Coach Orion lives on your iPhone. It reads every set you log, factors in last night's recovery, and tells you exactly what to do next: heavier, hold, add a rep, or back off.
Log a set; within seconds Coach Orion tells you whether to go heavier, hold, add a rep, or back off. The numbers come from a deterministic progression engine.
With permission, Coach Orion reads HRV, resting heart rate, and sleep from Apple Health. When those say you're run down, it drops sets and adds reps in reserve. It never adds sets beyond your program.
Volume landmarks, autoregulation, planned deloads. The principles strength researchers spent decades converging on, running quietly behind every set. You train; Coach Orion does the thinking.
Coach Orion picks a program from its coach-reviewed library to fit your goal, experience, and the equipment you actually own, then adjusts each session as you train. Works with just dumbbells and floor space, and scales up to a full rack.
Tell Coach Orion your goal, training days per week, experience, and what's in your gym, from just dumbbells and floor space to a full barbell and rack. It builds your training block in under a second.
Weight, reps, and reps in reserve. That's it. The rest timer starts on its own, and the methodology lives behind the screen.
Set by set RIR, your recent performance on each lift, soreness check-ins, and last night's recovery, all combined into a single coaching call.
Reps and load climb as you earn them. Sets follow the program's weekly ramp, minus any your recovery takes off. Week 4 doesn't look like week 1.
After every session, Coach Orion writes you a short verdict: what the numbers mean, what stood out, and one thing to carry into the next session. Tap a sample.
With your permission, Coach Orion reads HRV, resting heart rate, and sleep from Apple Health each time you open the app, and adjusts the day's session when you start it.
A fixed plan runs the same whether you slept seven hours or four. Coach Orion checks your recovery first. One warning sign (short sleep, HRV well under your 7-day average, a high resting heart rate) adds a rep in reserve and trims one accessory set, unless you report high energy at check-in. A rough night, like under five hours of sleep, drops the last set of every exercise.
On a normal day you get the program as written. Coach Orion never adds sets on a good day; the weekly build is already in the plan.
The principles aren't ours. They're the body of evidence the hypertrophy community has converged on over the last decade. Coach Orion is the system that runs them for you. Read how Orion coaches, rule by rule.
Reps climb when you hit your target RIR. Reach the top of the rep range and the weight goes up one step. Beginners keep one rep target and move up in weight once sets feel clearly easy. Your logged RIR is the gate.
The default 6-week block adds sets week by week, then finishes with a deload week. Your working weights carry into the next block.
Programs start each muscle near the minimum weekly sets that drive growth (MEV). Muscles the program prioritizes build toward their maximum adaptive volume (MAV) through the block, never past it.
Reps in reserve replaces “as many as possible.” Hard but not redlined, every set, every session. How autoregulation works.
Programs end their block with a deload week unless you turn it off. If two of three fatigue signals show up sooner (RIR creeping down, stalled lifts, high soreness on two or more muscles), Coach Orion applies an early deload on its own, at most once every 28 days. You can skip it.
About 30 hours after a session, Coach Orion asks how each muscle you trained feels. If a muscle is still very sore, it can ease that muscle off by leaving an extra rep in reserve. High soreness also counts toward an early deload. Soreness never adds sets.
These principles are popularized by educators in the strength science community. Coach Orion is an independent product, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in partnership with any of them. The credit for the science belongs to the researchers; the credit for nailing your top set on Thursday belongs to you.
Volume climbs through the block, with more sets and more reps each week, until the planned deload. That week cuts your sets roughly in half and keeps your weights, so your body can consolidate the work you put in.
That's what builds.
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Short reads on reps in reserve, progression, deloads and recovery. Each one answers first, then shows its sources.
Both work about equally for muscle: in an 8-week trial in trained lifters, quad thickness rose about 9.2% when they added weight and 9.1% when they added reps.
DeloadsTake a deload when two or more of these show up together: your main lifts stop climbing for a week or two, sets planned with reps in the tank come in harder, or soreness lingers on several muscles.
LongevityHealth guidelines recommend muscle-strengthening work for all major muscle groups on 2 or more days a week, and cohort studies link about 30 to 60 minutes a week with the largest drop in mortality risk, roughly 10 to 20%.
RecoveryYes, but ease it rather than skip it: on a poorly recovered day, stop each set a rep or two further from failure and trim a few sets, while keeping the weight you would normally use.
ProgressionDouble progression means you keep the same weight and add reps until your working sets reach the top of your rep range at your target effort, then add one small weight step and drop back to the bottom of the range, so you always know what…
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