Amplify Run

iPhone & Apple Watch

The plan changes
when your body does.

A real training plan for your race. Every morning it reads last night's sleep, heart-rate variability and strain, and tells you out loud whether today's session still makes sense.

See how it works Get early access

In testing on TestFlight · iOS 17 or later · No account needed to train

The Amplify Run home screen: a morning briefing you can play, and sleep, recovery and strain scoring 97, 80 and 0.0.

What it's for

Three things.
It says no to the rest.

Most running apps are a log with a coach bolted on. This one starts from the plan and works backwards to the data it needs.

01

Get you to a start line, trained

A periodised plan for a specific race on a specific date, built around the days you can actually run and the time you have on each of them.

02

Tell you the truth each morning

Sleep, heart-rate variability and resting heart rate measured against your own normal — not a population average — and a straight answer about today.

03

Never hold the coaching hostage

Every training feature works with no account, no connection and nobody else involved. The social side is a choice you can skip forever.

What it reads

It asks Health for what it uses.
Nothing else.

Every one of these is read with your permission, used on your phone, and can be switched off one by one in iOS Settings.

Sleep analysis Heart-rate variability (SDNN) Resting heart rate Heart rate Wrist temperature Respiratory rate Heart-rate recovery Workouts & routes Running speed Running power Stride length Ground contact time Vertical oscillation Walking + running distance Cycling, swimming, rowing distance Active & resting energy Step count Workout effort score Date of birth

With a phone alone, you have a coach

The whole training side runs on the iPhone. It tracks your runs with GPS, writes and rebuilds your plan, works out your paces, reads anything already in Apple Health, and speaks your briefing. You can train for a marathon and never own a watch.

With a watch, it can also see the night

Recovery scoring is the part that genuinely needs a wrist. Sleep stages, overnight heart-rate variability and resting heart rate are measured while you sleep, and heart rate during a run is what strain is calculated from.

The watch app showing today's session, Long Run, 4km easy, with a Start button.
Today's session, on your wrist
Training paces on the watch: recovery 8:59, easy 8:17, steady 7:34 per kilometre.
Your paces, without reaching for a phone
Phone only vs. phone and watch
FeatureiPhone aloneWith Apple Watch
Training plan, paces, rebuildsYesYes
Run tracking, GPS route, splitsYesYes
Spoken daily briefingYesYes
Social, posts, stories, chatYesYes
Guided session on your wrist—Interval by interval
Sleep scoreOnly if another device writes sleep to HealthFrom your own nights
Recovery score (HRV, resting HR)—Every morning
Strain, 0–21 from heart rateEstimated from pace onlyMinute by minute
Cadence, power, ground contact—Every run
Easy-run heart-rate ceiling—Live on the wrist

The plan

Built from twelve answers,
not a template.

You give it the race and the shape of your week. It writes every session from today to race day.

Baseweeks 1–4
Buildweeks 5–8
Peakweeks 9–10
Taperweek 11
Race weekweek 12
Recoveryafter

A plan runs 8 to 24 weeks depending on how far away your race is and how far you're starting from. Phases shown for a 12-week 5K block.

What it asks you

The race, and the shape of your week

Distance and date. Which weekdays you can run and roughly how long you have on each. Which day gets the long run. A recent race result or time trial if you have one. Then the things that quietly change everything: your age, any injury you keep coming back to, whether the course is hilly, whether race day will be hot, and whether you want extra recovery built in.

What it does with them

Your fitness becomes nine paces

A recent result gives a fitness score — a VDOT, the standard measure of what your current engine can do. From it come nine training paces: recovery, easy, steady, marathon, half marathon, threshold, 10K, interval and repetition. Every session is written in those paces, so "easy" means a number you can run rather than a feeling you have to guess at.

How it's structured

Volume climbs, then backs off

Base builds the aerobic foundation. Build adds the work that hurts. Peak is the sharpest fortnight. Taper cuts volume while keeping intensity so you arrive fresh rather than flat. Then race week, then a recovery block — because the week after a race is where people get injured. Hard days never sit back to back, and the long run stays on your day.

How it pushes you

Just past comfortable, every week

Weekly volume rises in steps small enough to absorb, with a lighter week before each new climb. The app watches the ratio between what you've run recently and what you've run over the past month — the measure that predicts injury better than mileage alone — and says so when you're moving too fast. Pushing your limit only works if you're still there next week to do it again.

When life interferes

A plan you fall behind
is worse than no plan.

Most plans are a PDF. Miss a week and you spend the next one chasing work your body never did. This one rewrites itself — and shows you the change before it makes it.

  • You missed sessions. It offers a rebuild based on what you'd actually been running over the last three weeks, not the number you typed in when you started.
  • You ran a race or time trial. Your fitness score moves to match, and every pace is recalculated from it.
  • You got fitter without noticing. It watches your heart rate against your pace on ordinary easy runs. When they drift apart in your favour, it says so.
  • You stopped for a while. After three weeks off it eases your paces back — up to five points — because paces left at peak fitness are how people get hurt returning.
  • You changed your mind. New race, new date, different days: change any of it and the plan is rewritten from today forward. Nothing is locked once you start.
The profile screen offering to ease paces back after 38 days without running, with an Update to 25 button.

Sleep, recovery, strain

Three numbers, measured
against your own normal.

It takes about two weeks of nights before these mean anything, because the baseline is you rather than a population. Until then the app says so.

Sleep

97%

Hours against what your training actually asks for, how close your bedtime was to usual, and the wake-ups your watch recorded.

Duration 50 · Bedtime 30 · Wake-ups 20

Recovery

80%

Last night's heart-rate variability and resting heart rate against your own range, with how you slept folded in.

HRV 50% · Resting HR 25% · Sleep 25%

Strain

14.2

How hard your heart actually worked, minute by minute, on a 0–21 curve — with a target set by today's session.

Heart-rate load · 0–21 · Target 7–10 today
The score breakdown: sleep 97 percent built from duration, bedtime and interruptions, with each part's points shown.
Every point, accounted for
Two weeks of recovery scores as bars, and a heart-rate variability chart with the normal band shaded.
Your normal, drawn out

It shows its working

Every score opens into the arithmetic behind it: which parts earned which points, what your normal range is, and where last night fell inside it. Where the app differs from Apple's own sleep score, it says so and explains why.

  • Your own baseline. Roughly 60 nights of history, with the trend line and the band that counts as normal for you drawn around it.
  • Naps don't count. Sleep is the night, scored once, and the day ends when you go to bed — so opening the app at 1am shows last night, not a row of zeros.
  • It ties back to training. A hard session raises tonight's sleep need, and tomorrow's number reflects that.

The briefing

A minute, out loud,
while the kettle boils.

The summary that matters most is the one you'd never open an app to read. So it reads itself to you.

The briefing transcript: good morning, last night's sleep, recovery, yesterday and today's session, with play controls.
  • In the morning: how you slept, what your recovery is and why, what you did yesterday, today's session, the strain it should come to, and where you are in the week.
  • In the evening: how the day actually went, what it did to your week's load, and when to turn the light off to hit tomorrow's sleep need.
  • Follow along or don't. The transcript lights up word by word. Lock your phone and the controls sit on the lock screen with your other audio.
  • Nothing to download, nobody listening. It uses the voice already on your iPhone, so it works on a plane and without an account. No audio ever leaves the phone, because none is ever recorded.

Social — entirely optional

Bolted on by choice,
not by design.

The coaching never asks who you are. Everything above this works exactly the same whether you make an account or not.

The feed: a shared run showing 4.50km, 8:10 per kilometre and 36:45 over a dark photo.

What you get if you join

  • Runs as pictures. Put a run on a photo, drag the distance, pace, time and route where you want them, pick a palette, post it.
  • Stories. The same editor with a 24-hour life.
  • People and chat. Follow other runners, comment, send a run straight into a conversation, reply in messages that arrive live.
  • It works on the train. Offline, the feed and your profile show what was saved and reconnect by themselves.

What you keep if you don't

Everything. Plan, paces, run tracking, recovery scores, the spoken briefing, your whole history. There is no feature behind the account except other people.

Where your data lives

Your health data
never leaves your phone.

Worth being specific about, because "we take privacy seriously" means nothing. Here is exactly what happens to each kind of data.

On device

The coach runs on your iPhone

Plan generation, pace calculation, recovery scoring, the strain curve and the briefing text are all computed on the phone. No server is involved in any of it — which is also why it works with no signal.

Never uploaded

Sleep, HRV and heart rate stay local

Health data is read from Apple Health with your permission, used on the phone, and never sent anywhere. There is no account to attach it to unless you make one.

Trimmed first

Shared routes don't start at your door

The first and last 200 metres come off every route before it is shared, and anything inside a privacy zone you've drawn is removed on the phone. The untrimmed route is never stored.

Your call

Every post has an audience

Everyone, just followers, or only you — chosen per post and changeable afterwards. Your fitness score and personal bests are hidden from your profile by default.

Reversible

Deleting means deleting

Removing your account takes the profile, posts, comments, stories, messages and uploaded photos with it. Your runs stay on your phone, because they were never anywhere else.

Optional

Health access is granular

iOS asks per data type, and you can refuse any of them. Refuse sleep and you lose the sleep score; everything else carries on.

Day to day

The rest of it.

The session library: Classic Tempo, 6 by 800m, Pyramid Fartlek, Hill Repeats and a shakeout.
Standalone sessions, set to your current paces
A run in full: distance, moving time, pace, heart rate, calories, elevation, cadence, power and training load.
Every run in full, including what only a watch can give you
The activity tab: weekly volume bars, a week streak, and a history of logged runs.
Your weeks, your streak, everything you've logged

Questions

Before you ask.

Do I need an Apple Watch?

No. Amplify Run tracks runs with the iPhone on its own and the whole plan works without a watch. What a watch adds is the night: sleep stages, overnight heart-rate variability and resting heart rate, which the recovery and sleep scores are built from. It also puts the guided session on your wrist and gives you cadence, power and ground contact time.

Does it work without an internet connection?

Yes, and that isn't a fallback mode. Plans, paces, recovery scores, run tracking and the spoken briefing all run on the phone. Only the social side needs a connection, and even that shows you what was last saved and reconnects on its own.

What happens when I miss a week?

The app notices and offers a rebuilt plan based on what you'd actually been running, rather than letting you fall behind a schedule you can't catch up with. You see the current and proposed plans side by side with the reasoning, and you decide whether to take it.

Can I change my race or my goal after I've started?

Yes, at any point. Change the race, the date, which days you can run, how long you have on each, or your long-run day, and the plan is rewritten from today forward. Your history stays as it is.

Is this Apple's Sleep Score?

No. Apple doesn't make its score available to other apps, so Amplify Run computes its own using the same published structure: duration out of 50, bedtime consistency out of 30 and wake-ups out of 20. The two usually land within a few points, and the app shows you the full breakdown so you can see exactly where any difference comes from.

Can other runners see where I live?

No. Shared routes lose their first and last 200 metres, and anything inside a privacy zone you've set is removed before the route leaves your phone — including on a route drawn into a photo.

Do I have to use the social part?

No, and nothing nags you about it. There's no feature behind the account except other people. If you never sign up, the app is a running coach and nothing else.

The Amplify Run app icon

Early access

Amplify Run is in testing.

It's being used daily on real training, with TestFlight invitations going out in small batches. Ask for one and say what you're training for.

hello@amplifyrun.com