529 levels of progressive calisthenics. Here’s how that works.

A wall push-up and a full push-up look like the same exercise at two angles. In our system they’re the first and last of 12 levels. This page explains why we train in steps that small, then shows the whole system, ladder by ladder.

What progressive calisthenics is

In progressive calisthenics, resistance comes from body position. Lower your hands, raise your feet, straighten a lever, and the same movement gets heavier. Your body is the barbell, and how you hold it in space sets the load.

It also trains movement patterns rather than isolated muscles. A push-up loads your chest, and at the same time it teaches your shoulders, wrists and trunk to share the work. Because full range is part of every rep, mobility gets trained inside the work itself.

That matters more than it sounds. Strong muscles don’t protect weak movement patterns. You can press a heavy bar and still have shoulders that fold when the load shifts, so we train the pattern first and build strength on top of it.

The problem with “beginner, intermediate, advanced”

Most calisthenics programs ship with three difficulty settings: beginner, intermediate, advanced. A person who can’t yet do one push-up and a person who can do twenty both get the same beginner plan. One is under-worked. The other is a shoulder injury on a schedule.

A progression closes that gap. It takes one movement and breaks it into a ladder of versions, from one almost anyone can do to one most people will chase for years. Each version is a real exercise, and each one prepares your joints for the next.

Training then has a simple shape: master the level you’re on, move up one.

Why the steps are so small

There’s a principle under all of this: you don’t get stronger by doing more of the same exercise. You get stronger by doing harder variations.

Fifty regular push-ups is the same difficulty with more grinding. One slightly harder push-up variation raises the difficulty at the same effort, and rising difficulty is what makes the body adapt.

So each level sits roughly 5 to 10% above the one before — the sizing principle the whole system is built on: small enough that tendons adapt alongside muscle, big enough that something changes at almost every session. Demand never outpaces control.

The system also watches how each session actually went. You rate the effort after every exercise, and the next workout adjusts. Some days you move up, some days you hold, and the step stays just right either way.

Your exact starting level

One label can’t hold all of that, because push, pull and mobility are at different levels in every individual. Years at a desk can leave someone strong at pushing and far behind on pulling, and no single label catches it.

So we keep one number per movement pattern instead of one label per person. Our assessment finds the exact level you can do today on each of the 9 fundamentals, and your workouts are built from those levels.

Find your level — free, about 3 minutes

The whole system, counted

Everything above is the method. Below is the system it produces, counted from the same training data the app serves, so every figure matches what members are training today.

The 9 fundamentals, ladder by ladder

Each ladder ends where that pattern stops being a fundamental. Push-ups end at the full push-up. Handstands end at a 45-second wall hold — the freestanding handstand is its own ladder, further down. Each level is a calibrated step toward that endpoint, and every skill in the catalog below builds on at least one of these nine.

The complete push-up ladder

One ladder in full, as it runs in the app, so you can see the size of the steps. Level 1 assumes you can’t yet do a single push-up. Level 12 is the full strict movement, and skills like the One Arm Push-Up continue from there.

1. Wall Push-ups
2. Knee Push-ups
3. Knee Wide Push-ups
4. Knee Diamond Push-ups
5. Incline Push-ups
6. Elevated Full Push-up
7. Incline Full Push-up
8. Half Push-ups
9. Wide Half Push-ups
10. Diamond Half Push-ups
11. Negative Push-up
12. Normal Push-ups

53 skills beyond the fundamentals — the ones with a ladder of their own

The app’s full skill catalog holds 107 entries: the 9 fundamentals above, the 53 laddered skills below, and the remainder — single moves without a ladder of their own. That’s why you’ll see 100+ skills quoted elsewhere and 53 here — the two numbers count different things.

Every skill below sits behind a fundamental; the number after each name is how many levels its own ladder holds inside the app.

Intermediate skills open up as the relevant fundamentals are mastered. Advanced skills build on the intermediate ones — or directly on a fundamental taken to mastery.

Intermediate skills (28)

Pulling (3)

• Dragon Flag — 5 levels
• Front Lever Foundation — 7 levels
• Muscle Up Intro — 3 levels

Pushing (13)

• Bridge — 4 levels
• Cartwheel — 10 levels
• Elbow Lever — 5 levels
• Elevated Bridge (Bridge Prep) — 6 levels
• Explosive Push-Ups — 4 levels
• Forearm Wall Stand — 5 levels
• Freestanding Handstand — 9 levels
• Handstand Development — 5 levels
• Handstand Shoulder Taps — 5 levels
• Headstand — 7 levels
• Push Variations — 3 levels
• Ring Dips — 6 levels
• Ring Push-Ups — 5 levels

Core (5)

• Backward Roll — 3 levels
• Forward Roll — 5 levels
• Hanging Leg Raises — 4 levels
• Side Plank — 7 levels
• V-Sit Progression — 8 levels

Leg work (7)

• Box Jump — 5 levels
• Calf Raises — 6 levels
• Nordic Curls — 11 levels
• Pistol Squat Prep — 4 levels
• Quad Extension — 5 levels
• Shrimp Squat — 6 levels
• Wall Squat — 3 levels

Advanced skills (25)

Pulling (8)

• Back Lever — 21 levels
• Front Lever — 13 levels
• Kipping Bar Muscle Up — 11 levels
• Kipping Ring Muscle Up — 6 levels
• One Arm Pull-Up — 10 levels
• Strict Bar Muscle-Up — 5 levels
• Strict Ring Muscle Up — 6 levels
• Weighted Pull-Up — 5 levels

Pushing (12)

• Bridge Mastery — 4 levels
• Diamond Bridge (Advanced Bridge) — 3 levels
• Dips Mastery — 5 levels
• Forearm Stand Quest — 7 levels
• Freestanding Handstand Push-Up — 7 levels
• Full Planche — 7 levels
• Handstand Pirouettes — 6 levels
• Handstand Walk — 16 levels
• One Arm Push-Up — 19 levels
• Planche — 17 levels
• Press Handstand — 19 levels
• Wall Handstand Push-Up — 13 levels

Core (3)

• Back Plank — 11 levels
• Human Flag — 11 levels
• One Arm Straight Leg V Raise — 8 levels

Leg work (2)

• Pistol Squat — 13 levels
• Weighted Pistol Squats — 7 levels

What we do not claim

This page counts the structure of our own system, because we can show every part of it. It carries no success rates and no comparisons with other apps; those would rest on numbers nobody outside those companies can check. What members say about training this way lives on the reviews page, separately from the data.