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A few questions
The quiz takes about a minute. Goal: build muscle, get stronger, both, or general fitness. Experience: newer to lifting, intermediate, or advanced. Days a week, and which days. Session length: 30, 45, 60 or 75 minutes, with warm-up on top. Equipment: full gym, barbell at home, dumbbells only, or bodyweight.
A focus if you want one: balanced, booty builder, upper body, arms and delts, or legs all-round. Anything to go easy on: shoulders, lower back, knees, elbows and wrists, hips. Anything to avoid, in your own words. And the split: full body, upper and lower, push, pull and legs, or let Coach choose from your days and session length.
If the sets your goal needs do not fit the minutes you gave, the quiz says so before anything is written.
Two of the quiz’s steps
The first step: what the block is for.
The focus step: where the week leans, what to go easy on, and anything to avoid.
Built from your training
Before it writes anything, Coach reads what you have already logged: how many sessions, your top lift, the muscles you train most and least, and how much you actually do in a week. The review screen shows you those numbers, so you can see what the program is built on. Nothing is self-reported.
Every set gets a load. A lift you have logged starts at a percentage of your projected one-rep max, worked out from your best recent sessions and adjusted for time off. A lift you have not logged is estimated from a related one you have, then re-anchored to the first load you actually lift. A lift with no reference point runs on RPE alone until it has one.
A session, before you start it
The numbers Coach is handed, on screen before anything is written.
A block, week by week
A block runs six to twelve weeks, with one session for each day you train. Days are named by what they train, so a day reads Full Body A, squat lead, or Upper, never day three. Progression is written in: a small load step each week, or reps climbing for three weeks before the load moves, or effort rising half a point a week up to a cap. Deload weeks sit at week eight, or at six and twelve on a longer block.
Every session lands on your calendar and opens in the logger with the weights already in the boxes. When the block ends, the next one starts from what you just did.
The block on the calendar
The block on the calendar, week by week.
It adjusts to every session you log
Log your sets with RPE and the next session moves. A top set that came in one and a half points or more over its target steps that lift down one increment. A set two points or more under target, with every rep met, steps it up. One increment per lift per session, never a leap, and nothing moves without a logged RPE.
In the rest gap, Coach speaks up too. A set that lands well off its target gets a line on the rest card, naming the load for the sets still to come. Set 2 was RPE 10 against a target of 8. Drop the next sets to 47.5 kg. One tap applies it.
After three sessions or a week, Coach asks how the program fits: feels right, too hard, too easy, or change something bigger. Too hard or too easy shifts every remaining session one increment, with an undo.
Swap any exercise for one your gym has. Replacements are ranked by movement pattern, then muscle, then group, with lifts you have logged first.
The logger on a Coach session
The prescribed load is already in the boxes. Log the set, rate the effort, and the next session moves.
When life gets in the way
Miss a stretch and you can refresh the rest of your program. Coach re-plans the weeks still ahead, once per program, from halfway through or straight from the check-in. Your finish date never moves.
Sessions running long can be shortened: tell Coach a session is too long and it takes sets out of the rest of the block, showing which ones go before you agree. A single session can be moved to another day, deferred to tomorrow, or skipped from its own sheet. The schedule can be realigned to new days, and a program can be abandoned in one tap.
If your subscription ends, the program, the calendar, your history and the logger’s own suggestions stay. Coach’s rewriting, the check-in, the refresh and new programs stop.
A session’s own sheet
Every session opens on its own sheet: start it, move it to another day, defer it, or skip it.
Price and limits
14 days free, then A$69.99 a year or A$9.99 a month, billed by the App Store in your local currency. Cancel any time in Settings. Restore a purchase from Profile.
Up to three programs in any 30 days, and one during the free trial. Subscriptions are bought in the iPhone app; your account and your program are the same on the web. Every Pro feature is free during early access.
Not ready for Coach? A free four-week Fundamentals program is built in, at two, three or four days a week.
Fair questions
What does Shojin Coach do?
It writes a training block of six to twelve weeks from your answers and your lifting history, puts a real load on every set, and moves those loads after each session you log. It checks in after your first week, and you can refresh the weeks ahead when life gets in the way. Up to three programs a month.
Does Coach replace a human coach?
No. Shojin Coach is AI-assisted and science-based: it writes and adjusts a lifting program from your numbers, following rules that come from the published research and from experienced lifters. It does not give injury or rehab advice, and it is not a medical device.
Do I need to log RPE?
Yes, for the adjustments. Coach moves your next session’s loads off the RPE you log. Skip it and the block keeps its planned progression without the session-to-session moves.
Can I subscribe on the web?
Not yet. Subscriptions are bought in the iPhone app through the App Store. Your account, your program and your history are the same on the web.
Is Shojin free?
Free to download. Logging, the rest timer, progress charts, the body map, Week Wrapped, Training Circles and the starter program are free. Every Pro feature is free during early access. Shojin Coach is an auto-renewing subscription with a 14-day free trial, then A$69.99 a year or A$9.99 a month, billed by the App Store in your local currency.