Pull Up School
What it is
Pull Up School is an iOS app that counts your pull-ups from the phone in your pocket. You can find it at pullupschool.app.
There is nothing to press and nothing to watch. You pick your phase, put the phone in your trouser pocket and walk to the bar. Every rep is read from the motion of your own body and spoken out loud as it lands.
The log covers the whole progression, from band assisted through bodyweight to weighted. Each phase moves a different number: a thinner band, one more rep, another 2.5 kilos.
No account, no feed, works without signal.
Why I made it
The name came before the app. My housemate Tijs and I started training together and one of the things I could not do yet was a pull-up. Pull Up School was what he shouted at the bar, with the enthusiasm he brings to most things. We kept it up every week and the name stuck.
The app started on a single morning. I run, and I am used to Strava keeping the record for me. For pull-ups I had nothing but my own memory, and my own memory is bad. So I gave myself one morning to build a log. That worked, and it was not enough. It still asked me for numbers afterwards.
You count in your head instead. Somewhere past six the count goes soft, by the third set you are guessing, and the number still has to survive the walk home. The training was never the problem. The bookkeeping was.
So I went back to the drawing board. After years on WOO Sports I knew roughly what a phone can read from a body in motion, and a pull-up is a cleaner signal than most: your torso travels through the same narrow arc every rep, and the phone against your hip rides that arc exactly. I built a first version that measures instead of asks, and tested it on myself and on people at the TAG office.
It was only meant for me. Somewhere in that testing it stopped being that.
Why it might help you
It is made for anyone working on their pull-ups. From a first rep on a green band to a first plate on a belt.
Three things it gives you:
- A count you did not have to keep. You hear where you are in the set without breaking your grip to look. Half reps do not qualify, kipping does not qualify, so the number is the number.
- A log that reads all three phases. Most trackers only count reps, which makes band work look like standing still and weighted work look like going backwards. This one knows what you are on today and moves the number that is actually moving.
- Real data about your own training. Every set is a measurement instead of something you typed in afterwards, which means the log can eventually tell you more than a notes file ever could.
Where it goes next
Right now the log tracks load and volume: reps, band colour, kilos. That is the outside of the movement. The sensors already see more than that.
What comes next is feedback on the movement itself. How fast you pull and how controlled you come down. Whether the rep you just banked was clean or whether you swung your way through it. Where in a set your form starts to go. The log should tell you something about how you pull, not only how often.
The scope does not widen. Pull Up School counts pull-ups and will keep counting only pull-ups. One movement done genuinely well beats five done roughly.
To be continued.
The beta runs on iOS and it needs testing on more bars than mine. Leave your email, get the first build, report what it gets wrong.