Training plans

A NexRex plan is a calendar of workouts built around your goal race and current fitness. It adapts as you train — missed sessions, fast progress, and fatigue all reshape what comes next.

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Building a plan

Choose a race distance and date (or a general goal), and NexRex generates a weekly schedule with the right mix of easy runs, workouts, and long runs.

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How plans adapt

When your plan changes — especially when your coach approves an adjustment — you’ll get a plan changes notification. Tap it to open an in-app explanation showing what changed, why NexRex suggested it, and any note your coach left. Toggle this notification under Settings → Notifications.

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Reviewing a proposed adjustment

When Rex spots a reason to change your week — for example, accumulated fatigue, a missed long run, or a recent fitness jump — a Plan adjustment card appears at the top of your home screen instead of silently rewriting the plan. The same card is on the mobile app home and on the personal Home tab of the web console. The card leads with the reasons so you can decide whether to take the change:

• Why Rex is suggesting the change, plus the weekly objective and how it affects your goal race.
• Original vs. proposed for the affected workout, shown side by side. Rest-day proposals are labelled Rest day, easy-rebuild proposals are tagged as a restart of the block, and increase proposals are tagged Add load.
• Accept applies the proposed workout to your plan. Keep original dismisses the proposal and leaves your plan untouched.

You’ll only see the card while a proposal is open for review; once you choose Accept or Keep original, it disappears until Rex has a new suggestion. When Rex sends a proactive push notification about a new proposal, tapping it opens the same review card.

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Explaining a Keep original

When you tap Keep original, Rex asks a short optional follow-up so future proposals fit you better. Pick one of the reason chips or add a free-form note. Both are optional — you can confirm without any reason at all. The reason and note are shared with your coach if you have one, so a Work got in the way on a Wednesday helps them read the week without you having to message. Not every weekly check produces a proposal. When the evidence doesn’t warrant a change, Rex records a keep decision and leaves the week as scheduled — no review card appears.

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When Rex proposes an increase

Rex can also propose raising next week’s load, not just reducing it. Increase proposals are deliberately conservative:

• The increase is capped at 10% above the scheduled workout’s target distance or duration. NexRex’s servers reject anything larger.
• An increase only changes volume (distance or duration). It never changes pace, intensity zones, or the interval structure of the workout.
• Rex only proposes one when your recent training supports it: at least 85% completion over the trailing four weeks, no injury, illness, fatigue, or overtraining signals, readiness that isn’t declining, no race within the next three weeks, and no earlier increase that went unfinished.

If any of those checks fail, or NexRex can’t verify them from your data, no increase is proposed. You review an increase the same way as any other proposal: Accept or Keep original. An increase card also includes a Why more panel with the evidence Rex used, so you can see the numbers before you accept:

• Last 4 weeks completed — your completion rate over the trailing four weeks, as a percentage.
• Training load — the direction of your recent load trend.
• Readiness — the direction of your readiness trend.
• Capped at +10% appears when the proposed increase hit the ceiling. Without this tag, the increment Rex chose was smaller than the cap.

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If a coach manages your training

When you have an assigned coach, weekly proposals go to your coach instead of you. The proposal-ready notification is sent to your coach, and the pending adjustment appears to you as read-only: you can see what Rex proposed, but the Accept and Keep original actions belong to your coach. NexRex rejects athlete approve or reject attempts on coach-managed proposals server-side. What happens at the review deadline depends on the review mode your coach has set. See Weekly adjustment review modes.

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What happens if you don’t respond

Each proposal has a review deadline, at least 24 hours after you’re notified that it’s ready. If neither you nor your coach responds by the deadline, NexRex applies the proposed change automatically. For coach-managed proposals, this deadline behavior depends on your coach’s review mode; some modes let the proposal expire unapplied instead. The plan changes notification says the change was applied automatically at the review deadline, and the in-app explanation shows the deadline and that the change was auto-applied. An auto-applied change is never attributed to your coach; only changes your coach actually approves carry their name. To keep or revert a change you didn’t want, open the plan and adjust the affected workout, or reject the next proposal when it appears.

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Post-session micro-check

After you finish a session that was adjusted from an accepted proposal, Home shows a one-tap How did it feel? card asking whether the session came in Too easy, Just right, or Too hard. Rex uses your answer to calibrate future proposals.

• The card only appears for sessions run on a day when an accepted adjustment was applied, and only for a short window after the session completes.
• Each accepted adjustment gets one micro-check. Once you answer (or the window passes), the card doesn’t return for that adjustment.
• If more than one applied session is waiting on an answer, Home offers the most recent one.

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Turning off proposals for a plan

When you enroll in a plan, the final settings step includes an AI Dynamic Adjustment toggle. Turn it off and NexRex stops proposing weekly adjustments for that plan; you won’t see review cards or receive adjustment notifications for it. Other plans keep their own setting, since the toggle is per plan. NexRex re-checks this setting before auto-applying anything. If you turn the toggle off while a proposal is waiting for review, the proposal expires at its deadline instead of being applied. If your coach manages your training, your plan may come from a shared group plan instead — your coach controls the template and adjustments.

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Reading your week in the training calendar

The training calendar is the main view for your plan. It’s redesigned in version 8.1.0 to put phase, weekly workload, coach notes, and plan switching one tap away from the week you’re looking at.

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Compact and spacious views

A pill in the app bar switches the week between two densities:

• Compact shows each day as a fixed-height horizontal lane. Best for scanning the whole week at once.
• Spacious stacks full-width cards for each day. Best for reading workout details without opening the preview sheet.

Your choice is remembered between sessions.

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Phase and week-stats row

Above the day list, a header row shows the current training phase (Base, Build, Development, Peak, Taper, Recovery, or Race) as a small accent pill, plus this week’s total distance and session count on the right. Tap the phase pill to open the weekly overview when your coach or Rex has written one.

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Weekly summary and coach reminder

A notepad icon in the calendar toolbar opens a bottom sheet with two sections:

• Weekly summary — the objective and shape of the current week.
• Coach reminder — anything your coach has written specifically for this week.

A pulsing accent dot on the icon flags a week you haven’t read yet. The first time you land on a week that has unseen content, the sheet auto-opens once so you don’t miss it. After that, tap the icon whenever you want to reread it.

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Switching plans

If you have more than one active plan, a plan-switcher pill sits below the app bar showing the currently displayed plan’s name and a dot for its position in your active list. Tap it to open the plan management sheet, which replaces the old side drawer:

• Each active plan is listed with its type (personal or group), date range, and completion progress.
• Tap a plan card to display it in the calendar. This only changes what you’re viewing; it never overwrites the plan on the server.
• The eye icon on each card toggles whether that plan’s workouts show on the calendar.
• A details button on each card opens the plan overview without switching the displayed plan.
• A header link jumps to the full plan management screen.

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Workout preview

Tapping any workout opens the redesigned workout preview sheet. It leads with the structure (warm-up, intervals, cool-down, etc.), followed by coach notes and any linked demo video. When a session is completed, the CTA becomes Completed · Undo so you can revert to scheduled if you tapped by mistake.

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Adding an entry

Tapping an empty day opens a kind picker with tiles for the entry types you can log from mobile: Race, Nutrition, Note, Recovery, and Rest. (Sport activities like runs sync in from Garmin, Strava, or Apple Watch — you can’t create them by hand on mobile.) Picking a kind opens a tailored form: races ask for distance, goal time, and priority; recovery asks for type and duration; rest asks for a reason.

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Training plan on Home

The Home screen shows a training plan summary card for your primary active plan:

• Plan name and date range.
• A progress bar and percentage for how far through the block you are.

Tap the card to open the plan overview. From there, a calendar icon in the overview toolbar jumps straight to the training calendar’s week view — useful when you got to the overview from Home rather than from the calendar tab.

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Workout intensity labels

Coach-assigned workouts carry a short intensity token that shows up on activity cards, training-calendar rows, and the workout details sheet. Heart-rate zone targets are prefixed with HR so you can tell them apart from pace-zone targets at a glance:

• HR Z1–HR Z5 target a specific HR zone.
• HR <Z1 targets below Zone 1 (recovery ceiling).
• HR >Z5 targets above Zone 5 (max-effort ceiling).

In the workout details sheet, the label expands to include the bpm range for that zone once you’ve set your HR zones under Settings → Zones. For example, HR Z2 · 132–148 bpm. Activity cards and the compact info line stay symbolic (no bpm) to keep the row short. If your HR zones aren’t configured, the label falls back to the plain symbolic form (HR Z2) everywhere, including the details sheet. Set your zones under Settings → Zones to get the bpm range.

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How durations and distances read in the workout details sheet

The workout details sheet formats each step the way your coach authored it, so short recoveries and track reps don’t get lost in rounding.

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Step durations

• Under one hour, seconds are kept. A 40-second full-stop recovery reads 40s, and a 1-minute-30-second step reads 1m 30s. The old behavior floored every step to whole minutes, so a 40-second rest showed as 0m and 1m30s showed as 1m.
• At or above one hour, the display switches to the hour-and-minute form (for example 1h 05m), unchanged from before.

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Step distances

• Steps shorter than the big unit render in metres so track reps read the way coaches enter them. A 400 m interval shows as 400 m, not 0.4 km on metric or 0.25 mi on imperial.
• At or above the big unit, the one-decimal form is kept: 10.0 km on metric, 2.0 mi on imperial. This applies to each step row, the sheet’s header total, and the linked-activity card at the bottom.
• Your unit choice comes from Settings → Units. Coaches always author in metres for sub-kilometre steps, and NexRex converts to your unit when it reaches you.

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Setting up your training zones

Open Settings → Zones to reach the Training Zones overview. Pace and heart-rate zones are configured on separate detail screens, so you can update one without touching the other. Changes are saved when you leave each section.

• Pace zones — derive from a recent race result or manually tune each range.
• Heart-rate zones — pick an automatic method (Max HR only, or Max + Resting HR presets) or expand Advanced heart-rate settings to configure from your tested lactate-threshold heart rate (LTHR).

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Heart-rate zones from LTHR

If you’ve done a guided or field threshold test, LTHR gives you the most accurate five-zone split for running. In the HR zones screen, expand Advanced heart-rate settings, enter your LTHR (BPM), and tap Calculate from LTHR. NexRex uses Joe Friel’s published running percentages, adapted to the app’s five-zone model (Friel’s three Z5 subdivisions are combined into a single Z5): The screen previews the % LTHR bands next to each bpm range. Tap a zone to fine-tune it as a custom bpm range if you want to deviate from the formula. Your LTHR value is saved with your zones so the source is preserved. Edits to Max HR and Resting HR stay aligned with whichever method you last used, so switching between automatic presets and LTHR doesn’t quietly break the ordering.

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Completion and adherence

Every activity that’s tied to a plan carries a completion percentage and a status band so you can tell at a glance how a session tracked against what was scheduled. The same numbers surface everywhere a plan session shows up:

• Activity cards — the badge on the right of each card shows the status (NEXT, TARGET, MISSED, SKIPPED, FREE) or, for completed runs, the completion percentage (for example ✓ 96%).
• Training calendar — day tiles use the same bands, so missed and skipped sessions stand out from on-target runs without opening the activity.
• Personal training plan — the overview shows a progress bar for activities completed, plus an adherence figure that reflects how closely those completed runs matched their targets.
• Group plan cards on Home — each group plan shows a slim progress bar and a NN% complete label so you can see how far along the block is.

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How the bands work

Completion is reported as a whole-number percentage between 0 and 150 — values above 100 mean you went further, faster, or longer than the target. The app maps that number, together with the session status, to one of four bands:

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Over-target results

Going further or faster than planned is still tracked as completion, not as a bonus. A 130% long run shows the actual percentage (for example ✓ 130%) and lands in the caution band — the plan was calibrated for a target volume, so materially overshooting is worth noticing the same way undershooting is. The activity itself is still counted as completed.