Health, Recovery & Your Muscle Rank
The free Health hub, check-ins and recovery score, plus how XP and Muscle Rank track your progress.
Two systems run alongside your training and nutrition: the Health hub, which tracks how you're recovering, and the gamification layer, which turns your consistency into visible progress.
Daily check-ins
A quick daily log of sleep, soreness, stress, and whatever else your check-in is configured to ask, feeds your recovery score. This part of Health is free on every tier; deeper health tooling (bloodwork, compound tracking, cycle templates) is a Pro feature for people who want it, but check-ins and recovery are available to everyone from day one.
Recovery score
Your recovery score is a rolling read on how ready your body is for the next hard session, built from your check-in history. It's informational, not a hard gate. You decide what to do with it, but it's there so a rough week doesn't sneak up on you.
- 40%Heart-rate variability: the earliest signal
- 30%Resting heart rate: confirms the trend
- 30%Sleep: duration and consistency
| Score | What it reads as | A reasonable response |
|---|---|---|
| 70 and above | Primed | Train the session as prescribed |
| 40 to 69 | Moderate | Run it, but hold back on the top sets |
| Below 40 | Compromised | Cut volume, or make it a rest day |
XP and Muscle Rank
Logging workouts, hitting check-ins, and staying consistent earns XP. XP maps to a level (Newbie through Legend, 13 levels) and your Muscle Rank is a separate 9-tier system (Wood through Legend) that reflects your actual strength and consistency over time, not just activity for its own sake.
Rank moves slowly on purpose
Muscle Rank is built to reward months of consistency, not a single strong week. If it feels slow to move, that's the design, not a bug.
Where to go next
More guides
MuscleBuddy 101: What's Where and Why
A quick orientation to the app: what Plan, Train, Nutrition, Health, and Community actually do, and how they connect.
Logging Your First Workout
The actual logging flow: starting a session, recording sets, RPE/RIR, and how offline mode keeps you covered.
Understanding Your Program & Progression
How double-progression, linear, RPE, and other progression methods automatically adjust your training loads.
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