Coaching, your way

The coach hub is your home base. From here you reach every athlete you work with, the blocks you have built, and the analytics that show how training is going across your roster. It is the one screen you start your coaching day from.

Ironstead is the tool you coach with. It does not coach anyone for you and it never prescribes exercises. Every plan, every number and every choice is yours; the app just makes the work faster and clearer.

Your roster is the list of athletes you coach. You add an athlete by sharing your personal invite code: they enter it in their account, a request appears for you, and once you accept it you are connected. Pending requests wait in one place so nobody slips through.

From the roster you open any athlete to see their plan, their history and their progress. Connecting or disconnecting is always mutual and visible to both sides.

Every block lives in your "Block library", split into Active, Drafts and Templates. You create one with the New-block wizard, which is two steps. Step 1 is Basics: you name the block, and an athlete is optional. Without an athlete the block is saved as a reusable template you can assign later. You start empty or from a source block, and Goal chips and Shape presets scaffold the day roles for you. The presets never pick exercises; that stays your call. You then set the duration in weeks and the sessions per week.

Step 2 is Days: rename each day after its movement pattern, toggle a rest day, and add exercise rows with a role, the exercise, sets, reps, weight, rest and RPE, plus a coach comment. Once the block exists, the editor opens: the Matrix on desktop, where you build, and Day Flow on the phone, the on-the-go companion for quick edits like swapping an exercise or tweaking a weight. From there, progression rules and the deload sheet do the week-to-week work. The training blocks guide covers the Matrix, progression rules and deloads in depth.

The best way to feel how a block comes together is to build one yourself. The Blockbuilder Academy is a free, interactive walkthrough of the same ideas, right in your browser.

Every exercise row takes a coach comment, so "3s eccentric, controlled descent" rides along with the sets instead of sitting in a chat your athlete has to scroll back through.

You write it in two places. On the exercise row, in the day editor and in the New-block wizard, the comment is the slot default and applies to every week that has not been changed. In the Matrix, opening a cell gives you "Comment (this week only)", which applies to that one week and falls back to the slot default when you leave it empty.

Your athlete reads it while logging, in a highlighted Coach block on the exercise: in the exercise header when the comment covers the exercise from its first working set, and directly above the first set it applies to when it starts later. Sets that share one comment show it once, so a note for a whole exercise does not repeat per set. The workout tracking guide shows it from their side.

A finished template does not reach an athlete until you send it. "Send to athlete" opens an athlete picker and, for a template, clones it into a per-athlete draft that you own for each athlete you picked. The template itself stays reusable, so one template can seed many drafts.

The draft is then activated, and that is the moment the athlete sees the block under their Training Blocks. If any loads use a percent of a max but that athlete has no recorded max, a review step lists those loads first. You can acknowledge and assign, or go back and set the numbers.

For each athlete you get a clear read on how training is going. Analytics summarize volume and consistency over time. A PR list surfaces the lifts where they set a new best. A muscle overview shows where the work is landing across the body, so you can spot a lagging area or an overloaded one.

The numbers give you the picture; you bring the judgment about what to change next.

• Consistency: are the planned sessions actually getting done.
• Records: which lifts are moving, and which have stalled.
• Balance: where weekly volume is landing across muscle groups.

Open an athlete and the progression view goes a level below those summary cards. It comes in layers, and the first two never involve a model.

Window observations are plain counts for the timeframe you picked: sets per primary muscle group, the estimated 1RM at the start and at the end, and how many reps were marked as not completed. Each working set counts once for its primary muscle here, so these numbers sit lower than the full muscle overview, which also credits secondary muscles.

The direct analysis sits on top of those counts and is calculated in the app from logged sessions, not written by a model. It splits what it finds into signals worth reviewing and neutral context, and every row shows the numbers behind it: the e1RM change in percent, the volume change, the frequency in sessions per week, the RPE it moved between. Each number names the lift or the movement pattern it came from, and you can read the board by main lift or by movement pattern.

The ACWR rides along as a rolling comparison of recent load against the longer-term average. It needs at least 28 days of history before it says anything, and it is a rough signal rather than a limit. Read it next to volume, the trend and what the athlete tells you about how they feel.

An AI summary is optional on top. The direct facts cost nothing; a fresh summary spends AI quota units and is then cached until the end of the day or until the athlete logs their next session. It only runs when the athlete has enabled AI analysis in their privacy settings, and it summarizes the same logged data rather than assessing the person.

Analytics tell you how an athlete is training. The performance matrix tells you how they are training YOUR block. Open an athlete from your roster and every block card carries a "Performance" button next to "View this block". It opens the whole block as one grid: what you prescribed against what actually got logged, one tile per session. It is a coach screen, your athletes do not see it, and nothing on it can be edited.

Each tile is a comb of marks, one per set, plus the logged and prescribed set count and the date the session ran. A mark reads as on plan, over target, under target or not performed, so a session that quietly lost two sets looks different from one that never happened. Sessions that were never logged are stamped and hatched instead of scored. What the screen counts is always the rated set.

The grid has two layouts. Weeks by days is the default and answers "which session is slipping". Exercises by weeks answers "which lift is slipping", across every day that exercise appears in. Tap any cell in either layout and the drill-down opens the set by set comparison, grouped by session with its date: your prescribed reps, load and effort on one side, what the athlete actually did on the other.

• Adherence: the share of rated sets that landed on plan, with the sessions logged out of the sessions due.
• Effort logged: how many sets that carried an RPE or RIR target came back with a value. A gap here is a logging problem, not a compliance one.
• Axis drift: the net direction per axis. Reps, load and effort stay apart on purpose and are never blended into one score.

The AI review reads a block you built and checks it against the coaching rules you have set. If a rule says a heavy day should not sit right before a leg day, or that a lighter week belongs every fourth week, the review flags where the block disagrees with your own standards.

It is a second pair of eyes on your intent, not a source of training advice. It never invents rules and never tells you what good coaching is. It only measures your block against the rules you wrote. AI review is an experimental assistant and does not replace expert judgement.

How thorough it runs is your choice, under Privacy and AI in your profile settings. Smart is the recommended setting: one pass per block, fast, and it counts once against your AI allowance. Precise takes noticeably longer, often reports the same violation more than once, counts as four analyses, and in rare cases catches a rule violation Smart missed.

You can set daily nutrition targets for an athlete or assign them a full meal plan, and their food log then tracks against your numbers. You see how the week is going and adjust as their goal moves.

As with everything else, this is optional and it is your call. An athlete who wants to manage their own nutrition simply keeps their own targets.

When you do assign targets, the athlete still logs their real intake, so you always see the gap between the plan and the week that actually happened. That gap is the useful part: it tells you whether to hold the numbers, adjust them, or have a conversation.

Targets are the short version. If you want to plan what an athlete actually eats, meal by meal, that happens in the nutrition hub.

The nutrition hub opens from the Nutrition hub action in your coach hub, or from the Nutrition tab on an athlete page. It has three tabs: Overview, Kitchen and Week plan.

The work runs in that order. Build your recipes once, plan weeks out of them, then watch the overview and step in only where it matters.

1. 1
   Build the recipe onceA recipe in the Kitchen holds its ingredients, a photo, dietary restriction tags and the instructions. The ingredient search takes nutrition values straight from the food database, and scaling adjusts every ingredient at once until the recipe meets a calorie or protein target. Each recipe also shows how many current plans already use it, so you know what an edit touches.
2. 2
   Fill the weekWeek plan is a grid with the days across and the meals down. Drag a recipe from the drawer into a meal, or place several into the same meal when it is built from components. Copy Monday into the empty days that follow, copy a whole week from another athlete, or save a day or a week as a template.
3. 3
   Set the rules per mealEvery meal takes a portion factor in quarter steps, a fixed or flexible tolerance, the alternatives you approve as swaps, and a note for the athlete. A flexible meal with an approved swap is what lets an athlete adapt a day without dropping off the plan.
4. 4
   Scale to the targetScale one day or the whole week to a calorie or protein target and the portions move to fit. If the target cannot be met in quarter steps, or a portion hits the 0.25x or 4x limit, the dialog tells you instead of quietly missing.
5. 5
   Send itA week stays a draft until you send it. Send to athlete is what turns it into their planned days in the food log.

Once weeks are running, the Overview tab is the one you open. Every athlete sits in one table with their average calories and their macros against target, so a roster of fifteen takes a few seconds to read.

Next to it runs the exception feed, which lists only the athletes worth a message: nothing logged for two days, a macro that keeps landing low, a plan about to run out, a meal that keeps getting swapped. From a row you jump straight into that athlete week and fix the plan, or draft a message and ask.

What the feed does not do is judge. It points at the weeks that look unusual against the plan you set. Whether that means a bad week, a bad plan or a busy fortnight is your call, and the reasons an athlete gave when they went off plan are usually the fastest way to tell.

Questions about coaching

Does Ironstead coach my athletes or pick exercises?

No. Ironstead never picks an exercise or makes a coaching call for you. You choose every plan, every exercise and every number; Ironstead gives you the tools to put those choices into practice.

What does Send to athlete do?

For a template, it clones the block into a per-athlete draft you own, leaving the template reusable, then activates that draft so the athlete sees it. If any percent loads have no recorded max, a review lists them before you assign.

What does the AI review actually check?

It checks a block you built against the coaching rules you set, and flags where the block disagrees with them. It does not give training advice or replace your judgment; it only applies your own rules.

Can my athletes see the performance matrix?

No. It is a coach screen and it opens from the athlete page in your Athletes tab. Your athletes see their block and their own history; the grid that compares your prescription against every logged set stays with you.

Can I see the app the way my athletes see it?

Yes. Mode in your profile settings switches the app to athlete view and hides the coach screens. It changes only your view: your roles stay as they are, your athletes keep access to everything you assigned, and logging out puts you back in coach view.

Can I reuse a nutrition week instead of building it every time?

Yes. Save a day or a whole week as a template, copy Monday into the empty days that follow, or copy a week you already built for another athlete and adjust it.

What happens if a recipe clashes with an athlete dietary restriction?

The week cannot be saved or sent until you deal with it. The hub lists the affected meals with the tags they hit, and you either change them or record a reason for the approval, which stays on the plan with its timestamp.

What does coaching cost?

Coach accounts are paid per athlete and athletes never pay. The current per-athlete rate is shown on the coach sign-up page.