That number decided a lot. The question we build against is not how much we can fit into an app. It is what somebody is still doing in week six, which is where the trials say most people quit.
We pick the practice, you start it
Open Zenbody and the practice for right now is already chosen for you. It comes from what you told us when you set the app up: the areas you want to work on, how long you have, the time of day it is, and anything you asked us to go easy on. The rest of the library stays one tap away for the days you want to choose.
There is evidence behind handing that job to the app. Non-adherence to home exercise runs near 70%, and what predicts dropping out is the number of small barriers in the way, not how motivated somebody was at the start. Picking from a long list before coffee is one of those barriers. So the app does the picking, and opening it and starting are the same move.
Every hold tells you where you should feel it
We went through 2,107 App Store reviews across seven stretching apps. One complaint came back over and over: people cannot tell whether they are doing it right, or which muscle they are meant to notice. So every movement carries a line about where you should feel it, written at the same time as the movement itself, and the player keeps it on screen while you hold. Every movement has that line on the web as well.
The hold breathes
While you hold, a soft wash of light spreads from the figure and draws back in. It runs on a 7.5 second cycle: three seconds spreading, four and a half drawing back, a breath in and a longer breath out.
That length was picked so it divides every hold the library uses, fifteen, thirty, forty five and sixty seconds. A hold ends at the bottom of an out-breath, and the next movement's name arrives in that pause. Twice in a practice a line fades in at the foot of the screen to say remember to breathe, and it stays for exactly one breath.
Nobody asked for any of that. We use the app most days, so the small things get noticed.
The routines are argued, and the argument is public
The morning practice has no toe touch in it, because your discs take more bending load in the first hour after you get up. Posture is a word we use on two routines only, the two that put loaded holds after the stretches, because across 23 controlled trials the posture change came from strengthening. Happy Baby was rewritten to a gentler default after one of us felt the pull land in the wrong place.
Those calls and their sources are in how we build a routine. When a study changes our mind, the routine changes and that page changes with it.
It is drawn, not filmed
Every movement is an illustration, one figure per shape, drawn in the same hand. No gym, no instructor, no music to turn off. It also means we can break the frame when a movement needs it: the neck movements are drawn from the waist up, because a head turn on a full body figure at that size teaches nothing.
You can practice for free
Every practice on this site plays in your browser with the same drawings and the same timer as the app, and none of it asks for an account. The practices are all there. In the app, a practice a day is free.
What we chose to build is a small set of practices, short enough to finish, each one with its reasoning written down. If what you want is a teacher on screen for the length of a class, one of the video apps will suit you better. If you want a few minutes you will keep doing, try Desk reset in the browser and see whether three minutes lands.