Two shapes of line
Lifting takes date | exercise | weight | reps x sets and cardio takes date | exercise | distance | time. Which one a line is gets decided by what is in the last column: reps and sets make it a lifting entry, a distance or a time make it cardio. Write 5 reps x 5 sets or shorten it to 5x5, and a bare 8 reps counts as one set. Weight can be 135 lb, 60 kg or a plain number in whichever units you picked; bodyweight in that column records the reps with zero volume. Times read as 28 min, 27 min 30 sec, 28:30 for minutes and seconds, or 1:05:30 for hours. Distances take 3.1 mi, 5 km or 800 m and are converted into your chosen unit. Columns split on a vertical bar or a tab, and plain spaces usually work too.
What volume is doing
Volume is weight times reps times sets: five sets of five at 135 lb is 3,375 lb moved. Looking at the number on the bar alone cannot separate a day when you added weight and dropped a set from a day when you held the weight and added one, and volume measures both on the same scale. The catch is that volume does not transfer between exercises. A thousand pounds of squatting and a thousand pounds of curls leave the body in entirely different states, so the number earns its keep within one lift over time and loses most of its meaning across lifts.
Bests and the one-rep-max estimate
Each lift gets its heaviest recorded set, its biggest single session by volume, and an Epley estimate of a one-rep max taken from the best set of twelve reps or fewer. Formulas of that kind disagree with each other, and the disagreement widens as the rep count rises, so the estimate is a marker for tracking rather than a target weight. Cardio gets its best pace from efforts of at least a mile or a kilometre, since anything shorter produces a pace that does not sit on the same scale as a longer run.
Consistency is what makes any of this readable
Everything on this page is a sum, and sums are only as comparable as the notation feeding them. If you record every warm-up set for a month and then stop, volume falls off a cliff without anything about your training changing. The same goes for switching between logging top sets and logging all sets. Pick one convention and stay with it, the way you would keep the camera in the same place for progress photos. One more thing worth saying plainly: none of these totals knows anything about how you are moving. Form, sleep and recovery do not appear anywhere in them, and a joint or a chest that is telling you something is a matter for a clinician, not for a bigger number next week.
Questions people ask
How do I log a session where each set used a different weight?
Give each weight its own line. Several lines with the same date and the same exercise are added together for that day, so a warm-up of 95 lb for 10 and working sets of 135 lb for 5x5 go in as two rows. If you would rather keep it short, logging only the working weight is fine for watching a trend — just do not switch between the two habits mid-log, because volume jumps at the point where you change.
What about yoga, hiking or anything without a weight or a distance?
A time on its own is enough. 08/27/2026 | Yoga | 50 min records the session, adds to that activity’s total time and counts as a training day in the weekly totals and the calendar; with no distance there is simply no pace. A hike can carry both: Hike | 4 mi | 2 hr 30 min.
Is anything saved?
No. Everything is computed in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere and a refresh clears it. Copy the text output into a note to keep the log going — it pastes back in unchanged and new sessions can be appended to the end.