How to move your workout history from one app to another

Years of logged sets are worth more than any app that holds them. If you change tracker, the history should come with you. In most cases it can, through a plain text file called a CSV.

This guide covers the general process, what the file contains, and the places where an import usually goes wrong.

Step 1: export a CSV from your current app

CSV stands for comma-separated values. It is a text file where each line is a row and each value is separated by a comma or a semicolon. Any spreadsheet program can open it.

Most workout trackers offer an export. Strong and Hevy both provide a CSV export from their settings; look for “Export data” in the app’s settings. The exact menu wording changes between versions, so if you cannot find it, search the app’s help pages for “export”.

The general steps are the same everywhere:

1. Open the settings of the app you are leaving.
2. Find the export option and choose CSV if several formats are offered.
3. Save the file somewhere you can find it again: the Files app, a cloud folder, or an email to yourself.
4. Open it once to confirm it is not empty and that the latest workout is in it.

Do this before you cancel a subscription or delete an account. Some apps limit or remove access to data once an account is closed.

Step 2: understand what is in the file

A workout CSV usually has one row per set. The column names differ between apps, but the content is similar.

Column	Example	Notes
Date	2026-03-14 18:32:05	Start of the workout, sometimes with an end time or a duration
Workout name	Push A	The routine or session title
Exercise	Bench Press (Barbell)	The name as the source app spells it
Set order	1, 2, 3	Position of the set within the exercise
Weight	82.5	Sometimes with a separate unit column, sometimes not
Reps	8	Completed repetitions
RPE	8.5	Often empty
Notes	“Paused reps”	Per exercise, per workout, or both

Some exports add distance and duration for cardio, a set type (warm-up, drop set, failure), or a superset marker. Not every app has a matching concept for every column, so some of these may be dropped or simplified on the other side.

Open the file in a spreadsheet and read twenty or thirty rows. Knowing what your own data looks like makes the import preview much easier to judge.

Step 3: watch for the common pitfalls

Units

A weight column that says 100 does not say 100 of what. Some exports include a unit column or put the unit in the header; others rely on the setting you had in the source app. If the new app assumes kilograms and the file was in pounds, a 225 lb squat becomes a 225 kg squat. In real terms 225 lb is about 102 kg, so the error is large and easy to spot if you look.

Check which unit the file uses and tell the importer, if it asks. If you switched units at some point in the source app, look at old and recent rows separately.

Exercise name mismatches

“Bench Press (Barbell)” in one app is “Barbell Bench Press” in another and “Bench Press” in a third. An importer has to match each name to its own exercise list, or create a custom exercise when there is no match.

Two things go wrong here. A name can be matched to the wrong exercise, or one movement can end up split across two names, which cuts its history in half. Scan the list of exercises after the import and merge or rename where needed. The habit of consistent naming described in how to keep a lifting log pays off at exactly this moment.

Decimal separators

In some regions 82.5 is written “82,5”. In a file that also uses commas to separate columns, that causes trouble, so exports from those regions often use semicolons between columns instead. A tolerant importer handles both. If weights appear ten times too large, or fractions vanish (82.5 becoming 82 or 825), the decimal separator is the likely cause.

Opening and re-saving the file in a spreadsheet can silently change separators and number formats. To inspect a file, work on a copy.

Date formats

Is 03/04/2025 the third of April or the fourth of March? Files that write dates as year-month-day are unambiguous; others depend on the region of the phone that created them. After importing, compare a few workouts with dates you remember. If sessions appear on the wrong day of the week or in the wrong month, day and month have been swapped.

Duplicates

Importing the same file twice, or importing a new export that overlaps with an earlier one, can create every workout twice. Volume totals double and charts become meaningless. Before a second import, check whether the app detects existing workouts. If you are unsure, import once, from one complete export.

Step 4: check the preview before you confirm

A careful importer shows a preview before it writes anything: how many workouts, how many sets, the date range, which exercises were recognised and which were not.

Compare those figures with what you know:

• Does the first workout date match when you started logging?
• Is the latest workout the one you did most recently?
• Is the number of workouts plausible for your training frequency?
• Do a few recent sets show the weights you remember, in the right unit?

Quintal, an iPhone lifting log, reads CSV exports from Strong and Hevy and shows a preview of what will be imported before you confirm.

After the import, spot-check three sessions: an old one, a recent one, and one with something unusual such as a superset or decimal weights.

Step 5: keep the original file

Do not delete the export once the import has worked. Store the original, unmodified file somewhere other than your phone. It is your backup if you later notice a mismatch, and it is the neutral copy of your history that does not depend on any app.

From then on, export a fresh copy from your new app every so often. Units are the detail most worth staying careful about, especially in gyms with mixed equipment; the section on mixed kilogram and pound gyms in barbell plate math has the conversions.

This guide is general information, not medical or personal training advice. Ask a qualified professional about your own situation.