Calisthenics training app · iOS
ZenMotion is the calisthenics app that actually progresses you toward real skills — muscle-up, planche, front lever, handstand, human flag. Starting from zero? The adaptive 10-week Foundations cycle walks you up from wall push-ups. No random workouts. No fluff. Just programs that work.
Every skill is a Skill Focus Split — five days that rotate skill work, opposite-pattern balance, mobility, legs, and pure skill rehearsal. Pick the one you're chasing, set it as your focus, and the rest of the app biases toward it. Brand new to calisthenics? The Foundations card below is your starting point.
The bar-to-rings holy grail. Explosive pulls, transition drills, weighted variants, and L-sit progressions across five days a week.
From frog stand to full planche. Lean progressions, tuck holds, and straddle work that build the straight-arm strength most apps skip.
The forearm-supported sibling of the planche. Wrist-friendly entry to lower-body inversions and arm-balance strength.
Tuck → advanced tuck → straddle → full. The pulling-side equivalent of the planche, and one of the best core builders in calisthenics.
Often the first static skill people unlock. A friendly entry point into straight-arm strength training.
Wall holds, balance drills, freestanding press work. Build the line, the balance, and the wrist strength to hold a clean handstand on demand.
Pike press, straddle press, stalder. The pressing strength to enter a handstand from the ground without a kick.
Pole holds, side leans, and oblique work that get you from "what is that" to a clean horizontal flag.
The rear-grip pull most lifters don't know exists. Trains the back-line strength + shoulder mobility no other movement reaches.
Archer, typewriter, assisted, top hold, negative. The CNS overload progression toward the rarest pulling skill in calisthenics.
Compression strength from L-sit to V-sit to Manna. The hardest static skill in calisthenics — earned five days at a time.
A 10-week adaptive cycle for total beginners. 3 short sessions a week — push, pull, squat, hinge and core each climb their own progression ladder, from wall push-ups up.
Three steps. No spreadsheets, no guessing what to do next.
Two questions on launch. Starting from zero gets you Foundations — a 10-week adaptive cycle that walks you up from wall push-ups. Already training? Pick a skill (muscle-up, planche, front lever, V-sit) and the app sets it as your focus.
Foundations runs 3 short sessions a week — push, pull, squat, hinge, core each on their own progression ladder. Skill chasers get a 5-day rotation: Skill Focus Splits that rotate skill day, balance, mobility, legs, skill rehearsal. Either way the app tells you exactly what to do, how many sets, how many reps. Targets bump automatically when you clear them.
Log reps, sets, and hold times as you train. ZenMotion surfaces your streaks, personal bests, rep trends — and 56 achievements to chase, from first pull-up to first full planche.
11 advanced skills, each as a 5-day rotation: foundation, balance, mobility, legs, skill rehearsal. Plus a 5-day strength split, per-skill calibration tests, and the adaptive 10-week Foundations cycle for total beginners. Designed around specific outcomes — not random WODs.
Onboarding takes 30 seconds. Two questions decide whether you get the beginner-friendly Foundations cycle, the intermediate skill-focus track, or straight into the 5-day strength split. No 50-question quiz, no "select your goals" grid — just enough signal to route you to a plan that fits where you actually are today.
Beginners get five parallel ladders — push, pull, squat, hinge, core — each with its own progression. Push starts at wall push-ups and climbs through desk, knee, floor, decline, pike, and diamond. Pull ladder runs from scapular pulls to full pull-ups. The system places you at the right rung from your diagnostic, then only bumps you up after you crush the top rep target with clean form twice in a row.
From your first pull-up to your first full planche. Achievements span bodyweight ladders (Pull-Up 1 → 20, Dips 1 → 50), hold milestones (L-sit, plank, dead hang), skill firsts (muscle-up, lever, V-sit, Hefesto), and consistency streaks. Each unlock is shareable to Instagram Stories.
Pick a skill as your focus and the strength split adapts. Pull Day's main work — Pull-Ups, Rows, Knee Raises — swaps for back-lever progressions matched to your calibration tier. Same duration, biased toward what you're chasing.
Each exercise comes with clear written cues, plus one-tap YouTube and Google links if you want to see a tutorial. No guessing how the move should feel.
Track reps, sets, hold times, and weights. Per-movement charts in Stats. Auto-progression bumps your rep target after a clean set, and surfaces graduation hints when a variant gets too easy.
Every exercise you log gets its own timeline in Stats. Tap a movement and see your top set, estimated 1RM, and volume trend rendered as a Swift Charts line graph. A training heatmap shows density week over week, and a skill-progression view lays out where you are on every family ladder. This is your training log the way you'd have kept it in a notebook — but searchable, deduped, and never lost.
Every fourth training week, your target reps automatically scale down 20% for a full recovery cycle. Sets stay the same — the volume drops. A calm banner explains what's happening so you don't push through when your body needs to reset. Sustainable calisthenics means training in cycles, not straight lines.
Skipped a week? Life happened? Your first session back automatically drops targets 20% with a warm "Easing back in" banner. No guilt trip, no reset streaks — just softer numbers to rebuild momentum. Next session, you're back to normal.
Life doesn't stand still, and neither does your baseline. Every skill has a calibration test — a one-pass benchmark for back lever, front lever, planche, and handstand — that decides which variant tier the app serves you. Re-run it whenever you plateau, come back from injury, or feel like your prescriptions have drifted from what you can actually do. The whole plan re-tunes off the new result.
Set a weekly training target and build a streak. The boring secret of calisthenics: showing up consistently.
Create new programs from scratch using any exercise in the library. Pick your moves, set the reps, sets, and rest intervals, and save it alongside the guided programs.
The active workout lives in a sheet over the tab bar. Minimise to check Stats, peek at next week's programs, or switch your weight unit — then tap the mini-player to slide back in. Plus a Live Activity on the Lock Screen with the current exercise prescription.
Static skills get a configurable countdown before the timer starts (Off / 3s / 5s / 10s) so the seconds spent kicking into position don't eat into your goal. Stop the timer mid-hold, the seconds commit to the set automatically.
Every completed workout writes to Apple Health as a Functional Strength Training session — so your rings, history, and trends all stay in sync. Calorie estimates use your body mass when available.
One tap to sign in. No passwords, no email lists, no spam. Your data stays yours.
Four screens, four moments in a workout week.
Today's session up front. Streak, weekly goal, and next-up preview underneath — no digging.
11 Skill Focus Splits plus the Foundations cycle. One tap sets any of them as your focus.
Reps, sets, hold times, weights. Auto-progression bumps your target the moment you crush it.
Training heatmap, per-movement charts, and 30-day comparisons once you have enough history.
Most fitness apps throw exercises at you. ZenMotion progresses you.
Calisthenics isn't about how many burpees you can grind through this morning. It's about adding one more rep to your max set. Holding the tuck planche for two more seconds. Going from a chin-up negative to a full strict rep, then to ten of them.
That kind of progress needs structure. Every ZenMotion program is built around the principle of progressive overload — clear levels, clear targets, and the next step always one rep away. See the full progression roadmap — the exact path from wall push-up to planche, dead hang to muscle-up, plank to Manna.
And it needs recovery. Every fourth week is a built-in deload, and your first session back after a break gets softer targets so momentum rebuilds without a wall to hit. Sustainable progress is trained in cycles — not straight lines.
Yes — beginners are one of the two audiences the app is explicitly built for. When you launch, ZenMotion asks two short questions and routes you into the right path. If you're starting from zero, you get Foundations: a 10-week adaptive cycle, 3 short sessions a week, with push, pull, squat, hinge, and core each climbing their own progression ladder. We meet you at wall push-ups and walk you up — no assumed strength, no "30s active hang to qualify".
Especially for you. The Foundations cycle is designed for exactly this case. The push ladder starts at wall push-ups, then desk push-ups, then knee push-ups, then floor push-ups, all the way up to pike and diamond variants. The system places you at the right rung based on a short diagnostic, and only bumps you up after you crush a rung twice in a row with good form. You'll never be served a movement you're not ready for, and you'll see real progress between session one and session ten.
Most programs need only your body and a bit of floor space. A pull-up bar is required for pull-up, muscle-up, front lever, and back lever programs. Parallettes are useful (but not required) for planche and handstand work.
Most trainees who can already do 8–10 strict pull-ups achieve their first muscle-up in 8–16 weeks of consistent training. ZenMotion's muscle-up program walks you through explosive pull-ups, transition drills, and straight-bar dips — the three pieces that have to come together.
Most fitness apps give you random workouts. ZenMotion gives you Skill Focus Splits — 5-day rotations built around the skill you're chasing. Pick muscle-up, planche, front lever, V-sit, or any of 11 advanced skills, and the whole week rotates skill work, opposite-pattern balance, mobility, legs, and pure skill rehearsal. Every rep is tracked so you see exactly when a variant gets too easy and it's time to graduate.
Yes. Set as Focus lets you pick one skill (back lever, planche, muscle-up, etc.) and the 5-day strength split automatically adapts. The main work on each day stays in the same pattern (push, pull, full body) but swaps for variants that target your focus skill. Same workout duration, biased toward what you actually care about. Per-skill calibration tests for back lever, front lever, planche, and handstand decide which variant tier you're ready for, so you won't be served regressions you've already mastered.
56 milestones spanning four categories: bodyweight progression ladders (Pull-Up 1 → 5 → 10 → 15 → 20, Push-Up 1 → 75, Dips 1 → 50, pistol squats, archer variants), hold milestones (60s plank, 90s dead hang, 30s L-sit, 30s wall handstand, 5s freestanding), skill firsts (first muscle-up, tuck planche, tuck/full front and back lever, V-sit, dragon flag, human flag, press to handstand, Hefesto), and consistency streaks (1, 10, 25, 100 workouts; 7, 14, 30, 90-day streaks). Each one carries a world-rarity hint and routes you toward the program most likely to unlock it. Unlocks are shareable to Instagram Stories.
Absolutely. Calisthenics is bodyweight training — most of ZenMotion's programs require only floor space. For pulling skills, any pull-up bar (door-frame bar, park bar, monkey bars) works fine.
Yes. Every workout records your reps, sets, and hold times per exercise. The app surfaces personal bests, weekly training streaks, and rep trends across comparable workouts so you can see your strength curve over time.
Most people see steady progress on 3 to 5 sessions a week — enough volume to drive adaptations, enough rest for your central nervous system and connective tissue to recover. Beginners do well with 3 short sessions (Foundations is programmed exactly that way). Intermediate and advanced trainees chasing a specific skill typically run a 5-day split with one built-in mobility or leg day. Training every single day tends to backfire — recovery is where growth happens, and calisthenics is especially demanding on wrists, elbows, and shoulders. ZenMotion lets you set your weekly target when you set up your plan and adjusts recommendations accordingly.
Yes — and ZenMotion builds one in for you automatically. Every fourth training week is a deload: your target reps drop by 20% while sets stay the same. That gives your CNS, tendons, and joints a full week to consolidate the strength gains from the previous three weeks of harder training. Deloads aren't optional maintenance — they're what turns short-term overreaching into long-term adaptation. Skipping them is one of the fastest routes to elbow tendinopathy in calisthenics, especially when you're chasing static skills like planche, front lever, or handstand.
Gently, and with lower expectations for the first session. ZenMotion handles this automatically — if your last completed workout was 7 or more days ago, the first session back scales targets down by 20% with an "Easing back in" banner on Home. That's not the app being polite: it's the honest version of how detraining works. After even a week off, your strength endurance dips 5–10% while your neural drive stays roughly intact, so you can technically still lift near your max — but pushing to failure on the first session back is what causes tendon flare-ups. Softer targets for one session, then normal programming resumes.
When you can crush the top of the current rep range with clean form across all sets — and you've done it more than once. ZenMotion enforces this by never bumping you up on a single lucky session; it needs at least one prior session at the same rung with strong performance before it graduates you. In practice: hit 3×12 clean push-ups this week and 3×12 clean push-ups next week? Time to move to diamond, decline, or archer push-ups. This is where most self-programmed calisthenics stalls — trainees either graduate too early (and burn out on a variant they can't do with form) or too late (grinding easy reps that stop driving adaptation). Progression is treated as a decision the app makes for you, based on what you actually logged.
Yes — ZenMotion is completely free. Every program, every level, every feature is included at no cost. No subscription, no paywall, no in-app purchases.
ZenMotion is currently iOS-only. Android is on the roadmap.
About
ZenMotion is designed and built by Jacob Fredriksson — a software engineer training calisthenics since 2019. Every program, every progression ladder, every rep-range decision reflects what actually worked in a real training log, not a copy of some other app's catalogue. The point is honest, adaptive programming for people who train because they want to get stronger — not because a coach in a mirror is barking at them.
Feedback is read personally. Reach out on Instagram or email support@zenmotion.app.
Download ZenMotion, pick a skill, and train for it. Free on iOS.
Questions, feedback, or program requests? Email me directly — I read everything.
support@zenmotion.app