FAQ

How can I sign up?

Tideloop is in private beta right now, so I’m onboarding a small number of people at a time. Email [email protected] and I’ll add you to the list. Once you have access, you can sign in on the web at tideloop.fit/app — no app store download required.

How much does Tideloop cost?

Tideloop is free during the private beta. Pricing for the public launch isn’t finalized yet, but the plan is a single, modest subscription with no ads, no tracking, and no upsells. Beta users will get a long grace period before any paid plan kicks in.

Tideloop is a labor of love built by one person, not a venture-backed startup chasing growth. The pricing has to cover hosting and a bit of time — that’s it.

Is there an iOS app?

An iOS app is coming soon. In the meantime, the web app at tideloop.fit/app is fully featured and works great on a phone — add it to your home screen and it behaves like a native app for tracking workouts.

An Android app isn’t on the immediate roadmap, but the web app works on Android too.

What is Tideloop?

Tideloop is a strength training app for people who train at home. You pick the exercises you have equipment for, set a few preferences, and Tideloop builds a multi-week training cycle that progresses you from week to week — handling volume, intensity, deloads, and rest timing so you can stop fiddling with spreadsheets and just lift.

It’s opinionated about programming (high frequency, hard sets close to failure, cycles that ramp and deload) but flexible about exercise selection and equipment.

What is a cycle?

A cycle is a block of training — typically 4 weeks — with a clear arc:

• Ramp-up at the start: lower intensity, fewer sets, get your body used to the exercises.
• Working weeks in the middle: volume climbs week over week, intensity creeps closer to failure.
• Peak near the end: the hardest, highest-quality sets of the cycle.
• Deload as the final week: volume and intensity drop back down so you recover and absorb the work you just did.

When the cycle ends, Tideloop rolls you into the next one with your new strength baseline. That’s the loop in Tideloop — you’re always inside a structured block, never just doing random workouts.

How does progression work?

Tideloop progresses you in two directions over the course of a cycle:

• Volume ramps up. The first week starts at roughly 70% of your target weekly sets and climbs linearly until you hit your peak volume in the final working week.
• Intensity ramps up too. Early workouts target reps a few short of your estimated max; later workouts move closer to your max, and the hardest workouts of the cycle ask for everything you’ve got.

Between cycles, your maxes update based on what you actually hit. So next cycle’s targets reflect the strength you just built, not the strength you had six weeks ago.

What does "training close to failure" mean?

Failure is the point in a set where you can’t do another clean rep. Decades of research suggest that hypertrophy and strength gains depend more on how hard each set is than on the exact weight or rep count — sets stopped well short of failure leave a lot of progress on the table.

Tideloop’s targets are built around your estimated max reps for each exercise and pull you progressively closer to failure as the cycle goes on:

• Early cycle, you might stop 3 reps shy of failure.
• Mid cycle, 2 reps shy.
• Peak workouts, 1 rep shy.
• The hardest workouts of a long cycle ask for a true max effort.

You don’t need to grind to failure every set to grow. You just need to be honest about how close you are — and Tideloop’s structure makes that easy.

Why does Tideloop favor high-frequency training?

The traditional body-part split — chest day, back day, leg day — concentrates a muscle group’s weekly volume into a single brutal session. That’s fine, but it’s not optimal for most people: you fatigue early in the workout, the last sets are sloppy, and you only stimulate each muscle once a week.

Spreading the same weekly volume across more sessions tends to produce better results because:

• Every set is fresher, so the quality is higher.
• Each muscle group gets stimulated multiple times a week instead of once.
• Sessions stay short, which makes them easier to fit into real life.

Tideloop defaults to training most days of the week, with each session hitting your full body in a sensible order. You can dial frequency down to 3 days a week if that fits your schedule better.

How long are the workouts?

Most Tideloop sessions land between 25 and 45 minutes, including warmups and rest periods. Because volume is spread across more days, no single workout has to be a marathon — and shorter, more focused sessions are much easier to actually finish.

Rest periods are timed automatically based on the intensity of the set you just did: about 60 seconds for warmups, 3 minutes for moderate sets, and 5 minutes for the hardest sets where you need to be fully recovered.

What equipment do I need?

The short answer: a pull-up bar and a pair of rings (or a dip station) will take you a long way. Tideloop is designed for the home gym, which usually means very little space and a small, deliberate set of tools.

Common minimal setups that work well:

• Bodyweight only: rings or a doorway pull-up bar, plus the floor. You can run a full cycle with push-ups, dips, rows, pull-ups, squats, and hinges.
• Bodyweight + a kettlebell or two: opens up loaded squats, presses, rows, and hinges.
• Bodyweight + adjustable dumbbells: covers nearly every movement most people care about.
• A power rack and barbell: great if you have it, not required.

You pick the exercises you have equipment for when you set up your template, and Tideloop programs around that. There’s no “you need a leg press machine” — if you don’t have it, it doesn’t show up.

Can I use Tideloop with bodyweight only?

Yes. Tideloop treats bodyweight movements as first-class exercises, not as filler. Pull-ups, dips, ring rows, push-up variations, pistol squats, and so on all progress in reps the same way weighted exercises progress in load.

If a movement gets too easy, you can swap it for a harder progression (e.g. push-ups → archer push-ups → one-arm push-ups) and the cycle re-anchors around your new max.

What if I miss a workout?

Life happens. If you skip a day, your next session just picks up where the plan left off — there’s no pressure to “make up” the missed workout.

If you’re going to be out for longer (a vacation, an injury, a busy week at work), you can pause the cycle and resume it when you’re back. For long breaks, it’s usually better to start a fresh cycle so the volume ramp and intensity progression realign with where you actually are.

Can I customize the program?

You’re in control of the parts that matter:

• Which exercises are in your template (and which muscle groups they hit).
• How many days a week you want to train (3–7).
• How long each cycle is (2–8 weeks).
• Your weekly set target per muscle group (10–30 sets).
• Whether to start the cycle with a max test, and whether to include warmup sets.

What Tideloop handles automatically is the boring math: how those sets get distributed across the week, how intensity ramps from workout to workout, when to deload, and how rest periods are timed.

You can edit your template between cycles, swap exercises mid-cycle if something isn’t working, and adjust completed reps after a set if you mis-tapped.

What happens to my data?

Your workout data lives on a self-hosted server Tideloop operates, and that’s it. No advertising trackers, no analytics vendors, no data sharing.

You can delete your account and all associated data at any time by emailing [email protected] from the address you signed up with. The full details are in the privacy policy.

I have feedback or found a bug. Where do I send it?

Please do — beta feedback shapes what gets built next. Email [email protected] with anything: bugs, missing features, exercises you wish were in the library, programming questions, or just a note about how a cycle went. I personally read every message.