Changelog

The builder reads top-down now. “Add to workout” — your pre-workout notes, interval and rest timers, shared weight — moved up above the movement list, right next to your other session settings. And Complex mode now sits beside Circuit in the mode tabs, since they’re the closest cousins: both keep one bell moving across the whole set.

Your movement history finally agrees with itself. If you’d ever spotted the same movement twice in Recent — once under the name you typed, once under its catalog name — that’s fixed. Pick either one now and it points at the same row, so your training history stays in one place instead of splitting in two.

Chalk got sharper. It now recommends from your whole movement catalog instead of just what’s already in your library, so it can actually hit your balance targets instead of working around gaps in your training history. It’s more disciplined about what it hands you too — circuits only, no repeating the same rep count back-to-back on a ladder — and its rationale sticks to your real numbers instead of guessing. It’s officially Chalk everywhere now, not “the recommender.”

Your program cards show the finish line. If you’re enrolled in something with an end date, your card now shows how many sessions and days are left, a projected finish date, and whether you’re ahead of or behind pace.

A fresh coat of paint. The app picked up a new palette and type system — and dark mode finally survives a reload instead of resetting every time you open it.

Also this month: a single fixed-rep movement can sit beside a longer ladder in a circuit without padding it out to match, and 16 more catalog movements — suitcase carries, clean-and-press, thrusters, and more — now credit the second movement pattern they actually work.

August was about three things: coaching, pacing, and polish.

Meet Chalk. There’s now an AI coach in the app that chats over your actual training data — your history, your balance, your bells. Ask it what to do next, or why your pulls are outrunning your presses, and it answers from your numbers, not generic advice. Under the hood it’s grounded in a real coaching knowledge base now too, including its own pattern-balance math — less guessing, more of your actual training. You can also export your full training data as JSON for any AI assistant you like.

Race your past self. Ghost pacing shows how today’s session stacks up against the last time you ran the same workout, rung by rung.

A builder that keeps up with you. Drag and drop to reorder movements, weight mode that follows the movement you pick, any rung as max reps or max time, and straight sets that run as true sets per movement instead of a circuit. The whole thing collapses into tidy sections now too, so a long workout doesn’t mean a long scroll.

The workout runner got more forgiving. Chevrons let you move through your session freely — skip a rest or rewind a set by accident, and your reps, volume, and rounds come right back. Hitting your goal now asks before ending, so a strong day can keep going. Bodyweight and timed movements (push-ups, planks, burpees) now pay down their own slice of pattern debt instead of counting for nothing.

Also this month: a Training Mix card showing your modality balance, a Spotify mini-player for mid-workout track control, a movement details page with your personal history, new catalog movements (marches, band pull-downs, Pallof presses, ab wheel rollouts), and the ability to tell Bellskill which kettlebells you own so recommendations only suggest weights you can pick up.

If you only read about one month, make it this one. July shipped programs — the feature Bellskill was always headed toward.

Follow a real program. Browse a catalog of classics — Dan John’s 10,000 Swing Challenge, Easy Strength, and the Armor Building Complex; StrongFirst’s A+A Protocol and Snatch Test plan; Simple & Sinister; The Kettlebell Mile — or build your own from scratch. Enroll, pick your starting weights (per movement, even), and your next session is waiting on the home screen every time you open the app.

Make it yours. Run up to three programs in parallel, queue them back-to-back, edit any session and apply the change to every future one, adjust weights mid-program, and flip on auto-repeat for the programs you never want to end.

A new coat of paint everywhere. The workout builder, the start page, and the weekly history view were all redesigned. Navigation became one system — bottom nav on your phone, sidebar on your desktop. Workouts got titles, swipe-to-select weights and reps, straight-sets mode, and a satisfying ding (plus a buzz) when a rest timer ends.

Under the hood: timers now key off wall-clock deadlines, so switching apps mid-rest no longer eats your countdown.

June was a planting month — most of what went in the ground here bloomed in July and August.

Recommendations, take one. The first version of the AI session recommender landed on the Start Workout page: one tap, and Bellskill proposes a session built from your history.

Your balance, measured. A new Pattern Debt engine quietly started tracking which movement patterns you’ve been feeding and which you’ve been starving, with a Weekly Balance view to show the score.

A better first day. New lifters now get curated first workouts instead of a blank builder, and your history page loads faster with paging instead of one giant list.

Two big ones this month.

Complex mode. Some of the best kettlebell training chains movements back-to-back without ever setting the bell down — clean, press, squat, repeat. Bellskill now understands that. Flip on complex mode and the app runs the chain as one piece: shared weight, all movements visible at once, and a Complex badge in your history so you can spot those sessions later.

Find any movement. Typing movement names from memory is over. The builder gained an autocomplete backed by a proper movement catalog — fuzzy search, your most-used movements ranked first, and results filtered to match how you’re holding the bell.

The completed-workout page also got a fresh editorial look for admiring what you just did.

Bellskill didn’t start as Bellskill. It started in late 2022 as a scrappy workout generator, spent a while as Kettlebod, tried on Cannonbells, and in April 2026 finally settled into its name.

Along the way it grew the bones everything since is built on: workout generation with timers and progress tracking (2023), rep ladders and per-movement logging, RPE, interval and rest timers, dark mode (2024), workout goals — time, rounds, or volume — pounds and kilograms, a searchable movements page, and a proper install-to-your-home-screen app experience (2025).

Three eras, three names, one constant: put down the notebook, pick up the bell. The monthly notes above pick up the story from May 2026 — the month things started moving fast.