THE BODDY JOURNAL
How Should You Export and Back Up Your Workout History?
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Direct answer: Export before you cancel, reinstall, or migrate. Keep both a human-readable copy and structured data when available, verify that dates and units are intact, and preserve custom-exercise definitions alongside the set history that references them.
The complaint behind the question
Long-term users fear losing years of workouts when sync breaks or a product changes direction. A basic CSV may omit notes, templates, body measurements, media, or the links between a custom exercise and its history.
Why this happens
Workout history is relational. A row of weight and reps is useful, but context—exercise identity, equipment, units, time zone, set type, and notes—determines whether another app can interpret it. Apple Health exports only the data stored there, not every private app field.
A five-point quality check
- Export all available categories.
- Open the files before relying on them.
- Confirm kilograms and pounds are labeled.
- Save custom-exercise and template definitions.
- Store the backup somewhere independent of the app account.
A safer decision rule
Do not wait for a migration emergency. Create a periodic backup proportional to how valuable the history is. If an app has no usable export, treat that as a switching-cost risk before investing more years of data.
What good product behavior looks like
An export should be readable outside the app and preserve dates, exercise names, units, sets, reps, and meaningful notes. A backup that cannot be opened or mapped back to the original session is not yet dependable. Make the export easy to request before changing phones or subscriptions, and distinguish the app's own data from an Apple Health export. Check a few old and recent sessions after downloading; a file size alone cannot prove that the history is complete.
Where Boddy fits
Boddy makes training history useful inside the product by tying completed workouts to planning, coaching, recovery, meals, and visible progress instead of leaving sessions as isolated log entries. For long-term ownership, users should also use the export or Apple Health controls available in their current setup and keep an independent copy of records that matter to them. The value of one connected workflow does not require making it the only copy.
Important limit. An Apple Health export may contain workouts written to Health but not an app's private templates, photos, or coaching notes. A CSV can be readable yet lose relationships between exercises and sessions. Do not promise a seamless migration from file existence alone; verify representative records and the new app's import capabilities first.
A quick test before you depend on the feature
Worked example. Before changing workout apps, export your current records and open the files on another device. Pick three sessions—a recent workout, an older workout, and one using a custom exercise—and verify that the dates, units, exercise names, sets, reps, loads, and notes survived. Save screenshots or a readable copy of templates if the structured export omits them. Keep the backup outside the app account you plan to close. Only then test an import into the new app; do not delete the original account until you know what transferred and what needs manual reconstruction.
Bottom line
Test the backup before you need it. A usable file preserves the meaning of your workouts, not just a collection of opaque rows.
Sources checked in September 2026
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