StrongLifts 5x5 in Badger

Two things usually bring people to this page: they want to keep running 5x5 without paying a subscription for the privilege, and they do not want to abandon the history they already have. Badger does both. It is a log with tools rather than an app that runs the program for you, and that difference is worth understanding before you switch.

What Badger brings to a 5x5

• The template ships with the app. Under Routines, in the Beginner Programs folder, there is a StrongLifts 5x5 routine with two alternating days. Workout A is squat, bench press, and barbell row, five sets of five each. Workout B is squat and overhead press, five sets of five, plus one set of five deadlifts. Set it active and it is ready.
• It alternates for you. The two days are deliberately not pinned to weekdays, so the Today screen leads with whichever comes next based on what you last did. You never have to remember whether today is an A or a B.
• Your weights, not ours. The template carries the rep scheme and no weights at all. The first session is you entering what you actually lift; after that each session starts prefilled from the last one.
• A rest timer that starts itself. It runs when you complete a working set, two minutes by default, and every exercise can carry its own. Squats and rows want different rests, and 5x5 is mostly an argument about resting long enough.
• A plate calculator that works from the plates your gym actually owns, in barbell, machine, or single-lever modes, and tells you what goes on each side.
• A warmup generator that builds the ramp up to your work weight and rounds every rung down to a load you can really make with your plates.
• PRs and graphs on every lift, with no cap on how many routines you keep or how far back your history goes.

What you still decide yourself

If you are coming from an app whose whole job was to run the program, this is the part that decides whether Badger suits you.

• Badger does not add the weight for you. There is no setting that puts 2.5 kg on the bar every session. What it does instead: once you have held the same top weight for three sessions with every working set finished, a line appears above the entry row reading Suggested: 82.5 kg. You type it in, or you do not. The trigger count is adjustable in settings.
• There is an optional write-back, and it is conservative. Auto-progress routine weights, off unless you switch it on, offers at the end of a workout to save weights you already lifted above the plan back into the routine. It never invents an increment, and it asks per exercise before it writes anything.
• No "fail three times, drop ten percent" rule. Badger has a deload feature, off by default, and it works on a different idea: it schedules a whole light week starting the following Monday, at half the weight with two fewer working sets (the defaults; both are adjustable), which you confirm or decline when you start that session. It is a program-wide light week, not a per-lift reset triggered by missed reps. Cutting one stalled lift by ten percent is something you do by hand.
• Nothing decides you have stalled and moves you on. Plateau detection is optional and off by default, applies only to weight-and-reps exercises, and needs at least five sessions spanning three weeks of a flat estimated 1RM before it says anything. When it does, it is a banner with three suggestions, not a decision taken for you.
• No watch app on either platform, and no logging from your wrist.
• No sync between devices. Your training lives on the phone you log it on. There is an optional backup to a private folder in your own Google Drive, and a plain database file you can move yourself, but two phones do not stay in step. See moving to a new phone.

Bringing your StrongLifts history over

Badger reads the CSV that StrongLifts exports, so the years you already logged come with you and your PRs and graphs start out full rather than empty.

1. In StrongLifts, go to Settings → Export workout data to produce a CSV.
2. Get the file onto the phone you train with, however you normally move a file: email it to yourself, drop it in cloud storage, use a cable.
3. In Badger, go to Settings → Your data → Import from Stronglifts and pick the file. This is also offered during first-launch onboarding.
4. Check the preview: exercises, workout days, sets, and the detected weight unit.
5. Import.

What carries across:

• Every set, with its date, exercise, weight, and reps, read straight from the per-set columns.
• Kilograms or pounds, detected from the file's own headers, and stored in the unit you logged them in. Nothing is converted or rounded on the way in.
• The workout name becomes a note on that session, and a row's note attaches to its first set.
• PRs are recalculated from the imported history on their own, and new exercises land in an "Imported" category so you can find and re-sort them.
• When each session started and how long it ran, read from the export's own time columns, so imported history shows real durations.

What does not, so nothing surprises you later:

• Warmups. The StrongLifts export does not mark them, so every logged set arrives as a working set. There is no way for the importer to guess.
• Failed sets, as failures. A missed set of five comes in as what you actually did. Three reps is three reps; nothing labels it a miss.
• Which program a session belonged to. The import brings history, not the program. The 5x5 template is a separate thing you set active.

The import runs entirely on your phone, straight from the file you picked, and you can run it more than once, so a second or partial export is fine to add later. Nothing already logged is overwritten: sets landing on a date you already have merge into that session. Full detail in importing from Stronglifts and switching from another app.

The template as a file you can read

The same 5x5 routine is also published as a download: stronglifts-5x5.badger on the program gallery, exported from the app itself. Open it on your phone and Badger imports it. Open it in a text editor and it is ordinary readable text, so you can see exactly what you are agreeing to before you import it, or edit it first. The file format is documented for the same reason.

When 5x5 runs out

Linear progression ends for everybody, usually within months, and that moment is when most people reconsider their whole app. Worth knowing where Badger stands before you get there rather than after.

• Stretch it first. Smaller jumps, a light week, and rests long enough to be boring will all buy time. Badger has the tools for each; none of them is automatic.
• GZCLP and Upper/Lower both ship as templates in the app and download as files from the program gallery. Either is a reasonable next step.
• 5/3/1 and other percentage programs are a real limit. Badger ships a Boring But Big skeleton, but it will not compute working weights as percentages of a training max, so the arithmetic each cycle is yours. That is written up plainly on the program gallery, together with a way to say you want it built, which is the only signal this site collects.

What it costs

Nothing. No account, no subscription, no ads, no cap on routines or history, and exporting your own numbers is not a paid feature. Badger is free on Google Play, with an iOS beta open in TestFlight. If the reason you are shopping is that a tracker you already paid for changed the deal, read the promise, which is the version of that written down where you can hold us to it, and the no-subscription guide, which compares what free actually means across the trackers people usually weigh up.

About the name

StrongLifts is a trademark of its owner. Badger is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to StrongLifts in any way. This page describes compatibility and nothing else: Badger reads the CSV file that their app exports, and the 5x5 routine that ships inside Badger was written for Badger by us, from the publicly known shape of the program. If you want their app, they are easy to find.