Forge Privacy Policy

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE]

Forge is a powerlifting coaching platform operated by Forge Software LLC LLC, a Kansas limited liability company ("Forge," "we," "us"). This policy explains what information Forge collects, how it is used, who can see it, and the controls you have. It covers the Forge mobile app, the Forge web app at app.coachwithforge.com, and our website at coachwithforge.com.

We have tried to write this in plain English. If anything is unclear, email us at support@coachwithforge.com and we will explain it.

1. Forge is 18+

Forge is for adults. You must be 18 or older to create an account; the app checks your date of birth at signup and blocks anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18, and never from children under 13. If you believe a minor has created an account, contact support@coachwithforge.com and we will delete it.

2. Information we collect

Information you give us when you sign up

• Account details: email address, full name, username, and a password. Your password is handled by our authentication provider in hashed form — we never see or store it in readable form.
• Date of birth: used to verify you are 18 or older and, if leaderboard features are offered, to place you in an age category by birth year.
• Role and preferences: whether you use Forge as a coach, an athlete, or both; your preferred units (kg or lb); and optionally your experience level.

Profile information you choose to add

Profile photo (avatar), bio, sport focus, sex (used only to select the correct strength-score formula, such as DOTS), time zone (used to show your training days on the correct calendar date), and similar optional fields. You control what you fill in.

Training data you enter

This is the core of the app, and you or your coach enter all of it:

• Training programs, prescribed exercises, sets, reps, weights, and target RPE ("rate of perceived exertion," a 1–10 self-rated effort score).
• Workout logs: the weights, reps, and RPE you actually performed, including per-set detail, set notes, and whether a set was missed.
• Bodyweight logs, personal records, cardio and freestyle session logs, and session notes.
• Recovery entries, including pain and injury notes you choose to record.
• Competition (meet) planning and results: federation, weight class, attempts, and outcomes.

Some of this — bodyweight, effort ratings, pain and injury notes — is health-related. We treat it with the commitments in Section 6.

Training videos

You can record or upload short training videos (for example, a squat attempt) for technique review. Videos are stored in a private storage area — there are no public video links. The app grants access through short-lived, expiring links, only to the people described in Section 4. Camera, microphone, and photo-library access are requested only when you start recording or picking a video, and the app works without them if you decline.

Messages

Coach–athlete text messages and optional video attachments. Messages are visible to you and the person you are messaging.

Discover profile (opt-in only)

If you opt in to the Discover marketplace (to find a coach, or to be found as one), you choose additional information to show on your public card: location, a short bio, federation, weight class, goals, training style, coaching specialties, an optional price tier, any injury or training restrictions you choose to state, and up to a few featured videos you explicitly select. Discover visibility is off by default and you can turn it off at any time.

Information collected automatically

• Crash and error reports (Sentry): if the app crashes or hits an error, technical details are sent to Sentry — device model, operating system version, app version, and the technical trace of what failed. A small sample of app-performance timings is also collected. We use this only to find and fix bugs.
• Usage analytics (Firebase Analytics): which screens are viewed and a few key milestones (app installed, account created, a coach adding their first athlete, an athlete logging their first workout). Firebase associates these events with a device-level identifier. We use this only to understand how Forge is used in aggregate — never for advertising — and we do not send your training data, messages, or health-related entries to analytics.
• Push notification token: if you turn on notifications, a device push token is stored with your profile so we can deliver alerts (for example, a new message from your coach). Declining notifications simply means no token is stored.

Purchases

Coach subscriptions and roster add-ons are bought through Apple's App Store or Google Play. Apple or Google processes the payment — we never receive your card number or billing details. Our purchases provider (RevenueCat) processes the purchase receipt so the app knows which plan is active.

Emails you're involved in

If a coach invites someone by email, that email address is stored with the invite and passed to our email-delivery provider (Resend) to send the invitation. If you email support, we keep the correspondence so we can help you.

3. How we use your information

We use your information to:

• run Forge: accounts, coach–athlete connections, programs, logging, progress charts, video review, messaging, meet prep, and notifications;
• process subscriptions and enforce plan limits;
• fix crashes and improve the app using the technical and usage data described above;
• keep the platform safe: enforcing the 18+ rule, our Terms of Service, and the law;
• respond when you contact support.

That is the whole list. We do not use your information for advertising, and we do not build marketing profiles from it.

4. Who can see your information

Forge is a coaching platform, so sharing between the right people is the point. Here is exactly who sees what:

Your connected coach or athletes. When you connect with a coach (or, as a coach, with an athlete), the other person can see the training data relevant to the coaching relationship: your programs, workout logs, bodyweight logs, RPE, recovery and pain/injury notes, personal records, meet prep, progress charts, training videos, and your messages with them — plus basic profile details (name, username, photo, bio, experience level, and similar). When a connection ends, the former coach or athlete loses access to your data in the app. (Anything they downloaded or exported while connected — for example a saved video — is on their device and outside our control, as with any sharing.)

Other signed-in Forge users. So that coaches and athletes can find each other, any signed-in user can search for you and see a minimal profile card: your name, username, profile photo, and sport focus. Nothing else — not your email, birth date, logs, videos, or messages.

Discover (only if you opt in). Your Discover card, with the fields you chose to include, is visible to Forge users browsing the marketplace, and a limited version may be visible to visitors who are not signed in. Featured videos are visible only if you explicitly feature them. Opting out hides the card again.

Leaderboards (only if you opt in). If leaderboard features are offered, appearing on them is strictly opt-in and off by default.

Nobody else. Other users never see your data outside the cases above.

5. Service providers

Like almost every app, Forge runs on infrastructure operated by specialist companies. They process data only to provide their service to us, under their own contractual and privacy obligations:

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or as part of a business transition such as a merger or acquisition (in which case this policy continues to apply to your data and we will notify you of any change of operator).

6. What we never do

• We never sell your personal information, and we have not sold it in the past.
• We never share your information with data brokers.
• We show no advertising in Forge and use no advertising SDKs.
• Your fitness and health-related data — bodyweight, RPE, recovery and injury notes, training logs, videos — is never used for advertising or marketing, never shared for anyone else's marketing, and never used for any purpose unrelated to providing Forge's coaching features.
• Forge does not read from or write to Apple HealthKit or Google Health Connect.

7. Data retention, export, and deletion

While your account is active, we keep your data so the app works — your training history is the product's value to you and your coach.

Export: Profile → My Data → Export downloads your programs, workout logs, personal records, session history, and bodyweight logs as a CSV file you can keep or take elsewhere.

Deletion: Profile → My Data → Delete My Account schedules permanent deletion with a 30-day grace period. During those 30 days you can change your mind by logging back in and tapping "Recover My Account." After the 30 days, your account is permanently erased: profile, email, name, date of birth, training logs, bodyweight logs, personal records, recovery notes, meet data, messages, videos, and push token are all deleted.

One honest exception: before erasure, we extract bare, unlinkable training statistics — an exercise name, a weight, a rep count, an effort score, and the month it happened — with no name, no account identifier, no session or program link, and no exact dates. These isolated data points cannot be traced back to you or reassembled into anyone's history, and we keep them to understand training trends (for example, average squat loads across the platform). Everything that identifies you is destroyed.

Deleted data may persist briefly in encrypted backups until those backups rotate out.

8. Security

Data is encrypted in transit. Access to data inside Forge is enforced by row-level database rules, so users can only read what Section 4's rules allow. Videos live in a private bucket accessible only through short-lived expiring links. Passwords are stored only as cryptographic hashes. No system is perfectly secure, but if we learn of a breach affecting your personal information we will notify you as required by law.

9. Your rights and choices

Wherever you live, we extend the same basic rights to everyone:

• Access and portability: use the in-app export, or email us for a copy of your information.
• Correction: edit your profile and training data in the app, or ask us for help.
• Deletion: use the in-app deletion flow (Section 7), or email us.
• Notifications: turn push notifications on or off in the app or in your device settings at any time.
• Discover and leaderboards: opt in or out at any time.

Depending on where you live (for example, the EU/UK under GDPR or California under the CCPA), you may have additional statutory rights, including the right to complain to a data-protection authority. To exercise any right, email support@coachwithforge.com. We do not discriminate against you for exercising privacy rights. For California residents: we do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined in the CCPA/CPRA, and we do not use or disclose sensitive personal information for purposes requiring a right to limit.

10. Where data is processed

Forge is operated from the United States, and our service providers may store and process data in the United States and other countries. If you use Forge from outside the US, you understand your information will be transferred to and processed in the US, where privacy laws may differ from your country's.

11. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the effective date at the top and, for significant changes, tell you in the app or by email before the change takes effect. We will never retroactively weaken the commitments in Section 6 for data collected under this policy without your consent.

12. Contact

Forge Software LLC LLC
Kansas, United States
support@coachwithforge.com