A strength training coach for a body that's past its peak. Every lift graded for your joints and lower back, a plan that tells you what to do and moves the weight when you've earned it, and a session that reshapes itself for a cranky shoulder or a hotel gym, so you keep getting stronger, for the long haul.
Lifting, for the long haul.
They're excellent at the science and hostile to the audience. Barbell squats on day one. Aggressive volume ramps. No acknowledgement that connective tissue adapts slower than muscle, or that half of us are managing a back. Strength training after 40, 50 or 60 works. It just needs a plan that knows who it's for.
Every exercise carries a joint-risk and lower-back rating. Tell it your knees are bad and the programming changes, not a warning you dismiss, an actual different plan.
Reps climb inside the range, then the weight goes up. You never decide what to lift again. Rate a set "easy" and next week's jump gets bigger; rate it a grind and it holds. The science behind it.
Full gym, home gym, hotel, bodyweight, dumbbells only, bands only. Switch on a Tuesday and your week, streak and every weight you've worked up to carry across.
You shouldn't lift every day, but you can show up every day. A walk, yoga, a bike ride or "something else" keeps the flame lit, lifting days count on their own, and a full training week earns a freeze for the day life gets in the way.
Estimated 1RM per lift, weekly hard sets per muscle against the 10–20 band, and every all-time best recorded the moment you hit it.
Calorie and protein targets from your real numbers, and a weight tracker that turns green when you're moving the way you asked for, up or down.
"Shoulder's cranky and I slept badly", type it how you'd say it. Overhead work swaps out, loads ease, a set comes off. Just for today; tomorrow your program is back, untouched.
Already on Strong or Hevy? Import the CSV and your sessions and working weights carry across, and it exports right back to their format. Your training is never hostage here.
Invite a streak partner and keep a shared streak together. They see whether you logged today and your flame, never your weights or your history. A promise to someone else is a lot harder to skip.
Training stays weekly, because recovery is the point. Showing up goes daily: one tap on whatever you did today keeps your streak alive, and the calendar tells the honest story, lifts, movement, freezes and the days you missed. New to building the habit? Here's how to make one stick.
Not mockups. This is the real app.
The web version is genuinely free: logging, a safe starting plan that works around your joints and moves the weight for you, planned deloads, three starter programs, the daily streak with a streak partner, your training synced across every device, and full export, with no ads. Pro makes the whole thing yours:
Free to start: logging, a safe starting plan that works around your joints and moves the weight for you, planned deloads, three starter programs, the daily streak with a streak partner, sync across your devices, and full export, with no ads. Pro adds the daily check-in that reshapes a session, unlimited swaps and the full library, every training environment, your own program and custom exercises, and comes with a 7-day free trial. Prefer not to install? The web version at liftspan.fit/app is free to try, and you can go Pro right there, no iPhone required.
On Android, or just want the occasional note on what's being built? Leave your email, no spam, one click unsubscribes.
Plain answers from a lifter who is still at it, backed by the research. All guides →
A planned easy week that lets fatigue drain off. How often to deload, what to cut, the two ways to do it, and why it matters more after 40. Read the guide
Not much, once you can walk comfortably. What walking does for you after 40, how many steps the research supports, and why you still need to lift. Read the guide
Two or three is the sweet spot. What the research says about training frequency, how to lay out your week, and why recovery sets the limit after 40. Read the guide
No. The app is built to make better decisions than you would at 6am with a coffee in your hand, and that's worth as much at 22 as at 62. Same progression engine, same plate maths, same six environments, same streaks.
There's nothing to opt into: put in your real age and the plan tunes itself to it. Every movement is graded for joint and lower-back risk, so once it knows what it's working with, the risky ones simply stop being offered, replaced by a named alternative that trains the same muscle. Load jumps get halved so tendons keep up, rest goes up, blocks deload sooner. Tell it a shoulder or a lower back is a problem and it filters overhead pressing or loaded spinal flexion specifically, and reshapes the week around it.
At 22 that's the full library and standard progression. At 60 it's a program that assumes nothing and protects connective tissue. Same app reading the number you gave it, and every decision it makes is visible in Settings and yours to overrule.
That's the case it was built for. You tell it which joints are a problem and it filters loaded spinal flexion, unsupported bent-over work, overhead pressing, whatever applies, and offers a named alternative rather than just hiding things. It is not medical advice, and the app says so before you train: if something hurts, stop, and talk to your doctor before starting. The guide on lifting with a bad shoulder walks through the swaps it makes.
The web version is free, and there'll always be a free tier you can train on indefinitely. Pro is $4.99 a month, or $29.99 for a year (about $2.50/mo), a fraction of what the periodisation apps charge, and you get the whole app free for 7 days first, so you feel it working before you decide. You can subscribe on iPhone or right here on the web, and there's a launch-only Founding Lifter deal: $99.99 once for lifetime access, first 150 people only.
Until December 31, Pro annual on the web has a founding price: $24.99 a year, and you keep that price for as long as you stay subscribed.
Enough to train on for real, free and forever: log every workout, a safe starting plan that works around the joints you tell it about, your daily streak, a streak partner, badges and levels, your training synced across every device you sign in on, and full CSV/JSON export, no ads, no session limits, and nothing you log is ever deleted. The joint filtering is free and always will be; it works around what you tell it, and it's not medical advice.
Pro is the coach in full: the daily check-in that reshapes today's session when you say "shoulder's cranky and I slept badly"; progression that keeps moving the weight as you earn it; unlimited swaps and the whole 267-movement library; up to three programs of your own, built move by move and still coached around your joints; every training environment, switched mid-week with your weights carried; the progress screen that proves you're getting stronger: 1RM, PRs, your whole story across every block. $4.99/mo or $29.99/yr, free for 7 days.
No. Bodyweight-only is a first-class option, as are bands-only and dumbbells-only. Hotel gyms are specifically handled, because that's where most plans quietly fall apart.
It lives on your phone. If you sign in, it syncs to a private database where only your own account can read your rows. Your joint and back settings are health information and never appear anywhere another person can see. A streak partner sees exactly three things: whether you logged today, your flame, and the streak you share. The app has no ad network and no third-party analytics. On the web it counts which steps people reach, like finishing setup or starting a workout, so we can see where it confuses people; those counts carry no account, email or training data, and the iPhone app sends none. (This marketing page uses ordinary Google Analytics to count visits, like nearly every website.)
No. Export a CSV from either app and Liftspan reads it: your sessions land in your log, and your working weights seed the plan, never above what you've actually lifted. A movement it can't match with certainty is shown to you for review, not silently guessed at, and anything it doesn't carry stays in your log under its own name.
It works the other way too: your whole log exports back out in Strong's and Hevy's own formats. If you ever want to leave, the door is on the export screen, not hidden in a support ticket. The only things that don't transfer in are XP, levels and streaks, those are earned here, because a streak built on imported numbers would be fiction.
One person, still lifting, tired of apps that assume otherwise. Which is also why it gets fixed fast when something's wrong. More about why I built it.
