Importing your workouts from another app

Bring the training you have already done into BulkForged. Your past workouts, your routines, your weekly schedule and your starting weights are all rebuilt from the export file your old app gives you.

Which files work

Hevy — the workouts file, workout_data.csv, and the measurements file, measurement_data.csv, for your weigh-ins.
Strong — its CSV export.

In both apps the export is under Profile, then the settings gear, then Export Data. Send the file to yourself, then pick it here. You never have to say which app it came from. BulkForged works that out from the file.

You can pick more than one file at once, so Hevy's workouts and measurements come in together.

Strong does not record whether you logged in kg or lb. It asks you once, before it reads a single number.

Three ways to start

Setting up the app — tap Switching from another app? on the first screen.
Settings → Import workouts — at any time, including long after you have started training here.
On Android, share the file to BulkForged. Use Send to from your files app, your email or your downloads, or Open with on the CSV itself. Only CSV files do this. On a phone that has just installed the app, the file waits on the first screen until you tap Import your shared file.

What comes across

Every workout in the file, with its exercises, sets, reps, weights and cardio.
Your routines. A workout name you trained at least twice in the last eight weeks becomes a routine, up to seven of them.
Your schedule. Each new routine is booked weekly, on the weekday you usually trained it.
Your weigh-ins, from a measurements file.
Two profile details — your experience level and how many days a week you train. These fill in only when you have not already set them.

Nothing you already have is replaced. A routine name you are already using gets "(imported)" added instead. Importing the same export a second time only adds the workouts that were not there the first time.

A long history

There is no limit on how much history comes across, or on how long it takes. Years of workouts usually take seconds, not minutes. While they save, the screen counts them.

Stop is there the whole time. Stopping while your file is being read takes you back to choosing a file. Stopping while it saves keeps nothing, so you can import again whenever you like. If the save has already finished when you tap it, the import is complete.

Where your weights come from afterwards

Here's what we found lists the routines before anything is saved. Each one opens on the weight and reps from your most recent session of it, moved on by one ordinary step. There is no guessing: these are numbers you lifted.

An exercise name we don't recognize still imports, under the name your old app used. The review screen offers you the chance to point it at a match in our catalog. You can also leave it exactly as it is.

How imported workouts affect your targets

An imported workout counts everywhere you would want it to. It appears in your history, your charts, your records, your weekly volume and your recovery map.

What it does not do is move a target by itself. Targets rise from the sets you log in BulkForged. Your imported history sets the opening numbers once, and after that your first session here is what moves them. For the same reason, a personal best that arrived in the file is listed as a record but does not set off a record celebration.

Nothing is ever moved backwards by an import.

If a file cannot be read

The screen says what was wrong with it, and Try another file takes you back to pick again. Worth checking:

That it is the workouts export and not the measurements one.
That the download finished. Export it again if you are unsure.
That it is still a CSV, and has not been opened and re-saved as something else.

Send us this file

When we cannot read your export, Send us this file lets you show us the shape of it so we can add support. It is optional. Skipping it changes nothing about your import.

What leaves your phone:

The first line of the file, which is normally its column names. It is sent as written only when that line has no numbers in it. If it has any, it is blanked out like the rows below.
A copy of its first rows with every letter and number blanked out. That is enough for us to see that a column holds a date or a weight, and not enough to read your training.
An email address, only if you type one, so we can tell you when it works.

The rest of the file stays on your phone. You do not need an account to send it.

Backing out

Start with a new plan instead sits on the reading, review and problem screens. It leaves the import, saves nothing, and takes you on to building a plan from scratch. You can come back later from Settings → Import workouts.