People training with CalisthenAI

I spent two years doing the same three-sets-of-everything routine. The test gave me 71 on push and 43 on pull, which was exactly what I feared and had never wanted to look at. The routine it generated had twice the back work. Six months later I am at 68 on pull and I got my first muscle up.

I started unable to do a single proper push-up. What hooked me is that the first routine was incline push-ups on the edge of my sofa and it did not make me feel ridiculous. I moved up a rung when I hit the number, not when I felt like it. At fourteen weeks I did three full push-ups and burst into tears in my living room.

I train on some park bars and I have no rings and no parallettes. I ticked only pull-up bar and floor and the app never proposed anything I could not do again. It sounds trivial, but it is exactly what made me quit the other apps.

At forty you do not fancy starting something where everyone is twenty. Here you see nobody: you see your score and the rung you are on. The streak has made me train on days I would not have trained, which was precisely my problem.

I come from seven years of weights and I thought calisthenics would be easy. The test put me at 34 on core and took me down a peg. I dock a star because the physique analysis is paid and I would have liked more than one try before deciding, but I use the routine side every week.

I spent a year attempting the front lever from scattered videos and skipping rungs. Seeing the whole chain laid out in order, with the seconds criterion for going from tuck to advanced tuck, is what unlocked it. I had been attempting straddle without holding twenty seconds in tuck.

What I use most is logging sets during the session. You tap the check and that is it, nothing to write down. And the last-set-to-failure rule took my pull-ups from 9 to 15 in four months.

I spend half my life in hotels. Setting "floor and chair only" and getting a forty-minute session that genuinely tires me out is the reason I am still training. Travel weeks used to be lost weeks.

I paid for Pro for the physique analysis expecting decoration, and it flagged an anterior pelvic tilt that had been wrecking my lower back for years. I added the hip work it suggested and within two months the back pain during pull-ups was gone.

The app is very smooth and the animations are clear without reading anything. Four stars because the ads between sections get tiring if you train five days a week, though I understand somebody has to pay for the servers. With Pro they disappear.

What convinced me was retaking the test at eight weeks. Seeing 52 → 64 on push with the same exercises is a different thing from just feeling better. And when the score went up, the routine changed by itself the following week.

The handstand was my obsession and I always trained it by brute force. The progression made me go through wall walks and hold against the wall for a full minute before letting go. It took longer than I wanted but when it arrived, it really arrived.

My brother and I both use it and we follow each other on the feed. It sounds silly, but knowing he will see that I skipped Tuesday works better than any reminder.

I am a physio and I scrutinise any app that recommends movements. The tutorials are well written, the common mistakes are the ones I see in clinic, and it promises no miracle recoveries. I have passed it to several patients returning to exercise.

The best part is that the "what do I do today" question is gone. You open it, the session is there, you do it. That small friction was what made me skip days.

I train in my room with a doorway bar. Having the level run from 5 to 100 instead of beginner/intermediate/advanced means there is always a concrete next rung. I have never felt stuck for more than two weeks.