Record on your phone

The Form app records runs, rides and gym sessions itself and saves them to your training history, so you do not need another recording app. Recordings stay in Form: nothing goes to Intervals.icu, and nothing goes to Strava unless you press Send. This article is about the app on your phone; the web has no recording screens, so there are no screenshots here.

Where to find it

Open the Form app and tap Workout in the bar at the bottom (Overview, Activities, Coach, Workout, Races and More). The Workout screen asks “What are you training today?” with three choices: Run (GPS pace, distance and heart rate), Ride (Speed, power and your sensors) and Gym session (Log sets, reps and weights). Pick one, which the app remembers for next time, and press Start run, Start ride or Start session. Below the choices are Your workouts (“Build and edit sessions to follow”), for building runs, rides, swims and gym sessions, and Upload a .fit file (“Add a session from a watch or bike computer”) for a recording you already have.

1. Open the Form app and tap Workout.
2. Choose Run, Ride or Gym session.
3. Press the start button under the list. On the setup screen you can pick a workout, connect sensors and turn on live sharing.
4. Press Start (or Start ride) and begin.

You can record a run or a ride, not both at once. While one is going, the other is greyed out with “Finish your ride first” or “Finish your run first”. A gym session can sit alongside either. A recording that is already running shows LIVE on its choice and the button reads Back to your run, Back to your ride or Back to your session. A banner also appears across the app while a run or ride is recording; tap it to return.

Pick a workout first

On the run and ride setup screens, the workout picker lists No workout (record a free session), then PLANNED workouts from your published plans, then SAVED workouts from your library. Today’s planned workout is preselected. Its steps show on the recording screen and the phone buzzes at each new step. Swims are not recorded on the phone, so the picker is for runs and rides only. A workout that mixes distance steps and timed steps can drift, because the two share no clock.

Recording a run

The run setup screen has the workout picker, a Heart rate monitor card (Connect a monitor, optional) and a Share live with friends switch. Press Start. While GPS looks for a fix, “Finding GPS…” shows under the button, and you can start anyway. Location must be on and precise: approximate location is about 2 km wide, so Form cannot record with it, and the screen says so.

Recording keeps going with the screen off, through a notification the phone shows while GPS is in use. The live screen shows distance in kilometres, time, pace, average pace, heart rate, cadence, stride length, power and ground contact, a strip for the current kilometre and the last kilometre, and your climb. Every kilometre the phone buzzes and reads the split aloud: kilometre number, time, and heart rate when you have a strap. Press Pause, then Finish or Resume. A run has manual pause only. HIDE returns you to the app while the recording continues.

SHARE LIVE, at the top of the run and ride recording screens, starts a live share mid-session, and LIVE · STOP ends it. Neither touches the recording. While you share, a notification says “Sharing your run live” (or ride), and the recording screen briefly shows when a friend is watching or sends you a chapeau. Who can see you, and what they see, is in Friends, the feed and live tracking.

• Heart rate comes from a Bluetooth chest strap or armband you connect on the setup screen. Wet or move the strap to wake it. Straps that use only ANT+ never show up to a phone.
• Cadence comes from the phone’s step counter or a Bluetooth foot pod, so your phone must be allowed to count steps.
• Power is Form’s estimate from your speed, the gradient and your weight, not a measurement. It uses your profile weight, or an estimate if you have none, and the setup screen says which. Do not compare it to another brand’s watts.
• Ground contact time, vertical oscillation and vertical ratio come from the phone’s accelerometer and show only when the phone rides on your torso, in a belt or vest. In a hand, armband or pocket Form leaves them out and the screen says why.
• Distance ignores small GPS wander. A tunnel or tree cover can add or remove a little; GPS with a poor fix does not add distance.

Recording a ride

The ride setup screen asks how you want to use the phone:

• Bike computer: the phone is on your bars, shows the data pages you designed on the trainer and keeps the screen on while you ride. Set up bike computer opens the pages.
• In the background: you already ride with a separate bike computer. Keep it as your screen; Form records GPS and your sensors quietly in your pocket, and the ride goes into Form when you finish.

You can switch while riding. From the background screen, Show your data pages instead brings the computer up; from the computer, HIDE returns to the quiet screen. The pages are the same ones as the trainer’s phone computer, saved to your account, so a field you change on the road also changes at home.

Sensors are Bluetooth. Three tiles on the setup screen: Power meter, Heart rate and Speed and cadence. Tap a tile and choose from the nearby devices. Meters often only advertise while the cranks turn, so turn the crank or spin the wheel to wake a sensor, or wet the strap. A remembered sensor says “Connects when you start”. On a bike, watts come from a power meter or are missing: Form does not estimate power for a ride. In background mode, a meter your own bike computer is already using may allow a second Bluetooth connection or not; if the phone cannot connect, use ANT+ on the head unit or connect the phone first.

• Auto-pause is a switch on the setup screen, on by default. It stops the clock when you have been below about 3.6 km/h for 3 seconds and starts it again when you roll above about 5.4 km/h.
• LAP marks a lap; Form also auto-laps every 5 km. PAGE changes page; PAUSE and RESUME do as they say. Finish is available once you have paused.
• Unknown speed never pauses you: a tunnel is not a stop.

The finished ride summary shows average and max speed, average power, weighted power, load, intensity, average heart rate, average cadence, work and max power. Load and intensity need power and an FTP on your profile; otherwise the screen says “Add your FTP in Profile and Form works out intensity and load from your power.” Load is never shown as 0 when it is unknown.

Gym sessions

Choose Gym session and press Start session. The screen reads “Log your lifting”. If a session is planned for today, the button is Start today’s: followed by its name, and Start a blank session instead is underneath. The list below shows PLANNED sessions (some from the coach), your ROUTINES, LOG A PAST SESSION and RECENT sessions, with Records & progress.

1. Press + Add exercise, search Form’s list of more than 160 exercises, filter by muscle, or Create your own exercise.
2. Each exercise shows what you did last time (“Last: …”) and a Same as last button that copies it. Enter weight and reps for each set, or press the tick on an empty row to accept the PREVIOUS values.
3. Tick each set when you finish it. A rest timer starts, with Skip, and a notification buzzes the phone when rest is over, even with the screen off. Warm-up sets do not start the timer, and a superset waits until the round is done.
4. Press Finish. Name the session, check TIME, VOLUME and SETS and SETS PER MUSCLE, and rate HOW HARD WAS IT (1 is a stroll, 10 is all you had). Press Save session. You can also Save as routine for next time.

Weights follow your phone’s region: pounds in the US, Liberia and Myanmar, kilograms elsewhere. There is no setting. Form stores kilograms and converts only on the phone. Gym logging works without signal and uploads when you are back online; saving twice never makes two sessions. Records & progress show HEAVIEST, EST. 1RM and BEST SESSION per exercise. Warm-ups never count, and an estimated one-rep max comes only from sets of 10 reps or fewer. Gym effort is kept apart from your endurance fitness and fatigue, so a leg day does not read as an easy ride. You can view your sessions on the web’s Gym page, which is read-only, and plan sessions there or ask the coach.

Finish, save and upload

Press Finish on a run or ride. Form shows RUN COMPLETE or RIDE COMPLETE with the numbers, a NAME box (it suggests a name from the start time) and Save to Form. A run summary has a splits table with KM, TIME, PACE, HR, SPM and W. Discard run or Discard ride asks for confirmation (“Discard this run? It can’t be recovered.”). A recording under a minute, or under 50 m for a run or 100 m for a ride, says so and suggests discarding.

Saving writes a FIT file and uploads it to Form. It is never deleted from the phone until Form confirms it has the session.

• No signal: the recording stays on the phone and retries when you open the app or bring it back to the front. The run and ride setup screens say so, for example “One run is saved on this phone and will upload when you’re online.”
• Signed out or on a different account: the file is kept, and uploads only for the account that recorded it.
• The same session synced from Intervals.icu, starting within 10 minutes: your phone’s recording wins. The synced copy is dropped, and a planned-workout match moves to your phone’s recording.
• The same session recorded by your Garmin, if Garmin is connected: Garmin’s recording is kept. Whichever arrives first, Form ends up with one session, Garmin’s, in the phone recording’s place.
• Another Form recording of the same sport within 10 minutes: Form asks whether to keep both or discard, and never loops.
• The app is closed or the phone’s battery manager ends it mid-recording: the recording so far is kept on the phone. When you reopen Form it shows “Rebuilt from your phone after Form closed. Recording continues.”

Once uploaded, the session appears in Activities, in the app and on the web, with its route, graphs and splits, and the coach can use it. A run’s load needs a threshold pace on your profile; without one it is unknown, not 0. In the app, the session’s page has Summary, Graphs, Splits and Media tabs (and Workout, when you followed one); Media holds the session’s photos and videos (Add photos or videos). The ⋯ menu on the session page renames it, sends it to Strava, shares a photo or video to socials, downloads it as FIT, TCX, GPX or a splits CSV, or deletes it. See Share a session and Send a session to Strava.

Battery and background notes

• Recording uses the phone’s location only while the recording is running, and Form asks for “while using the app” location, not always-on location.
• A phone in a pocket with the screen off can record for hours. The recording does not depend on timers; it advances each time location arrives.
• The run or ride resumes after a restart. After a restart your phone may need Form on screen once before location comes back. Open the app and look at the recording.
• Heart-rate and power readings older than a few seconds are treated as missing and never held at their last value.