back, shoulders, biceps, triceps, forearms, quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves and core — the same ones on the muscle pages.
Step by step
- Open the picker from a session ("+" at the end of the exercise strip) and tap the + at the top — "Create custom exercise".
- Name it. Be specific; the name is what search matches and what the CSV export prints.
- Muscles. Tap the main mover once (Primary). Tap helpers once more each time to reach Secondary. A third tap clears a chip. Only one chip can be Primary — choosing a new one turns the old one into a Secondary rather than dropping it.
- Equipment. Pick what actually holds the load. Barbell means the plate inventory is consulted for loadability and step size; dumbbell, machine and cable step in 2 kg; bodyweight has no load to step, so progression works on reps.
- Type and rest. Compound or isolation; then a default rest from 1:00 to 3:00. You can override rest per exercise later from its detail page.
- Unilateral if it is one side at a time (a single-arm row, a split squat). This is a label for now; the L/R chip in a session does the actual splitting.
- Save. The exercise lands at the top of the Custom tab and is appended to the catalog with an id starting
custom-.
What the numbers mean
- Muscle credit follows the same rule as built-ins: on the dashboard's Muscle Groups card each working set counts 1 toward the primary muscle and 0.5 toward each secondary; the Levels tab counts primary only. Mark three secondaries and one set spreads 1.5 sets of credit around.
- Smart Progression reads equipment for the step and type for nothing — the rep targets come from the program. A custom barbell exercise with 1.25 kg plates available steps 2.5 kg like a built-in.
- Smart Generation can pick a custom exercise, but built-ins are matched first for each muscle and category, so a custom compound is chosen only when no unused built-in compound for that muscle remains.
Gotchas
- No body-weight fraction. Built-in bodyweight exercises carry a fraction of your body weight for volume; custom ones do not have that field yet, so a custom bodyweight exercise logs the weight you type (often 0) and contributes that to volume.
- One primary, always. You cannot save with two primaries or none; the demotion rule makes it easy to end up with an unintended secondary — check the chips before Save.
- Deleting is permanent for the exercise, not the data. History keeps every set under "Custom exercise (deleted)"; recreating the exercise makes a new id, so the old sets do not reattach.
- Custom exercises sync with an account. Create, edit and delete are backed up if you are signed in; on a fresh device they come back with your history.
- No videos or cues. Custom exercises have the form fields only; the detail page shows history, rest and notes.
The short version
Picker → "+" → name, one primary muscle (tap-cycle the chips), equipment, compound or isolation, default rest, Save. The new exercise counts toward its muscles like any built-in, steps in Smart Progression by its equipment (barbell plates, 2 kg, or reps), and can be deleted later without losing the sets you logged. Zyra Workouts is a training log, and this page describes one of its features as built today. Educational overview only — not medical advice.