Questions

Effectively yes. The programme leans on machines — leg press, chest press, pulldown, cable row, leg curl — particularly in the first half, because they let a beginner work genuinely hard without technique being the limiting factor. A well-equipped home gym with adjustable dumbbells and a bench can run most of it with substitutions, but you would be working around the programme rather than with it.

The first four weeks assume no experience at all: nothing goes near failure, every exercise carries a form cue, and the movement screen runs before you load anything. That said, an app cannot watch you squat. If you can afford a handful of sessions with a coach at the start, that is a better use of money than any app, this one included.

You do six submaximal tests — a set stopped with about two good reps left — and the app estimates a one-rep max from each using the Epley formula, then scales every exercise from the relevant test. It is an estimate and the app says so on every row. The first session of anything new is calibration; the logbook takes over from the second.

Failure is precisely the point where technique collapses, so taking a movement to failure before you can perform it reliably means discovering that your failure point and the point your back rounds are the same point. There is also good evidence that untrained lifters asked to stop one rep short routinely stop with four or more left — so "go to failure" and actually going to failure are different events for the first couple of months. The ramp exists to close that gap deliberately.

Honestly: probably not for the most growth possible. Meta-analyses on training volume consistently find a dose-response relationship, with more hard sets per muscle per week producing more growth up to a point well above one set. What one hard set reliably does produce is real growth for a very small time cost. That trade is the argument, and this programme presents it as a trade rather than as a settled fact.

You will have five to six months of logged data and a clear read on how you respond to low-volume, high-effort training. Week 12 and week 24 are retest points against your original baselines. There is nothing after week 24 — no continuation programme is written, and saying one exists when it does not would be the easiest lie on this page. Export your ledger and take it wherever you go next; the file is yours and it is readable without this app.

In your browser, on the device you are using, and nowhere else. Nothing about your body, your training or your weight is sent to any server — there is no analytics event in this product that carries a bodyweight, a load or a calorie figure. The trade is that clearing your browser data loses your history, which is why the export exists and why the app nags you to use it.

Nothing, and the catch is that your training data lives in your browser on one device. There is no account and no server copy — which is why nothing about your body is ever sent anywhere, and also why clearing your browsing data deletes your history for good. The app asks you to export a backup at the end of every week and before anything destructive, and those prompts are the only protection there is.