Add-ons

· v1.33.0 · ~5 min read

Ten sessions into a Skill Focus Split you notice a pattern. Same primary lift. Same accessories. Same core work. Same finisher. Body's adapting, but somewhere between session 7 and 15 the motivation curve dips — not because you're not progressing, but because you're not surprising yourself anymore.

This release adds an escape hatch: Add-ons. Standalone complementary sessions that plug into any user's week — designed to bring back some of what a specialised split leaves on the table.

The problem specialisation creates

Skill Focus Splits are biomechanically smart. Five days pointing at planche will make you better at planche faster than any other week structure. But five days of planche also means your shoulders never get dedicated prehab, your posterior chain stays underworked, your hips stiffen up, and there's zero pure play in the training.

The gym-athlete brain notices. Ambitious calisthenics practitioners want variety not because the program is wrong, but because breadth is part of the sport. A planche specialist who never trains hamstrings is missing something obvious. A planche specialist who never plays with the handstand shape between sessions loses touch with the movement.

Add-ons are how we bring breadth back without dropping the goal.

Six sessions, five categories

v1.33 ships 14 add-on programs — 7 unique sessions × 2 tiers each. Categorised by training purpose, right-sized to what that purpose actually needs:

Bulletproof Shoulders (Prehab, 15/20 min) — scapular control, rotator endurance, band pull-aparts, Y-T-W raises, external rotations. What the shoulders need between planche sessions to stay reliable. Prehab is honest about being short — 15-20 min is the diminishing-returns ceiling.

Core Foundations (Strength, 25/35 min) — real anti-extension, anti-rotation, and flexion work. Advanced tier adds Dragon Flag Negatives, L-Sit Hold, Hanging Leg Raises, and Pallof Press. Not activation. Actual core training.

Posterior Chain (Strength, 25/40 min) — glute bridges, Bulgarian split squats, hamstring walkouts, Nordic curls, calf raises. The Advanced tier is 40 minutes because real leg work with real rest between sets takes 40 minutes. Under-dosing here would just be activation.

Handstand Play (Skill practice, 15/25 min) — wall walks, wall handstand holds, freestanding attempts, pike push-ups. Skill work fatigues fast, so it's kept in the sweet spot: enough to train, not so much you're practising while your CNS is toast.

Mobility Flow — Full-body / Shoulders & Back / Hips & Legs (Mobility, 15/20 min each) — three flavours so you don't get the same session every time you tap Mobility. Full-body is the classic. Shoulders & Back leans into thoracic rotation, shoulder dislocates, downward dog to cobra, puppy pose. Hips & Legs is cossack squats, hip flexor stretch, deep squat hold, pancake stretch.

Total: 6 unique passes with Full-body Mobility split into 3 variants = 7 different sessions, each in a Beginner + Advanced tier.

Where you find them

Programs tab has a new Add-ons section between Strength and Calibrations. All 14 cards live there. Tap → normal StartProgram flow, no different from any other session.

The other place they show up is post-workout. After you save a session, the "Add another block?" card that shipped in v1.32 now surfaces relevant add-ons alongside skill-family days. Complete a Push & Skill session and it might offer Bulletproof Shoulders (Advanced) as the 15-minute complement. Same 60-minute combined budget as before — the app just knows more short sessions exist now.

The duration model

Not all add-ons are the same length, and that's on purpose:

  • Prehab: 15-20 min. Longer than that eats energy from the real workout.
  • Skill practice: 15-25 min. Neural fatigue is the ceiling.
  • Mobility: 15-20 min. ROM work saturates within a session.
  • Strength: 25-40 min. Real compound work needs proper rest between sets.

We considered making everything 15 min for consistency. Rejected: an under-dosed session isn't a shorter version of a real session, it's a different thing. Better to be honest about what each category needs.

Movement variety, for now

Right now each add-on is a fixed exercise list — tap Bulletproof Shoulders (Beginner) and you get the same 8 exercises every time. The three Mobility Flow variants exist because we knew "the same 6 mobility drills forever" wasn't going to work.

The proper fix is a pool-based rotation: each add-on declares which movement pools it draws from, and the app picks a different subset each week from those pools. Ten sessions of Bulletproof Shoulders would surface 15-20 different exercises across a couple of months. That work is scoped in an ADR now — trigger to build it is either user complaints about monotony, or 5+ runs of the same session in analytics without variation.

For now: three Mobility variants is our band-aid. If you get bored of Full-body, switch to Shoulders & Back or Hips & Legs — same category, different exercises.

Small things

  • Programs-tab section list now includes an Add-ons header between Strength and Calibrations.
  • Add-ons show a teal "Add-on" tag in the top-right of the card, distinguishing them from Focus / Strength / Check.
  • All 14 add-ons are single-level programs. Beginner and Advanced tiers are separate program IDs (201-210, 211-214), matching the modern convention post-Wedge D Phase C.

Under the hood

  • 14 new Program rows (id 201-214), category: "add_on".
  • ~95 new ProgramExercise rows across the 14 programs.
  • 9 new canonical movements authored: Band Pull-Aparts, Wall Slides, Prone Y Raise, Prone T Raise, Prone W Raise, External Rotations (Band), Pallof Press (Band), Thoracic Rotation, Deep Squat Hold, Shoulder Dislocates, Downward Dog to Cobra, Puppy Pose.
  • stackSuggestions.ts promotes category: "add_on" to rank 2 with reasoning "Complementary work" — between same-family days and different-family cross-training.
  • iOS ProgramCategory enum gains .addOn case; ProgramSection.addOn rendered between Strength and Calibrations.
  • New docs/addon_pool_rotation_adr.md scopes the future pool-based rotation work.

Breadth without leaving the goal.