Do your curls while your squats rest

You have half an hour. You squat, then stand by the rack for three minutes. You squat again and wait another three. By the time the squats are done, a third of the session has gone and most of it was spent waiting. The curls and presses you meant to do get cut.

A lifter testing Yield described the fix himself: do the heavy squats, and in between them do shoulder presses, curls or chest flyes, because those muscles were resting anyway. Strength coaches have paired exercises this way for a long time. Yield now does it for you.

How Yield picks a pair

When you accept a plan from your coach, the app pairs a heavy lift with a smaller exercise from the same plan that trains different muscles, and moves it up so the two sit together. Squats might pair with curls.

What it looks like in the workout

The two exercises are joined by a band that says they're paired, and a small "Next" tag shows which one to do now. Log a set of squats and the rest timer starts as usual. Under the timer, a line says something like "Curl now, squat rest continues".

When you log the curls, the squat's rest timer keeps running. It doesn't restart, and you're never asked to rest twice. When the timer runs out, it's back to the squat.

Once the heavy lift is finished, the smaller exercise goes back to its own normal rests for any sets it has left. If you'd rather keep the two apart on a given day, tap "Train straight through" on the band. That undoes the pair for the rest of that workout.

How much time it saves

Every plan in Yield shows how long it will take before you accept it, rests included. That estimate already allows for pairing.

Take three sets of five squats and three sets of ten curls. Done one after the other, that's about 16 minutes. Paired, the curls fit in the squat's rests and it comes to about 9 minutes. The time you get back can go to another exercise, or you can just finish sooner.

More on how Yield times a session in a 30-minute strength workout that takes 30 minutes, and on the rest timer in how Yield's rest timer works.

Yield Strength is in beta on TestFlight. Read more about what makes it different, or join the waitlist to try it yourself.