Built around skills.
For the past year ZenMotion has shipped skill programs as level ladders — Back Lever L1 → L2 → … → L6, Planche L1 → L8, and so on. The idea was simple: you start at L1, work through the progressions, graduate to the next level. It works, but it has two problems. It conflates "the skill" with "a sequence of one-hour sessions", and it forces you to pick one skill at a time — your whole training week is "the back lever week".
That's not how strong calisthenics practice actually works. Real skill chasing is a rotation — Monday you grind the skill, Tuesday you balance with the opposite pattern, Wednesday you mobilise, Thursday you train legs, Friday you practice the skill itself. Every day still biases the focus skill, but the week breathes.
v1.7.0 rewrites the skill side of ZenMotion around that shape.
Skill Focus Splits — 11 skills, 5 days each
The headline addition is 55 new programs grouped as 11 Skill Focus Splits, one per advanced calisthenics skill:
- Handstand · Push to Handstand · Planche · Elbow Planche
- Front Lever · Back Lever · Human Flag
- Muscle-Up · Hefesto · One-Arm Pull-Up · V-Sit & Manna
Each split is a 5-day rotation following the same template:
- Day 1: Foundation — the heaviest skill day. Main work biased toward the focus skill, low rep / high quality
- Day 2: Push or Pull Balance — opposite-pattern work to keep the kinetic chain symmetric (pull-dominant skills get a push day, push-dominant get a pull day)
- Day 3: Mobility & Endurance — lighter intensity, focus on the joint prep that the skill specifically demands (wrists for handstand, hamstrings for V-sit, etc.)
- Day 4: Legs for Line — a posterior-chain and hip-driven leg session. Strong legs are line. Lower body usually gets neglected by upper-body-obsessed calisthenics — not here
- Day 5: Skill Practice — pure skill rehearsal. Eccentrics, partials, holds, and bridge variants. Where the skill itself gets ingrained
Rest one or two days where it fits your life and you've got a complete week.
In the Programs tab they collapse to 11 family cards ("Handstand Focus", "Planche Focus", etc.) — tap one to see the 5 days and pick whichever fits your day. No level grind, no commitment to a six-month linear progression. Just consistent skill-biased rotations you cycle through forever.
Set as Focus — the accessory adapts
The other side of the rethink: when you're chasing a skill, your strength split days should also help. v1.7.0 lets you Set as Focus any skill in the catalogue. Once you do, every strength workout you start with focus-supporting context (push day, pull day, full body) swaps its main work for variants that target your focus skill.
Set Back Lever as your focus and Pull Day's main work — Strict Pull-Ups, Australian Rows, Hanging Knee Raises — gets substituted for back lever progressions matched to your current ability. Tuck Back Lever Holds, Advanced Tuck, Single Leg, Half-Lay, Full Back Lever — whichever tier the catalogue thinks you're ready for. Pull pattern preserved, but biased toward the skill.
It's a swap, not an addition — same workout duration, but the work targets what you actually care about.
A "Tuned for X" pill appears on the active workout header so you always know when substitutions are in play. A diff sheet shows the swaps before you start.
Variants that match your level
The substitution picker isn't naive — it knows the tier ladder for each skill. v1.7.0 ships per-skill calibration tests for Back Lever, Front Lever, Planche, and Handstand. Take the test once and the picker gets your baseline:
- Hold 5 seconds in tuck back lever → you'll be served Tuck Back Lever in substitutions
- Hold 5 seconds in advanced tuck → you'll get Advanced Tuck Back Lever (or single-leg, depending on the slot)
- Hold the half-lay → you'll graduate further still
The variant pool now extends all the way to elite tier: Full Back Lever, Full Front Lever, Full Planche, Stalder & Pancake Push to Handstand, Strict Hefesto, Ring Muscle-Up. If you're already there, the picker won't insult you with tuck holds — it'll give you the work that's actually challenging.
Graduation suggestions in the workout summary
When you crush an exercise — hit double the target, or sail through the easier variant — the workout summary now surfaces a soft graduation suggestion: "Looks like Wall Handstand is getting easy. Try Wall Handstand (L-Shape) next session?" The suggestion is opt-in — tap to accept and your future workouts will use the harder variant automatically. Ignore it and nothing changes.
It's a small thing but a powerful one. Programming used to require you to remember "I'm ready to graduate" mid-rest. Now it's there in front of you.
Smarter auto-progression
Auto-progression — the system that adds a rep to your target each time you hit it — got two refinements:
- Graduation cap. Targets no longer inflate past the threshold where a variant should hand off to the next one. If 10 reps of Negative Pull-Ups means you should graduate to Strict Pull-Ups, the system caps Negatives at 10 instead of running you up to 25.
- Jump-on-crush. If you outright crush a target by more than 50 % (say, you log 16 reps when the target was 8), the system jumps the target up by 2-3 instead of the standard +1. It catches up to where you actually are.
Together the two stop the slow drift where targets would inflate beyond reason, and accelerate the catch-up when your numbers genuinely jump.
Programs tab cleanup
The Programs tab needed two adjustments to absorb 55 new programs without becoming a wall of names:
- Family collapse — Skill Focus Splits surface as 11 family rows ("Handstand Focus" etc.). Tap one to drill into its 5 days. Each day card shows when you last ran it, so mid-rotation you can see where you are.
- Legacy skill programs retired — the old level-based skill programs (Back Lever L1–L6, Planche L1–L8, etc.) are hidden from discovery. Their data isn't deleted — runs still show in Stats, custom programs built on top still work, history is intact. They just aren't promoted as a path forward anymore. The new flow does what they did, better.
Smaller fixes
- Elite-tier pool expansion — the variant ladder now extends past intermediate for every focus-eligible skill. Half-Lay & Full Back Lever, Full Front Lever, Full Planche, Stalder / Pancake / Freestanding Push to Handstand, Strict Hefesto, Ring Muscle-Up are all in the substitution pool when calibration shows you're there
- One-Arm Pull-Up split — Day 5 is pure OAPU skill rehearsal (top hold, negatives, assisted, partials, L-sit archer). Day 1 stays foundational
- V-Sit & Manna split — built around compression and L-sit progressions, with a dedicated skill practice day for the V-sit → high V-sit → Manna ladder
- Onboarding starter picks — new users now see a Skill Focus Split as their long-term progression hook (instead of a legacy level-based skill program)
The thread running through v1.7.0: a skill is a rotation, not a ladder. Pick the one you're chasing, set it as focus, and every part of the app — Programs tab, your strength split, the auto-progression, the post-workout suggestions — points the same direction.
Email me if anything feels off — support@zenmotion.app. Every message still reaches the person who wrote the code.
— Jacob