Muscle readiness and recovery.

SET models fatigue clearing on a recovery window while fitness fades more slowly. Their difference is preparedness — an estimate used to describe a muscle’s training window.

Repairing → Ready → Holding. Holding never touches the level.

SET’s modeled strength deficit starts past a per-muscle grace window (roughly 2–5 weeks, longer with training history, shorter with age). Past grace, 1RM decays toward a muscle-memory floor and is re-scored.

Training burns that deficit back off — one warm-up cannot erase a layoff. Losing only labels the current long idle; leftover deficit can still suppress the number after you train again.

Home sorts by how overdue each muscle is relative to its own recovery rhythm — not a fixed calendar. An extended idle gap can move a lane higher.

Look at the muscle groups involved in the session you are considering, then read the state alongside your recent saved workouts. SET estimates preparedness from training history. It does not directly measure a muscle or know how you feel today. The Board is a planning signal that helps you review your training, not permission to ignore pain, illness, or an unusually difficult warm-up.

The important distinction is between short-term preparedness and longer-term modeled strength. Preparedness describes the estimated timing of fatigue and fitness after training. Strength levels describe scored lifting performance, with a separate detraining model for extended inactivity. A change in one does not automatically mean a change in the other.

For example, a chest lane can move from Ready to Holding while its level stays the same. The readiness model is saying its preferred training window has passed. It is not claiming you suddenly lost your bench press performance. That distinction prevents a short scheduling gap from being represented as immediate strength loss.

After a saved session, a muscle can enter Repairing because the model accounts for the fatigue associated with recent training. That is an expected state in the cycle. You do not need to force the lane back to Ready by adding sets, and a low readiness estimate is not evidence that your previous session was unproductive.

Check the context of the logged session. Incorrect dates, duplicated workouts, or the wrong muscle assignment can make a readiness display confusing. A workout recorded as today’s training contributes to today’s timeline even if it actually happened earlier. Accurate dates are particularly important when importing an old training archive.

A readiness label also does not prescribe a universal number of rest days. The model uses its own recovery rhythm for each muscle and the available history. Your actual next session still depends on the program you follow, exercise overlap, and how the planned movement feels. Use the label to review those choices rather than to replace them.

Ready is SET’s label for preparedness above its threshold. It marks a favorable window in the model, not a promise of a personal record. If you are Ready and your usual loads feel unusually hard, the app has not observed everything affecting your performance. Your session data and actual experience provide information that a clock alone cannot capture.

Holding means the preparedness estimate has dropped below the Ready threshold. It is a reminder to review the muscle’s place in your schedule. It does not subtract strength points. You can keep the same level through the entire Repairing → Ready → Holding sequence because those states belong to the preparedness clock.

If you are following a planned split, look at the whole week rather than reorganizing every session around a single label. A lane is one piece of information. You may have good reasons to train another muscle first, maintain the planned rest day, or change the session based on the equipment and time available.

Losing belongs to the separate detraining calculation. It appears while the current idle gap is actively increasing a modeled strength deficit after the grace period. The timing is a SET model assumption adjusted by profile and training history, not an exact biological deadline at which every person starts losing strength.

The modeled deficit can reduce the effective strength used for scoring. Training again begins working that deficit down, but a single warm-up does not automatically erase the whole interruption. This is why the Losing label can disappear when you resume training even though the level has not fully returned to its previous value.

When returning from a break, inspect your recent sessions and rebuild a current performance record. The app’s historical best is evidence of what you previously lifted. It is not an instruction to immediately use that old maximum. A useful comeback log records what you are actually doing now, giving the model a new timeline to work from.

Live workouts are recorded locally first. Finishing a workout places it on the unsaved shelf; the session contributes to saved training history after the explicit Save action completes. That separation allows you to review a workout before it affects Board heat and strength. Finishing and saving are two distinct steps.

If the Board has not changed after training, check whether the session is still unsaved before adding it again. Open the saved history and confirm that the expected exercise, sets, and date are there. An unsaved local session is not lost merely because its training has not yet contributed to the Board.

Imported workouts also use their historical dates. Saving a session from months ago should not make the muscle look freshly trained today. If the display seems surprising after an import, compare the original notes, the reviewed dates, and the saved timeline. Avoid changing historical dates just to obtain a preferred readiness color.

Start by checking which muscle groups have saved sessions and which remain untrained. Review whether your planned workouts actually cover the groups you intended. Then inspect any unexpectedly overdue lane and check its last session. The Board’s ordering makes these questions easier to spot without requiring a separate calendar for every muscle.

Use performance trends to judge progress and the readiness states to review timing. These complement one another. A consistent log can show that your working sets are improving even when today’s lane is Repairing, and it can show a long interruption even if you remember a much older personal best.

When in doubt, return to the inputs: the exercise, date, repetitions, load, and whether the session was saved. Those are the observations SET uses. The state names summarize a model built from them, and understanding that relationship makes the Board easier to use without treating its estimates as measurements.