Free sessions

A free session is an activity logged without exercises: two hours of bouldering, a tennis match, a hike. You give it a sport, a duration, how hard it was and which muscles it pumped, optionally photos and a note, and choose whether your friends see it. It counts like any other session in your history, calendar and weekly stats. You can log one afterwards or time it live, change it after saving, and quit a live one without leaving a trace. Every sport in Progress can be logged this way, even ones that have no exercises of their own.

Logging one

On Home, tap Free log. You can also use the Log activity card in Insights: tap a sport there and the form opens with that sport already picked.

  1. Activity: pick the sport. Your own sports come first, then every other sport, including walking and cycling. At the bottom, Other… lets you type a name for an activity that is not in the list.
  2. When: the date and start time. It starts at one hour ago and cannot be in the future.
  3. Duration: hours and minutes, in steps of 5 minutes. The session cannot end after now: if the start time plus the duration lands in the future, the form tells you why and Save stays off.
  4. Intensity: how hard it was, from 1 to 5.
  5. Muscles more pumped than normal: picking a sport fills in the muscle groups it usually trains. Change them to match how you feel, or clear them all. Other… starts with none.
  6. Photos and note: up to 5 photos and a note, both optional.
  7. Share with friends: on for your first session. After that it starts the way you left it last time.
  8. Tap Save. A session must be at least one minute long.

If you close the form without saving, nothing is kept, including any photos you added.

Timing it live

In the same form, tap Start now to start a clock for the picked activity.

  1. A bar at the bottom of every screen shows the activity, the elapsed time and pause and end buttons. Tap it to open the full screen.
  2. For a sport with a route, such as running, cycling or walking, the phone also records GPS and the screen adds distance and pace.
  3. Pause stops the clock and the GPS; paused time does not count. Closing the app does not stop the session: it is still running, or still paused, when you come back.
  4. End stops the clock and opens the form with the start time and the exact measured duration filled in. Fill in the rest and save. If you close this form, Progress asks Discard this session? first.
  5. To throw a live session away, open the full screen's menu and choose Quit session. After you confirm, nothing from it is saved: no session and no route.

After saving

Open the session from your history to see its duration, intensity, the muscle groups you picked and, when there is one, the route and distance.

  • Edit opens the same form with everything filled in. You can change every field except a recorded route: its route and distance stay as recorded.
  • Share with friends can be turned on or off at any time.
  • Delete asks you to confirm, then removes the session, its photos and its route everywhere, also from your friends' feeds.

What your friends see

When Share with friends is on, your friends see the session in their feed: the activity, the duration, the intensity and your note. They never see the muscle groups you picked. When it is off, the session stays out of their feed, and turning it off later removes it from there.

Free session versus freestyle

A free session has no exercises. A freestyle workout is a live strength workout you build as you go, set by set. If you want to log sets, start a freestyle workout instead.

Where your data lives

Free sessions are saved on your phone first, so logging, editing and deleting work offline. With an account they are uploaded, including the note and your sharing choice, and come back after a reinstall or on a second phone. When you edit a session on one phone, your other phone picks up the change. Photos ride along. A recorded route is uploaded only while cardio sync is on in Settings → Privacy → Health data sync; without it, the session still uploads and the route stays on your phone.

What it does not do

  • There is no calorie estimate for free sessions.
  • Free sessions are not written to Apple Health or Health Connect. A GPS route inside one is, like any other phone recording.
  • You cannot add exercises or sets to a free session, and intensity and muscle groups cannot be added to a normal gym session.
  • A live free session has no lock-screen display and cannot be controlled from a watch.
  • Free sessions cannot be logged on the website.