AMPLIFY RUN
iPhone & Apple Watch
Amplify Run writes a real training plan for your race, then reads last night's sleep, heart-rate variability and strain every morning and tells you — out loud — whether today's session still makes sense. When life gets in the way, it rebuilds the plan instead of letting you fall behind it.
In testing on TestFlight · iOS 17 or later · No account needed to train
What it's for
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.
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.
Sleep, heart-rate variability and resting heart rate measured against your own normal — not a population average — and a straight answer about today.
Every training feature works with no account, no connection and no one else involved. The social side is a choice you can skip forever.
What it reads
Every one of these is read with your permission, used on your phone, and can be switched off one by one in iOS Settings. Nothing here is uploaded anywhere by the coaching side of the app.
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 reads your briefing out loud. You can train for a marathon and never own a watch.
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. Without them the plan still runs — it just can't tell you how recovered you are.
| Feature | iPhone alone | With Apple Watch |
|---|---|---|
| Training plan, paces, rebuilds | Yes | Yes |
| Run tracking, GPS route, splits | Yes | Yes |
| Spoken daily briefing | Yes | Yes |
| Social, posts, stories, chat | Yes | Yes |
| Guided session on your wrist | — | Interval by interval |
| Sleep score | Only if another device writes sleep to Health | From your own nights |
| Recovery score (HRV, resting HR) | — | Every morning |
| Strain, 0–21 from heart rate | Estimated from pace only | Minute by minute |
| Cadence, power, ground contact | — | Every run |
| Easy-run heart-rate ceiling | — | Live on the wrist |
The plan
You tell it the race and your week. It writes every session from today to race day, in phases, with the long run where you said and hard days spaced so you can absorb them.
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.
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.
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 in the plan is written in those paces, so "easy" means a number you can actually run rather than a feeling you have to guess at.
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 that exists 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.
Weekly volume rises in steps small enough to absorb, with a lighter week built in 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 works only if you're still there next week to do it again.
When life interferes
Most plans are a PDF: miss a week and you spend the next one trying to catch up on work your body never did. This one rewrites itself, and always shows you what it wants to change before it changes it.
Every change is a proposal. You see the current plan and the proposed one side by side, with the reason written out, and you decide. Nothing is rewritten behind your back.
Sleep, recovery, strain
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 instead of showing you a confident number it hasn't earned.
Hours against what your training actually asks for, how close your bedtime was to usual, and the wake-ups your watch recorded.
Last night's heart-rate variability and resting heart rate against your own range, with how you slept folded in. Green, amber or red.
How hard your heart actually worked, minute by minute, on a 0–21 curve — with a target for today set by the session the plan wants.
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 rather than quietly disagreeing with your watch.
The briefing
The summary that matters most is the one you'd never open an app to read. So it reads itself to you.
Where your data lives
This is the part worth being specific about, because "we take privacy seriously" means nothing. Here is exactly what happens to each kind of data.
Plan generation, pace calculation, recovery scoring, the strain curve and the briefing text are all computed on the phone. There is no server involved in any of it — which is also why it works with no signal.
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, and even then it isn't part of what gets sent.
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 on the server at all.
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.
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.
iOS asks per data type, and you can refuse any of them. Refuse sleep and you lose the sleep score; everything else carries on. You can change your mind at any time in Settings.
Day to day
Questions
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. The untrimmed version is never stored on the server.
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.
Early access
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.
Social — entirely optional
Bolted on by choice, not by design
The coaching never asks who you are. Social is a separate account you make only if you want one, and everything above this section works exactly the same whether you do or not.
What you get if you join
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.