Building workouts by hand

Connecting an AI is optional. Every workout type, every builder, and the full history and charts work the same whether or not an AI is attached to your account. This guide covers using Parameter as a standalone, manual tracker.

Everything here starts the same way: on the Plan tab, tap + in the top right. That opens a list of six things you can add.

• Cardio & more, a run, ride, swim, or yoga session
• Intervals, repeating work and recovery
• Strength/Mobility, exercises with sets and reps
• External class, a class you follow in another app
• Rest day, planned recovery, not a gap
• From template, reuse something you saved

1. Build an interval workout

We will build 8×400m with a 90-second jog between each, because it uses every part of the builder.

Set up the workout

1. Tap +, then Intervals.
2. Give it a Title. This is what you will see on the calendar and in your history.
3. Pick the Activity, Running here.
4. Set the Date. Leave Scheduled at off unless you want a specific start time and a reminder for it.
5. Choose Indoor or Outdoor under Environment.
6. Modality is optional and free text, with chips for the common answers: treadmill, bike, rower, outdoor run, pool. It tells your AI what you were on. Skip it if you like.

Add the work segment

7. Tap Add segment. A segment appears in the list. Tap it to open it.
8. Set Phase to Work. The four phases are Warmup, Work, Rest and Cooldown, and they drive the color and the cues you get during the workout.
9. Under Timing, switch from Duration to Distance, enter 400, and set the unit to m. Duration takes sec or min; distance takes yd, mi, m or km.

10. Under Targets, tap Add target and pick a metric from the menu. Eight are available: Speed, Incline, Pace, Power, Cadence, Resistance, HR and HR zone. For a 400 repeat, Pace is the useful one.
11. Enter the value and check the unit beside it. Single value holds you to one number; Range takes a floor and a ceiling, which is usually kinder on a hard effort.
12. A segment can carry more than one target. Tap Add target again to pair a cadence with your pace. On a treadmill the useful pairing is a speed and an incline instead.

Heart-rate zone targets are chips, not numbers. Pick HR zone as the metric and you get a Z1 to Z5 row rather than a bpm field, showing the actual bpm range each zone means for you from your profile. This is the target that stay-in-zone machine control needs, so if you want Parameter driving a treadmill to hold your heart rate, this is where that starts.

Add the recovery segment

13. Go back to the segment list and tap Add segment again.
14. Set its Phase to Rest, its Timing to Duration, 90, sec. Leave the targets empty, or set an easy pace.

Turn two segments into eight rounds

This is the part that saves the work. You do not need to add sixteen rows individually.

15. Tap Select segments to repeat…. Each row grows a selection circle.
16. Tap your work segment and your rest segment so both are ticked.
17. Tap Wrap 2 selected in a repeat.
18. The pair collapses under a Repeat ×2 header with a stepper. Step it up to 8. Repeat counts run from 2 to 50.

To undo a grouping, tap Unwrap on the repeat header. The segments come back as ordinary rows in the same order.

19. Add a Warmup segment before the repeat and a Cooldown after it, the same way.
20. Tap Add in the top right. The workout lands on the date you picked.

2. Build a strength routine

1. Tap +, then Strength/Mobility.
2. Fill in Title, Activity and Date as before.
3. A routine starts with one block, Block A. Set its Structure:

• Straight sets runs each exercise to completion before moving to the next one.

• Superset alternates between the block’s exercises with no rest row between them.

• Circuit cycles through the whole block in order.

  Pick either Superset or Circuit and two more rows appear: Rounds, from 2 to 20, and Rest between rounds. Straight sets does not use them, because rest belongs to the individual set for those.

4. Tap Add exercise and search the catalog. If nothing matches, you can add the exercise by name and it stays as you typed it.
5. Each exercise starts with one set. For each set, choose Reps or Duration as the mode, then fill in the reps (or seconds), the load and whether that load is in lb or kg.
6. Rest after sets the rest timer that starts by itself when you check that set off during the workout.
7. Side is for unilateral work. Leave it at None for ordinary sets, or set Left and Right so each arm or leg is logged separately.
8. Tap Add set for the next one, or Duplicate last set to copy the one above it, which is faster when the whole exercise is three sets at the same load.
9. Tap Add block for the next block. Use the arrows on a block header to reorder blocks, and the bin icon to delete one.
10. Tap Add to save.

3. Save it as a template

The Save as template switch sits at the foot of both builders. Turn it on before you tap Add and the workout is saved as a template at the same time as it is scheduled, rather than in a separate step afterwards.

To use one later, tap + and pick From template. Once you have a handful of templates for the sessions you run regularly, planning a week gets much faster. Just pick the templates, update the weights, and place them on the calendar.

4. Copy, move, do again

Three different actions, and which one you want depends on whether the workout has already happened.

• Do this workout again is at the bottom of a finished workout’s detail screen. It creates a fresh copy for today, ready to start, leaving the original log untouched.
• Copy to another day takes a workout you have already done and puts a new, unstarted copy on a date you pick. It is in the … menu at the top right of the workout’s detail screen.
• Move to another day is for work still ahead of you. Anything planned, or marked not done, can be moved. It is in the same … menu, listed above Copy.

Between templates and these three, nearly all manual planning can eventually reduce to one of: start from a template, copy something you already did, or move something you had planned to a different day.

5. Rest days and classes

To add a rest day: tap + and pick Rest day. It becomes a real entry on the calendar carrying its own recovery guidance, rather than an empty gap between workouts.

To log something you did outside Parameter: tap + and pick External class. Give it a name and a date, and link it to the app it happens in, such as Peloton or Down Dog. The entry deep-links into that app, and when the class produces a HealthKit workout, you can link that result back so the duration and heart rate land in your Parameter history. Your log stays complete even for the workouts Parameter did not run itself.