What is a readiness score?

A readiness score is a single number, usually on a 0–100 scale, that summarises how recovered you are this morning and therefore how hard today’s training should be. It replaces a decision most people make by mood with one made from measurements: hours and quality of sleep, heart-rate variability and resting heart rate against your own baseline, how much you trained in the last two days, and what you report about soreness, stress and energy. A high score means the plan can be pushed; a low one means the same session, lighter, or a different one.

It is a decision aid, not a diagnosis. Its job is to change today’s prescription by the right amount, which is usually a little. The scale matters less than the direction: a 55 against your usual 75 is the useful fact, not the 55.

What goes into Liftor’s readiness score?

Eight terms, with fixed weights. Sleep is 25%, graded against your own median hours and quality. Your check-in is 25%: mood, motivation, energy, stress, hours of sleep and soreness by muscle group, a minute in the morning. HRV against your baseline is 15%; the last 48 hours of training, 15%; resting heart rate, 10%; yesterday’s nutrition against target, 7%. Two terms subtract: alcohol the night before, 7%, and unusually heavy strain coming up, 3%.

The final number is floored at 30. A score of 8 would read as a broken app rather than a bad night, and no set of inputs is bad enough to earn one; the worst morning reads as “low”, and the plan bends accordingly.

What does the score change?

Today’s workout, today’s food and today’s recovery, and a short note that says what moved and why — “HRV down against your baseline” rather than “low readiness”. A good morning makes the session heavier; a bad one lightens it or swaps the day. A week of low scores is one of the signals that proposes a deload. None of it needs a watch: with nothing connected, the check-in alone carries the score, and the baselines fill in as the app learns your normal.

Do check-in answers actually predict anything?

Better than the blood tests, as it turns out. Saw, Main and Gastin reviewed fifty-six studies in 2016 that had measured athletes’ well-being both ways at once — objective markers like resting heart rate and blood chemistry beside subjective ones like mood and perceived stress — and found that the subjective measures reflected acute and chronic training load with superior sensitivity and consistency. The two kinds of measure generally did not even correlate with each other: the athlete’s own report saw the load before the lab did.

That is the argument for weighting a one-minute check-in at 25% of the readiness score, the same as sleep and more than HRV. The six fields — mood, motivation, energy, stress, hours of sleep and soreness by muscle group — are the ones the review found informative, and they are asked as sliders and taps rather than as a questionnaire, because a question that takes a minute is answered every day and one that takes five is answered on Sundays.

What is a good readiness score?

One that is close to your own usual. The scale runs from a floor of 30 to 100, but the number on its own says little: a lifter whose mornings average 80 and a lifter whose mornings average 60 are both fine on their own terms, and each is worth a closer look on a day fifteen under. Liftor keys its decisions to the gap and to the run of days rather than to the level, which is why two people with the same score can get two different sessions.

Two thresholds are fixed, and both are about weeks rather than mornings. A seven-day average under 60 is one of the four signals that proposes a lighter week; a seven-day average under 45 forces the proposal on its own. Below that there is nothing to interpret — a week that low is a week to rest, and the app says so in as many words.

Do you need a watch for a readiness score?

No. Without a device the check-in carries the score by itself, which the review above suggests is the better half of the model anyway; with one, sleep, HRV and resting heart rate are read from Apple Health and folded in at their fixed weights. Whatever writes to Apple Health counts — an Apple Watch, a ring, a chest strap worn to bed — and the baselines fill in from your own readings over seven days, with population medians standing in until then.

The number that is missing is simply left out of the weighting rather than guessed, so a lifter with no watch is scored on what is known about them, not on an average of strangers. The daily rewrite works the same way in both cases: the session, the food and the rest bend by a little, and the note says what moved.

Sources

Saw AE, Main LC, Gastin PB. Monitoring the athlete training response: subjective self-reported measures trump commonly used objective measures: a systematic review. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2016; 50(5): 281–291
Liftor’s readiness model: the eight weights, the floor of 30, the sleep grade against your own median (services/readiness.ts in the app’s source)
Liftor’s check-in: mood, motivation, energy, stress, hours of sleep, soreness by muscle group (app/checkin.tsx)
Liftor’s deload detector: a seven-day readiness average under 60 as a signal, under 45 as a forcing one (services/deloadEngine.ts)