Your rest timer should know you just loaded 200 pounds

A lifter testing Yield finished a squat set and started his rest. The next set needed another 100 pounds on the bar, and the one after that another 100. By the time he'd carried the plates over, loaded both sides and fixed the collars, most of his rest was gone. As he put it, adding the plates to the bar is its own kind of workout.

Going from the empty bar to 15 pounds more takes a few seconds. Going from 135 to 315 takes a minute or more of carrying heavy iron. A rest timer that treats both the same leaves you starting the heavy set out of breath.

What Yield does

When your next set of a barbell exercise needs a different weight, Yield adds time to the rest for changing the plates. A big change in heavy plates gets more time than adding a small plate to each side.

The timer tells you when this happens. Instead of "Rest · heavy lift", it reads "Rest · heavy lift + loading", so you know why this rest is longer.

If the weight stays the same, nothing is added. Dumbbells, machines and bodyweight exercises never get loading time.

Shorter rests don't mean faster plates

You can set rests to shorter or longer for a workout, and the loading time still counts, because a 45 is just as heavy on a short-rest day. You can always end a rest early if you load faster than the app expects.

Your coach can see the loading time too, so if you ask why a rest is so long, it can tell you. When you plan a session, the time estimate includes loading the bar, so a heavy squat day reads a little longer than a light one with the same sets.

Related: how Yield helps with plate math between sets and 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.