How to get started with the app

Step 1: Choosing Programs

… or use workouts and/or modules to create your own programs, or supplement your existing program - LEARN MORE.

Programs are weekly scheduled training plans that will tell you what workouts you should do on what day. There are programs for different levels and for different goals.

The programs are built up by workouts and all workouts are again built up by blocks that has a specific purpose and consists of exercises. All of these exercise are adjustable and has several “progressions”. You will learn about the best practices to choose progressions later in this article.

The very first step should be to choose your program(s) based on the following:

• Your goals

• Your level

  In the app, you will find that there are several general program categories. Within each of these categories, you will find specific programs usually labeled at a specific level. If you click on the programs you should see a description of the programs which will tell you the recommended pre requisites.

• How much time you have and your need for restitution

  Some programs have different splits and fewer, or more workouts in a week. This is mostly valid for the bodyweight strength programs and you should critically evaluate how much time you can realistically put aside for working out.

  Some programs have higher training volumes and you may even want to combine programs and/or add specific workouts, or modules, which you will learn more about later in this article.

  “Bodyweight STRONG” and “Bodyweight SKILLED” which are intermediate and advanced bodyweight strength programs have a choice of “full body”, “push/pull” and “straight/bent arm” split. In most cases, the full body program having 3 workout days a week will be more than enough to see strength gains. For some the 6 days a week splits “push/pull” and “straight/bent arm” may provide an extra boost given your body is able to recover.

  The “straight/bent arm” are particularly intense, and regardless of what split you choose, you should always be critical and evaluate your recovery. A good rule of thumb is - “If consistently perform worse on your next workout, you may not have recovered properly”

  In the end, fitness is a journey of learning to know your body, so experimenting with different programs can be interesting and educational. Trained athletes generally need less time to recover, so as you grow stronger, you may also handle more training volume.

  Since we are all different in terms of recovery, it is also important that you allow yourself to make certain individual customisations to the programs. You can read more about suggested individualisation measures in the end of this article.

Step 2: Start the Program and choose progressions

The same procedure that will be presented is applicable if you are doing stand alone workouts, or modules (which you can learn more about HERE.

You can check out this video for a detailed follow-along on how to get started using a program, or workout:

Your first workout will necessarily be a bit more time consuming and challenging because you will need to choose progressions for each exercise. This is the only way to assure that the programs and workouts are as efficient as possible and that you work at your limit and get the best results possible.

Each exercise category (except for some warm-up drills) has a progression button on the right side. Clicking this will make a list of available progressions appear. When first doing a specific program, or workout, we must choose the progression that is most suiting to our level.

On most of the broader programs (all the bodyweight programs and handstand programs as well as others) there are test days. These test days is the first day of the program and includes all exercise categories used in the entire program and all of its workouts. The test day can have 2 functions:

TEST DAYS:

1. If it is your first time doing a program, you spend this day testing out the different progressions on each exercise category to find the most suitable progression according to your level.

2. When you are repeating the program (which you should expect to do), you can spend this day experimenting with more advanced progressions and see if you are able to bump up your level in any of the exercise categories. This can also be done continously throughout the program before starting a workout, so you do not have to wait for the next test day top do this.

3. You can use it as a traditional test day when re doing the program. You can note down the number of repetitions and compare it to the previous time you performed the test day. measuring progress is an important part of your training journey to make sure you are actually seeing progress.

The progression should be chosen based on the details provided on the exercise card. For example, if it says “5-10 reps - to failure”, that means you should choose a progression you are able to perform 5-10 reps of. If you are able to do 10, then you may want to choose an harder progression. If you are not able to do 5 reps, you should consider choosing an easier progression.

Below you will see an example of an exercise card with the rep scheme “collecting seconds. While the progressions can be changed by clicking the arrows on the right, the rep scheme stays the same throughout all the different progressions in this exercise category. In these kinds of rep schemes, the goal time indicated by (20s) will also change throughout the progressions. In this case, the next progression will be “tuck planche (30s) (PL2)”. Don’t mind the (PL2), it’s just for organisation.

In the above example of an exercise card, you need to choose a progression (by clicking the arrows on the right) that you are able to hold the specified goal time (in this case 20 seconds) in 5, or less than 5 tries. when you are able to hold the specified goal time in less than 3 tries, you are ready for the next progression. In this case 1 set is considered to be the amount of tries needed to complete the goal time. You will also rest 20-30 seconds between the tries. Collecting set is inspired by classic weight lifting rep schemes rest-pause sets and cluster sets. You can learn more about “collecting seconds” rep scheme and other rep schemes used in the app in the videos below.

once you have chosen a progression for each exercise in the workout, you can save the choice so that the app remember this throughout your program. As you get stronger, you can of course choose a more challenging progression under ways.

The “5-10 reps - to failure” and the “collecting seconds” rep schemes are just examples and there are many different set schemes provided in the different workouts. Here is a video gallery with instructions for the different rep schemes:

Step 4: Then what?

Now you just got to stick to it!

Make sure as you grow stronger, that you challenge yourself by choosing harder progressions.

You can also individualise the programs as you get more familiar with your own body, its limits, and your own goals and preferences.

Here is a few ways to individualise the programs:

1. You can reduce, or increase the number of sets within each workout

   If you feel that the volume is too high, I recommend reducing the number of sets and see if that feels better. Perhaps some workouts are just too long for you in general, or in some cases where you are in a hurry - The best workout is the workout you where able to complete… and a short workout is always better than no workut!

   Sometimes you may even want to increase the number of sets if you are struggling to move on to more advanced progressions, or seeing stagnation in general.

2. You can add Modules for additional skills you want to work on

   I you for example are doing a handstand program, and also want to learn to planche, or front lever, or any other skill, but don’t want to embark on a complete bodyweight program, then adding additional modules for the skills you want to work on may be a good idea.

   The same applies if you are doing a complete bodyweight program and want to add training for skills that isn’t a part of the program you are using.

   I recommend “saving” your favourite modules so they are easily accessible. You can do several modules after each other, or just one. The modules can be done after your main workout, as a part of it, or by itself on a separate time in the same day, or another day where you have no other workouts.

   Modules are found in the “stand alone” workouts tab in the app. You can use the filter “modules” to easily find all available modules.

   The difference between a module and a workout is that a module is not regarded as a complete general workout, but a complete specific workout for a specific skill. It includes specific warm-up only, so if you are only doing a module stand alone (not after, or in another workout), a general warm-up is recommended before starting.

3. You can add additional workouts

   if you want to for example follow a full bodyweight program, you also want to learn to handstand, but do not have the time to follow both a handstand program and a complete bodyweight program, then you can add a handstand workout to your program.

   The same would apply if handstands was your priority and you want to add for example 1 day a week of bodyweight strength work.

   In any case I recommend finding your favourite workouts to add and “saving” them (by clicking the heart in the upper right corner) so they are easily accessible from the home screen of the app.

   Another useful tip is that the level of the workouts (according to the level of the programs) are indicated in the workout names. Here are some examples.

   • “BW foundations 1 (Full)” means it is level 1 and same pre requisites as “bodyweight FOUNDATION” programs is to be expected. As a side note, all BW foundation workouts are full body workouts.

   • “Full Body L2 A” means it is level 2 and same pre requisites as “bodyweight STRONG” programs is to be expected. Letter “A” indicates that there is one, or more variations of this workout (labeled with “B” etc.)

   • “Pull L3 B (OAP & FL)” means it is level 3 and same pre requisites as “bodyweight SKILLED” programs is to be expected. The parenthesis will be explained further.

   • Workouts named handstand 1, 2 and 3 will indicate the difficulty of the handstand workouts according to prerequisites specified in the handstand programs for these levels.

   • You can also get more info on each workout by clicking on them and reading the introduction on top.

   in addition to this there may be additional information within (parenthesis’) indication additional info such as:

   • (FULL) - The full workout including all important exercises for specified workout.

   • (SHORT) - a shorter variation of the workout with only the most essential exercises.

   • (“some specific” focus) - focusing on a specific aspect relevant to the specified workout. “handstand 2 (mobility focus)” for example will have a stronger focus on the mobility aspects of the handstand 2 workout. and “Pull L3 B (OAP & FL)” is a pull workout of level 3 wich focuses on strength for one arm pull-up (OAP) and front lever (FL).

   All workouts in the app is available as stand alone workouts in the “stand alone workouts” tab in the app.

4. You can combine programs

   You can combine any programs as pleased. In many cases this means 2 workouts will occur on the same day. It is then up to you to decide if you are too fatigued to perform both on the same day, or if you have time to do so. If not, then choose to perform the workout that is most relevant to your priority of goals.

   If you do choose to complete 2 workouts on the same day, you can either complete them back to back, or one in the morning and one in the afternoon/evening. If you choose to complete them back to back, you can skip the warm-up of the second workout. In this case I also recommend starting with the most technical workout. If you for example are following “bodyweight skilled Push/pull” program and handstand 2 program, and want to do two workouts from these programs back to back, I recommend starting with the handstand workout. In this case, if the handstand workout also includes strength work, I would recommend skipping this.

5. Add deload week and/or additional rest days when needed

   You know your body best and if you some time feel that you are in need of an additional rest day, or a deload week, then do that.

   You notice the need of an additional rest day if you feel unusually sore, or if you feel that you are performing worse than your last workout. You may also feel the need to add consistent additional rest days. Perhaps you feel the “bodyweight skilled Push/pull” program for example is slightly to much volume for you to handle and that you need an additional day between day 5 and 6 for example - then you do this! In the app, the “day 5” will be waiting for you. We do not always need to think of programming in terms of weeks!

   You notice the need of a deload week by consistently feeling fatigued and by consistently performing worse from workout to workout.

   A deload week can either be week (or just a few days) of complete rest, or reduced volume. You could consider down regulating the amount fo sets to half of the original workout for example (by clicking on the set number and choosing a new amount of sets).

   TIP: Active rest days and deloads:

   Instead of complete rest, you could deload a strength program, by focusing more on handstands for a week. Try some of the handstand workouts, or even follow one week of a handstand program.

   OR, you could focus more on mobility and test out some of the upper body mobility workouts, or even give the Acrobatics 101 program, or workouts a try.

   You could also simply do some more running, swimming or other cardio activities that aren’t too hard on your muscles.

6. make the programs fit your schedule

   Do you have something coming up, preventing you to complete a workout on a given day, or Wednesdays is supposed to be full body workout, but is also a day you know you consistently will not have time for a workout? Don’t sweat it.. You can do the workout on tuesday (if you can handle it), or push it to thursday.