Gyms & Equipment

Badger lets you track which gym, machine, and attachment you used for each exercise. This unlocks machine-scoped progress tracking - your cable row on the low pulley and your cable row on the high cable are treated as separate performance histories.

Managing gyms

Go to You → Gyms to manage your gym list.

Tap + to create a gym.
Tap a gym to edit its name or notes, or to set it as the default.
The default gym is automatically used when starting a workout if you have only one gym, or if a default is set among multiple.
Each gym has its own Plate inventory - open a gym and tap Plate assortment to set which plates (and how many) are available there. Competition gyms often stock both kg and lbs plates, so the set is kept per unit. A gym with no set of its own falls back to your global one, so the plate calculator works out of the box; per-gym editing is optional.
Each gym also has its own Racks - open a gym and use the Racks section to say which dumbbells and kettlebells it stocks, so the weight stepper walks the real rack while you train.
Gyms can be archived (hidden from pickers but preserved for historical data) instead of deleted.

Machines

Go to You → Machines to manage machines.

Tap + to create a machine (e.g. "Cable station", "Leg press", "Smith machine"). Give it a name and pick which gyms it lives at - with only one gym, it links there automatically. You land on the new machine's page right away to fill in the rest of its details.
Each machine has two toggles: Uses attachments and Uses grip types.
Set the machine's Resistance type - Selectorized (a pin-selected weight stack), Plate-loaded, or Unspecified if you'd rather not say. This is the setting that matters most: it decides what the rest of the machine's weight settings even ask you.
The Plate calculator section follows the resistance type, so you're only ever asked something that makes sense for the machine in front of you:
- Selectorized - there is no plate calculator section at all. A pin-selected stack has no plates to load, so there is nothing to configure. The weight increment settings below stay, since those are exactly what a stack does need.
- Plate-loaded - choose Dual-Loaded (the starting default) or Single-Loaded. Dual-Loaded also lets you enter the machine's Starting weight (see below). There's no option to turn the calculator off here: a machine you load with plates has plate math by definition.
- Unspecified - you choose None, Dual-Loaded or Single-Loaded, and nothing is selected until you pick one. Until then Badger says so ("Not set") and the exercise's own plate calculator setting applies. None turns the calculator off for this machine entirely.
Set the Starting weight - what the machine weighs empty, before any plates (the bar, the sled, or the arms). Most machines aren't labeled, so leave it blank if you don't know; the plate calculator then just counts plates. Tap the (i) beside the label for the same explanation in the app.
On a plate-loaded machine that loads both sides, set How weight is logged to Total or one side, so Badger reads your number the right way. This matters on iso-lateral machines: load 90 lbs a side and write down 90, and without this set correctly it would be filed as 90 total. Once set, the weight field (which then shows "/ side"), the plate calculator, and every set you log on the machine all use the same reading, and your numbers stay exactly as you typed them. Sets you logged before this existed are unaffected. A pin-selected stack and a single-lever machine don't ask, since each has only one number.
Set a Logging unit if this machine should be logged in a specific unit (kg or lbs) regardless of your app setting - useful for a stack that is physically kg but dual-marked with awkward lbs numbers. Leave it on Default to follow the exercise, then the app setting. When you start a set on the machine, the weight field switches to its unit automatically - and so do the routine editor, quick edit, and the log preview for any routine slot that has this machine as its default, so you plan in the unit you lift in.
Optionally set a Weight increment - the physical step between settings (for example 5 kg between stack positions), entered in the machine's own unit. For stacks that change step size partway up, also fill in Then step and Above (for example 10 kg up to 100, then 20 kg). The progressive-overload suggestion snaps to this grid, and so do the + and − buttons beside the weight field while you log - so a stack that steps by 10 moves by 10, not by your exercise's 2.5.
On the machine's detail screen, use the Available at section to link the machine to one or more gyms. A machine that is linked to no gym at all can't be offered while you're training, and the section tells you so.
Deleting a machine: if the machine isn't referenced anywhere, deleting it also removes it from every gym and exercise link. If it's used in a logged workout or set as a default in a routine, deletion is blocked so your history and routines stay intact - remove it from those first if you really want it gone.

Linking machines to exercises

Linking a machine to an exercise marks the two as compatible, which is what puts the machine at the top of the "Set machine" picker while you train.

You don't have to set this up in advance. Pick a machine from the picker's second section, Other machines at this gym, and it moves to the top section from then on. Link machines while training, or up front via the exercise library → Edit → Compatible machines.

Attachments

Attachments are cable/pulley accessories (e.g. "Straight bar", "Rope", "V-bar", "D-handle"). Go to You → Attachments to manage them.

Tap + to create an attachment. Like machines, you name it and pick its gyms (skipped when you only have one), then land on its page to finish up.
Link attachments to gyms via the Available at section on each attachment's detail screen. An attachment with no gym isn't offered while training, and the section says so.
Deleting an attachment works like deleting a machine: blocked if it appears in a logged workout or a routine default, otherwise removed from all gyms.

Attachments are available in the machine picker only when the current machine has Uses attachments enabled.

Notes you write on an attachment show up in the training screen's notes card whenever that attachment is selected, next to the machine's own setup notes.

Bars

A bar is a thing you own, not a number on a settings screen. The Olympic bar, the trap bar, the EZ curl, and the worn 45 in the corner that actually weighs 44 are all different bars, so Badger lets you name them and pick one per exercise. Go to You → Bars to manage them.

Tap + to create a bar. Like machines and attachments, you name it and pick its gyms, then land on its page to finish up.
Give it a weight in kg or lbs. It is stored exactly as you type it, never converted, so a 45 lb bar stays 45. Leave it blank if you don't know - a bar with no weight is still perfectly useful for the rest of what bars do.
A bar can carry notes and a photo, same as a machine.
Link bars to gyms from the bar's Available at section, or from Bars at this gym on the gym's own page.
Deleting a bar works like deleting a machine: blocked if it appears in a logged workout or as a routine default, otherwise removed from every gym.

Picking a bar while you train

On a barbell exercise, at a gym that has bars, tap the bar chip in the context row (or use ⋮ → Set bar…) and pick from the bars at your gym, each shown with its weight in your logging unit. Standing in front of a bar you never added? Use New bar… at the bottom - it only asks for a name; weigh it later on its own page.

The bar chip only shows up on a barbell exercise, at a gym with bars linked.

What the bar's weight is used for

The bar you pick is the first place Badger looks for a starting weight, ahead of the machine's and then the exercise's own. That one answer feeds both the plate calculator and the warm-up calculator, so they can't disagree with each other.

A bar with no weight entered doesn't blank anything out - it just falls through, and whatever the machine or exercise already said still applies. Adding "Trap bar" purely so your records stay separate never costs you a bar weight you'd already set up.

Records are kept per bar

A different bar is a different lift, so personal records are tracked per machine and per bar. A deadlift off the trap bar doesn't compete with your straight-bar deadlift, and neither one hides the other.

Sets logged with no bar recorded - which is every set you logged before bars existed - still see your whole history, exactly as before. Nothing you already logged changed when this arrived.

A routine slot can carry a Default bar, so the right bar is already picked when you start the session. The bar you used shows in your history and on the workout summary, and you can change it after the fact by tapping the equipment line there.

Accessories: bands, chains, and straps

Accessories are the things you add to a lift that aren't the load itself: resistance bands, chains, suspension straps. Go to You → Accessories to manage them. Each one has:

A name and a kind - Band, Chain, Suspension, or Other. (Suspension shows as "Suspension (TRX)" in lists and picker headings, where there is room for the qualifier.)
A color. This is the point of the whole screen: people say "the green band", not "the 1.9 cm band". Pick from the preset swatches or set your own. An accessory with no color gets a hollow ring rather than a made-up one.
An optional label, free text, shown beside the name - "rated 25 lbs", "doubled", whatever helps. It's descriptive only; nothing calculates from it. See below.
Notes, and the usual Available at gym links.

There is no photo field, on purpose. A photo of a band tells you nothing the color doesn't.

Picking accessories while you train

An accessories chip joins the context row on a barbell or bodyweight exercise, at a gym that has accessories linked. On a machine it appears only when that machine has Supports bands switched on, and only bands are offered there.

Unlike the machine and bar pickers, this one takes several at once and stays open until you tap Done - two bands stack to a resistance neither one gives you alone, and chains often ride on a bar that's already banded. Unchecking everything and confirming clears the lot; backing out changes nothing.

The chip then reads back as a count with the colors beside it - "2 bands", "1 chain", or "3 accessories" when you've mixed kinds - and the same count and dots show in your history and on the workout summary. Three band names don't fit on a chip; the dots are what tell them apart.

Accessories never touch the math

Badger records what you attached and nothing more: no weight is adjusted, no plate math changes, the +/− stepper is unaffected, and the label is never parsed. A band's rated tension isn't what it actually contributes at the top of a rep, so it plays no part in the numbers.

Sets logged with an accessory attached stay out of your personal records entirely, in both directions: a banded set never earns a PR badge, and a banded 100 kg bench can't stop a bare 95 kg bench from being one. Clear the accessories off an exercise and its sets go back into the running.

Two ways to handle a session that's part banded and part bare:

Bands for some sets, then bare for the rest - add the exercise twice, once with the accessory and once without. The bare rows keep their records.
Alternating within a session - do the same thing and put the two in a superset, which is how you alternate between anything else.

Dumbbell and kettlebell racks

A weight increment describes a regular ladder. A real rack doesn't run like one: it goes 5, 10, 15 up to 50, then skips to 60 and 70, and stops. So instead of a step size, Badger lets you list what's actually on the rack, and the +/− buttons beside the weight field walk that list.

The rack never restricts anything. You can still type any weight you like, nothing snaps on save, and no set is ever checked against it. It decides one thing only: which number the stepper lands on next.

Setting one up

Open a gym and use the Racks section - one row for dumbbells, one for kettlebells. Or wait until it's in your way: on a dumbbell or kettlebell exercise at a gym with no rack set up, a quiet "Set up My Gym's dumbbell rack" link sits under the weight field. It goes away by itself once a rack exists.

The first time you open a rack it fills in a sensible starting list and saves it, so tapping the link once already leaves you with a working rack.
Add weights one at a time, or use Add range for a run of them - from, to, and a step. An adjustable dumbbell is just a range.
The list is the whole story: nothing distinguishes a weight the preset filled in from one you typed, so edit and delete freely.
kg and lbs racks are kept separately and never converted between each other. A rack is a physical fact about a gym, and 20 kg bells are not 45 lb bells. A kg / lbs switch at the top of the editor flips between the two lists, so you can set both up from the same place.
A rack with fewer than two weights isn't a rack, so the stepper falls back to your ordinary increment until there are at least two.

Kettlebell colors

Competition kettlebells are color-coded by weight, and the kg preset comes with that code already set: 8 pink, 12 blue, 16 yellow, 20 purple, 24 green, 28 orange, 32 red (4 kg has no standard color and starts blank). Tap the dot beside any weight to change it, or to add one to a dumbbell entry.

The lbs kettlebell preset is a plain uncolored ladder - there's no standard pound color code to draw from.

While you're logging, a matching dot appears next to the weight whenever it lands exactly on a colored rack weight - a glance-check that you picked up the bell you meant to.

What the stepper does with it

Press + or − and the weight moves to the next entry on the rack in that direction. A weight that isn't on the rack moves to its nearest neighbor on that side. Above the top of the rack, or below the bottom, the stepper goes back to using your ordinary increment rather than trapping you inside the list.

A small line under the field says where the step is coming from: "Step: rack · My Gym". It names the rack rather than a number, because walking a rack has no single step size - the next tap would contradict it.

Kettlebells in kg at a gym that works in pounds? Racks follow the exercise's own logging unit, not your app-wide setting. Switch the rack editor to kg and set that rack up, then set the exercise's weight unit to kg too (exercise library → Edit → Weight unit) - both steps are needed for the stepper to walk it.

Photos

Add a photo to a machine, attachment, or bar so you can recognize it at the rack. Open it, tap the photo panel at the top for take a photo or choose from your gallery, and tap again to replace or remove it. (Accessories don't have one - their color does that job.)

Attachment photos also show as a small thumbnail in the attachment picker during a workout, which is the point: "the rope or the short V-bar?" is easier to answer from a picture than a name.

Photos stay on your device unless you ask otherwise. Nothing is uploaded on its own, and Badger only asks for camera or photo access at the moment you first use it.
Cloud backup leaves photos out unless you turn them on. Backups stay small and quick by default, so photos are not included and a restore onto a new phone brings your machines and attachments back without their pictures. To carry them across, turn on Back up equipment photos on the Cloud backup screen. It is off by default, because photos make backups considerably larger and they use your own Drive storage.
Deleting a machine, attachment, or bar deletes its photo too.

Grip types

When a machine has Uses grip types enabled, a grip chip appears in the training screen's context row for that exercise. Tap it to open the picker and choose your grip, before or after logging sets:

Overhand
Underhand
Neutral
Wide
Close
Hammer

To clear it, open the picker again and tap No grip. The grip is stored on the workout exercise record and shown in the history tab.

You can also set a default grip type per routine exercise in the predefined sets screen - this gets pre-filled when starting a routine workout.

Gym context during workouts

Automatic gym assignment

When a workout is created, Badger tries to set the gym automatically:

If you have only one gym → that gym is used.
If you have a default gym → that gym is used.
If you have multiple gyms with no default → no gym is set (you can assign it manually).

If a routine day has a default gym configured, that overrides the above when starting from a routine.

Changing the gym mid-workout

The current gym name appears in the training screen's header bar. To change it: tap ⋮ → Change gym… and select a different gym.

Setting a machine for an exercise

Tap ⋮ → Set machine… to pick a machine and (if applicable) an attachment. Machines already marked compatible with this exercise at your current gym come first; Other machines at this gym lists the rest, and picking one from there marks it compatible for next time.

Badger remembers the last attachment used for each exercise + machine combination and pre-selects it next time.

Progress filtering by machine

On the Progress screen, if you've used the same exercise on multiple machines, a row of filter chips appears. Select a specific machine to see only that machine's history, or select All to see combined data.

The most recently used machine is selected by default. The same filter applies to PRs - they're scoped per machine when a machine is set, and per bar when a bar is. The filter chips themselves are machine-only for now: the bar you used is named on every row, but you can't yet narrow the list to it.

Routine defaults

You can set default equipment at the routine level to avoid re-selecting it each session:

Routine day → Default gym - Pre-sets the workout gym when starting from this day.
Routine exercise → Default machine & attachment - Pre-sets the machine for that exercise when starting from a routine.
Routine exercise → Default bar - Pre-sets the bar on a barbell exercise.
Routine exercise → Default grip type - Pre-sets the grip for that exercise.

Accessories are picked per session rather than planned, so there is no routine default for them.

Gym detail → ⋮ → Share gym writes a .badger file you can send to anyone - hand it to a friend who just joined your gym and they get the place as it stands, instead of typing in every machine themselves.

It carries everything that describes the equipment: the machines with their resistance types, increments and units, the attachments, the bars with their weights, the bands and chains with their colors, and the notes on any of them. It also carries the dumbbell and kettlebell racks and the plate inventory, whichever you've actually set up - a gym still on Badger's built-in plate defaults carries no plate list, since the receiving app already ships those.

What describes you does not travel: your photos stay on your phone, and so do the personal setup cues you save against one exercise on one machine.

Nothing is overwritten on the way in. If they already have that gym with their own rack set up, theirs is left as it was and only the gaps are filled. The import preview marks each one yours are kept when that gym already has it, and counts the attachments, bars and accessories alongside the machines before you confirm. Full field-by-field details are on the file format page.