What's new
New exercises and grading improvements shipping in CalmArms — newest at the top.
June 2026
Bench press, squats, and floor-pull deadlifts now in the catalog.- New
Bench press is now graded
The bench press joined the catalog — barbell and dumbbell, flat and incline. Set the camera to the side in landscape and the app reads your press: how far you lower the bar to your chest, how far you press to lockout, your tempo, and whether you're actually at the bench angle you picked. Dumbbell sets also grade left-vs-right evenness; barbell sets ease up on that since the bar locks your hands together.
- New
Conventional, sumo, and trap bar deadlifts are now graded
The deadlift family grew past the RDL variants — conventional, sumo, and trap bar floor pulls are now supported. Unlike the RDLs, these grade your knees too: the grading expects them to bend to reach the bar and extend to lockout, instead of staying soft-locked, so a real floor pull no longer loses points for normal knee bend. Sumo leans on hip drive and full lockout since the wide stance hides exact knee angle from a side camera; trap bar is graded as the most squat-like pull, rewarding the deeper knee bend and upright torso. Stand sideways in portrait, full body in frame.
- New
Squats are now graded
The squat family shipped — bodyweight, goblet, BB back, and BB front are all supported. The grading window adjusts per variation: BB back gets a forward-lean allowance, BB front demands a vertical torso. CC-4 back-rounding is the primary safety check on every squat rep. Stand sideways to the camera in portrait, full body in frame.
- Improved
Squat grading stopped under-marking clean reps
Pristine, lightweight squats were stuck around a mid-B because the angle score was too strict — filming from the side naturally makes your knee and hip look 12-18° off through the middle of the rep even on a perfect squat, and that was quietly capping the grade. Squats now get the same side-camera forgiveness the deadlift and leg machines already had, so a clean set lands the A it deserves while sloppy reps still get flagged.
- Fixed
Single-arm and close-grip lat pulldown now use a portrait camera
Both variations were stuck on the wide-grip landscape framing. Single-arm now uses a portrait side-view camera and grades the working arm by elbow flexion — hand goes from arms-overhead to face level. Close-grip stays back view but now portrait, which fits the narrower hand path. Wide and reverse grip keep their landscape back-view setup.
- Improved
Reverse crunch was removed from the catalog
Reverse crunch covered the same supine flexion pattern as crunch and sit-up without adding a meaningful grading signal. Dropping it keeps the core catalog tight — Crunch and Sit-Up for the supine fundamentals, Hanging Leg Raise for the harder bodyweight progression.
- Fixed
Crunch reps are now actually getting counted
Crunch grading was reading from the shoulder, which moves only 15-25 cm during a clean rep and gets partially hidden by your elbows when your hands are behind your head. It now reads from the elbows — they move further, they're always visible in the canonical hands-behind-head form, and the rep counter actually catches each rep instead of missing most of the set.
- Fixed
Lat pulldown rep counting handles off-center cameras
If your phone isn't dead-centre on the seat, the rep counter no longer double-counts your reps — four reps now reads as four, not seven.
- Improved
Lat pulldown grading no longer penalises clean reps for camera angle
Range of motion, angle accuracy, and bilateral balance scores are all more forgiving when the camera is filming from slightly off-axis — clean reps now land where they should instead of getting dragged into C territory by the camera angle.
- Improved
Lat pulldown ROM windows tuned per grip
Wide, close, reverse-grip, and single-arm lat pulldown now each get graded against a window that matches what that grip actually looks like — wide-grip lifters don't need to fully lock out arms overhead, close-grip gets credit for the tighter peak it can actually reach, and the single-arm setup accounts for the cross-body angle the camera can't see directly.
- Improved
Deadlift grading is stricter on lockout deviation
Heavy-rep deadlift sets where bar path drifts mid-pull now lose more grade points so the score reflects what your training partner sees.
- New
Hanging leg raise achievements
Hit milestones for clean hanging leg raise sets. Three new achievements joined the catalog.
May 2026
Tempo grading rebuilt across the whole catalog.- Improved
Tempo grading rebuilt across every exercise
A new tempo synchronizer evaluates the up-phase and down-phase of every rep against the ideal cadence for that lift, so momentum-driven sets get caught everywhere — not just on a few exercises.
- New
Single-arm dumbbell row added to the row family
A portrait-orientation single-arm DB row variation is now graded with the same five-axis system as the rest of the row catalog.
- Improved
Romanian deadlift false-positives down
A more conservative body-english check and per-variation thresholds cut the number of clean RDL reps that were being penalised as momentum cheating.
- Improved
Leg-machine exercises score more reps
Leg extension and seated leg curl thresholds were tightened so the grading engine accepts the natural range of these machines instead of demanding more depth than the seat actually allows.
Have a request for a new exercise or variation? Tell us at hello@calmarms.com.