Recovery, read against your own baseline

Three inputs, scored against your own history

The score weights heart rate variability at 40%, resting heart rate at 30% and sleep quality at 30%. When your wearable reports breathing rate or blood oxygen, those take a combined 15%. HRV and resting heart rate are compared with your own baseline, the average of every reading you have logged to date, not a population norm, and a lower resting heart rate scores better.

Enter HRV and resting heart rate by hand each morning, or sync a wearable and skip the typing. Both run through the same formula. Measure the same way each morning; that makes the score more reliable than a pricier device would.

The score falls into one of three bands: primed (70+), ready (40 to 69) or prioritize recovery (under 40), with a training-readiness note. Below it, a breakdown shows how much each input contributed, and trend views over 14, 30 and 90 days show a slow slide before it turns into a bad week.

Suggestions from fixed rules

A resting heart rate above your baseline brings up an "ease back" prompt. Several low-scoring days in a row bring up a deload flag. Each suggestion comes from a rule you can read, gives the same result for the same inputs, and is not written by a language model. Where a rule fires, the app says which one.

Pro adds a recovery-versus-performance correlation: whether your scores track how your sessions went, so you can judge how much to trust the number for you.

Recovery informs training, and on Pro it can ease a week

On Pro, three low-recovery days in a row ease that week's training automatically, and one tap on your workout undoes it; if a coach reviews your training, they get the change as a proposal to approve instead. On any tier, every block still closes on its scheduled deload week. A single morning's number does not cancel a session or change a program.

Your daily check-in holds both the sleep and resting heart rate behind your recovery score and the weigh-in behind your calorie target, so you can see a rough week in both at once. Upkeep's medication and appointment records often explain what the numbers only flag, such as a resting heart rate that rose the week a new prescription started. If you have a coach, their Alerts widget lists clients with missed check-ins and stalled lifts across the roster.

A declared condition (POTS, hypermobility and others) can change how the three inputs are weighted, because for some people resting heart rate tracks posture more than recovery. That correction applies as soon as you declare the condition; it is not an opt-in adaptation.

Sync a device, or don’t

MuscleBuddy reads recovery data from Whoop, Oura, Withings and Google Health (Fitbit and Pixel Watch). Connect one and HRV, resting heart rate and sleep come in each morning.

Android Health Connect and Polar are not yet live, and there's no iOS HealthKit integration or MuscleBuddy watch app today, on either platform. If you'd rather not connect anything, manual entry runs the same formula. The one difference: a wearable that reports breathing rate or blood oxygen adds the respiratory factor, which hand entry does not supply.

Part of your daily check-in

Recovery inputs sit in the same one-minute daily check-in as sleep, fatigue, soreness, motivation and stress. If you connect a wearable, the app fills in the numeric fields, and you are asked only for what the app can't get another way.

Share your recovery data with a coach and they see the same score, breakdown and trend you do. Turn sharing off and it is yours alone. Recovery is health data under MuscleBuddy's privacy rules: it does not appear in a feed, on a leaderboard, or in an export to anyone but you and, if you choose, your coach.