Thanks for voting for this feature -- it's done!

If you're on Android, you can update now. If you're on iPhone, you'll have to wait 2-3 days for Apple to approve it. To update:

- Open the store app on your phone
- Search for Dr. Muscle
- Tap update

Now would be a great time to suggest and vote for our next feature. If you'd like to do that, please visit: https://muscle.userecho.com/communities/1-submit-your-feedback/topics#.

Really appreciate your support and advice. Thanks!

Carl Juneau, PhD
Founder of Dr. Muscle

I'm happy to announce the official launch of our new volume dashboard! See it live at https://dashboard.dr-muscle.com/. Since beta, Ross Coundon has updated them. They load much faster, and now you can view each body part by kg or lb, choose your start and end dates, see a trendline for your sets and 1RM, and more. Big thx to Ross for his help with the dashboard. It's open source, so if you'd like to contribute, get in touch.

Marc, that's a great suggestion, and I'm happy to say we released that exact feature on June 14! You can learn more it here: https://dr-muscle.com/overtraining/. 

It looks like it didn't trigger for you though this time tough, so I'll be following up by email. I'm thinking maybe you trained once during that break. We'll see 1-on-1 (trying to keep this forum for feature requests).

Cheers, and all the best in 2020!

Hi Ross! Happy to say you can already do that. Here's how:

- Tap the pen icon next to any exercise

- Tap "More"

- Toggle on "Use custom reps"
- Set your reps
- Tap "Save"

I'm marking this suggestion as completed. Cheers!

Hey Greg. Thanks for clarifying. I'll close this thread here and follow up with you by email re your goals. Cheers.

Hi Greg! All our programs and settings are already designed to maximize muscle gain. So, I'm puzzled. Can you tell me a bit more about what you have in mind?

Volume charts are here! Just in time for Christmas :)

I recently co-authored a review titled Mesocycle Progression in Hypertrophy: Volume Versus Intensity with Mike Israetel, Jared Feather and Tiago Vasconcelos Faleiro. It was published on Dec 11 (https://journals.lww.com/nsca-scj/Abstract/publishahead/Mesocycle_Progression_in_Hypertrophy__Volume.99298.aspx).

Howshould you progress in a mesocycle? From the abstract:

"Should the trainee add more weight to the bar each week, add repetitions to the sets, or add whole sets to provide the best hypertrophy-specific overload? Based on the current literature, the likely answer is “some of all 3,” but with a progression in set numbers probably being the most well supported."

Keep in mind that this is week-to-week progression in a mesocycle (typically 4-8 weeks). Long-term, IMO, you should focus on adding weight to the bar.

Still, it's a good idea to keep an eye on your weekly volume (best measured in number of hard sets per body part). It should be around 10-20 sets. I'm posting an image of what my volume looks like for shoulders.

As you can see:

– Volume went up and down week to week
– I did between 4 and 34 sets a week (but mostly 14-21 sets)
– My average went up from 15.2 to 15.5 sets over the course of the year

That's smack within guidelines, and subjectively speaking, I'd say my shoulders have grown this year. Mind you, I've been working out for 19 years now, so they don't grow as fast as they used to and any change is hard to spot.

Now, a small Christmas gift from customer Ross Coundon for users of Dr. Muscle. Want to analyse your volume, like I did? Head over to our new volume dashboard (https://cranky-wiles-88244c.netlify.com/). The dashboard is still early, so let me know if you notice any issues. And it's open source, so if you'd like to contribute, get in touch.

Speaking of which, a message from Ross:

"I'm delighted to be able to help out the community and I know the visibility of body part set volume was something a few users were looking for so that's what I started with. It's open-source, so any frontend developers (specifically VueJS) in the group that would like to get involved?"

Merry Christmas!

Bob, thank you for that suggestion.

Stephen, the app does auto schedule easy workouts. You get them from level 4 and up, on all programs.

Great point Victor; that was indeed part of the problem. Our database was maxing out 5-6 times a day, causing delays at peak hours. We upgraded to a bigger plan and now everything seems much smoother. Thx for your wisdom!

Thanks for voting for this feature -- it's done!

You can now work out with fewer and shorter load times. In our tests, the app now loads 36% faster (opening a workout, doing 4 sets of an exercise, and saving it now takes 31 seconds, down from 48).

If you're on Android, you can update now. If you're on iPhone, you'll have to wait 2-3 days for Apple to approve it. To update:

- Open the store app on your phone
- Search for Dr. Muscle
- Tap update

We have more speed improvements coming up, but I'll mark this suggestion as completed today. Now would be a great time to suggest and vote for our next feature. If you'd like to do that, please visit: https://muscle.userecho.com/communities/1-submit-your-feedback/topics#.

Really appreciate your support and advice. Thanks!

Carl Juneau, PhD
Founder of Dr. Muscle