Why We Built Pull-Up Day

Forward neck. Shoulder blade pain. Migraines. If you spend your day glued to a monitor, you've probably felt at least one of these. Pull-Up Day started right there - built by someone who can't do a single pull-up, for people who want to track their pull-ups and dead hangs without lifting a finger (well, except to hang).

You don't need to do a single pull-up

One of our teammates was dealing with chronic pain between his shoulder blades and that classic forward-neck posture. Plus the migraines that come with it. Sound familiar? It's the developer starter pack. Mornings feel fine, then around 3pm your neck locks up, and by evening your head is pounding. Doctors say "stretch more." Cool. Who actually has time to stretch for 10 minutes twice a day?

Digging around, we found out that just hanging from a bar does wonders. You don't need to do pull-ups at all. Hanging stretches your spine, opens up space between compressed discs, and the pain starts fading. All you need is a doorway bar and one minute a day.

We tried it. It worked. After just one minute of hanging, the shoulder blade pain was gone and the migraines noticeably backed off. But then came the next problem: how many reps did I do today? How long did I hang? No idea. There was no good way to log it. Not a single fitness app out there counted pull-ups automatically. Tapping a button mid-rep is impossible when both your hands are on the bar, and let's be honest - nobody's going to remember to log it later. So we decided to build it ourselves at DoDraft. The whole idea: solve our own daily problems with products we'd actually use every day.

Just stand in front of the camera

The core of Pull-Up Day is dead simple. Prop your phone up, work out in front of the camera, and the app counts for you. No buttons to press. No numbers to type in afterward. Just set the phone down and go.

Under the hood, we use Apple Vision-based pose detection. It tracks your movement in real time, but only on three points: your neck and both wrists. You'd think more joints means more accuracy, but it's actually the opposite. The more points you track, the more they interfere with each other and the noisier the detection gets. Tracking fewer points but reading them precisely turns out to be way more reliable. We also took advantage of the fact that pull-ups are kinda slow. No need to process tons of frames per second. Result: your battery doesn't drain, your phone doesn't turn into a hand warmer, and you can just focus on the workout.

When you're ready, just say "Start." Nobody can tap a phone while hanging from a bar, so we made everything voice-controlled. We also didn't want it counting the moment you appeared on camera - that's annoying when you're still getting into position. With "Start," you decide the exact moment counting begins. If the detection drops for a sec, it auto-pauses, and picks right back up when you're in frame again. Nothing to think about mid-workout.

Why logging your workouts actually matters

Pull-Up Day has a calendar view and a weekly streak. You can literally watch your workouts stack up. And honestly? That's way more motivating than it sounds. Three days of green dots in a row and you're hitting day four. A full week in and there's no way you're breaking the chain.

Weekly and monthly stats show your volume changing over time. Did 30 total reps last week, hit 45 this week? You can see the progress in actual numbers. Same with hangs. If you could only hold for 10 seconds at first and you're at a full minute a month later, the graph shows it. Numbers turn workouts into habits. Habits bring results.

We put a lot of thought into the design too. If you're going to use a fitness app every single day, the screen better not feel ugly. There's a ton of info we could shove on the screen, but mid-workout you really only need two things: current reps, current set. Everything else can wait until after. Figuring out what to keep and what to cut took the most time, and "the design feels premium" is the feedback we hear most often.

Who's it for?

Pull-Up Day doesn't care about your fitness level. Honestly, it was built by someone who couldn't do a single pull-up, so the bar to entry (pun intended) is as low as it gets.

If you're starting with dead hangs, the timer is your best friend. Just hanging from the bar is the workout at this stage. Going from 10 seconds to 30 seconds to a full minute - watching that build up in the calendar - is reason enough to keep going. Good luck finding another app that tracks your journey to your first pull-up.

If you're working on adding reps, the auto-counting is where it shines. Going from 1 to 5, 5 to 10 - you don't have to remember or jot anything down. The camera handles it. Between sets, you can glance at your previous reps and adjust your goal on the spot.

For seasoned lifters with a solid routine, what matters is accurate logs and trend tracking. Weekly and monthly volume, streaks for consistency. The interface that strips away everything except the essentials? Turns out that's exactly what advanced users want. No clutter, no distractions.

There's also a crew that hangs purely for posture - forward neck, disc issues, no interest in pull-ups at all. They use Pull-Up Day to track their daily 1-minute hangs. That's literally what we do at DoDraft, and it's been a clear win against forward neck and migraines. One minute of hanging beats 10 minutes of stretching - more realistic, and more effective.

We actually use it. It actually works.

That teammate who sparked the whole thing? He still uses Pull-Up Day every day. One minute of hanging knocks out the shoulder blade pain, and the migraines from forward neck have clearly eased up. After launch, the feature people loved most was the automatic counting. The experience of "stand in front of the camera, it counts for you" is simple but new, and folks were really into it.

A product built to solve a real problem is actually solving it. That's why we built Pull-Up Day, and why we keep making it better.

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Pull-Up Day is available for free on the App Store.

Pull Up Day - DoDraft

Pull Up Day는 AI 기반 운동 트래커입니다. 스마트폰을 거치대에 올려놓고 운동하면, 카메라가 자세를 인식하여 풀업 횟수를 자동으로 카운트하고 매달리기 시간을 측정합니다. 계정 등록이나 인터넷 연결 없이 완전히 기기 내에서 작동하며, 운동 캘린더, 통계, 개인 기록 등을 제공합니다.

dodraft.studio

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Written by Koo - blogger and app developer.