Balance Score

The Program Balance Score evaluates how well your training distributes volume across all major muscle groups. It comes in two modes: the planned score rates your program as written and appears on program template and program instance detail pages, while the logged week score rates a week of a running or finished mesocycle as you actually performed it. The scoring below applies to both modes — they differ only in which sets are counted (per-session warnings come from the planned program only).

What you'll see

Letter grade

A single grade from A+ (excellent balance) to F (severely imbalanced) is shown at the top of the balance section. This is a quick snapshot of your program's overall volume distribution.

Traffic lights

Below the grade, each of the 11 tracked muscle groups gets a colored dot and a status label:

Color	Label	Meaning
Red	Too low	Not enough to maintain muscle
Orange	Maintaining	Holding steady, but not growing
Yellow	Suboptimal	Growing, but below the optimal range
Green	Sweet spot	Optimal growth per set
Yellow	High volume	Above optimal, diminishing returns
Red	Too much	Exceeds recovery capacity

Next to each dot you'll see the effective sets per week — how much stimulus that muscle receives, weighted by each exercise's activation percentage. The planned score counts your program's prescribed sets; the logged week score counts the sets you actually logged.

Volume curve

The curve chart plots each muscle group as a dot showing where it sits relative to its optimal volume range. The shaded zones match the traffic light colors — a well-balanced program clusters dots in the green zone.

The X-axis thresholds — Growth min, Optimal, and Upper limit — mark the key volume boundaries for each muscle. Tap any dot to see that muscle's exact numbers.

How it's calculated

Effective sets

Raw set counts are misleading because compound exercises train multiple muscles. HyperIron uses each exercise's muscle activation percentages from the exercise library. For example, 4 sets of barbell rows might contribute:

• 3.2 effective sets to back/lats (80% activation)
• 2.0 effective sets to biceps (50% activation)
• 1.6 effective sets to rear delts (40% activation)

RIR weighting

Sets are weighted by proximity to failure:

• 0–3 RIR: Full credit (1.0x)
• 4–5 RIR: Half credit (0.5x)
• 6+ RIR: Not counted (warm-up sets, technique work)

Volume landmarks

Each muscle group has science-based volume landmarks that define the zone boundaries. The app uses plain-English labels; the table below maps them to the scientific terms if you want to dig deeper:

In the app	Scientific term
(below Growth min)	Maintenance Volume (MV)
Growth min	Minimum Effective Volume (MEV)
Optimal	Maximum Adaptive Volume (MAV)
Upper limit	Maximum Recoverable Volume (MRV)

These landmarks vary by muscle group and are adjusted by your Training Profile (see below).

Scoring

The grade combines two factors:

• Zone quality (60%) — What fraction of muscles are in the green or yellow zones?
• Balance (40%) — How evenly are muscles distributed? A program with all muscles in green but at wildly different positions scores lower on balance.

Training profile

Your Training Profile (set in Settings) adjusts the volume landmarks to your individual context:

• Age — Older lifters benefit from lower volumes; landmarks scale down
• Training experience — Beginners need less volume; advanced lifters can handle more
• Caloric context — A deficit reduces recovery capacity; landmarks scale down
• Biological sex — Currently no difference (the evidence doesn't support one)

If you don't set a profile, baseline landmarks are used.

Per-session warnings

If any workout day loads more than 10 effective sets onto a single muscle group in one session, you'll see an amber warning. Research suggests diminishing returns beyond ~10 sets per muscle per session — splitting across more sessions is more productive.

Logged week score

The planned score rates your program as written; the Logged Week Score rates a single week of a mesocycle as you actually performed it. It appears on running and finished mesocycles — on the web, as a card below the Program Score on the program instance page; on mobile, in the mesocycle's detail view on the Programs tab. It's part of the same premium Balance Score feature.

A week picker lists every program week that has logged sessions — pick a week to score it. Weeks are your program's own week numbers, not calendar weeks.

What counts toward the score:

• Completed sessions only. A session still in progress isn't scored — its sets count toward the week only once you finish it.
• Every performed set — any set with reps logged, including sets you added on the day. Sets you didn't do simply aren't counted.
• The exercise you actually did. A substitution charges the replacement exercise's muscles, not the original's.
• Each set's own logged RIR. The RIR weighting above uses what you recorded per set, not the program's target — a set without a recorded RIR counts as a hard set (full credit).

The grade, traffic lights, and volume curve then work exactly like the planned score, with the same landmarks and Training Profile adjustments.

Why it can differ from the planned score

Added sets, skipped sessions or exercises, substitutions, and training easier or harder than prescribed all shift the effective-set totals — so your logged grade can land above or below the plan's. Two caveats when reading it:

• A week in progress scores low. Sessions you haven't completed yet read as missing volume, so judge the current week only after its last session is done.
• A deload week scores low by design. Deloads deliberately cut volume and back off from failure, so most muscles land in the low zones. That's the deload working, not something to fix.

Tips for improving your score

• Add isolation work for muscles labeled "Too low" or "Maintaining" (side delts, rear delts, and calves are commonly under-trained)
• Reduce volume for muscles labeled "Too much" — more isn't always better
• Split high-volume days to stay under the 10-set per-session threshold
• Don't chase A+ — a B+ program you enjoy and stick with beats a "perfect" program you abandon