Written by Will Duru, BSc (Hons) Sport and Exercise Science, Level 3 Personal Trainer
If you’ve ever walked into a gym and asked yourself, “What should I do today?”12REPS was built for you. This strength-training app is laser-focused on helping users quickly and effectively improve their weightlifting routines. Unlike generic fitness apps that might throw random workouts at you, 12REPS creates a personalised plan tailored to your equipment, goals, and energy level. The result is no guesswork, no wasted time, just a clear path to getting stronger.
What Is 12REPS?
12REPS is a smart strength training app that acts like a personal trainer in your pocket. Here’s how it works:
- Personalised Workouts: You tell the app what equipment you have, which muscle group you want to train, and even how energetic you feel. Then 12REPS instantly builds a workout for you, selecting exercises that fit your setup and mood.
- Guided Training: Every exercise comes with step-by-step video demonstrations (filmed with real trainers in actual gyms) so you can learn proper form, not just follow an animation. You can log your sets, reps, and weight with ease, making it simple to track progress.
- Adaptive Progression: The more you use 12REPS, the smarter it gets. The app adapts as you grow stronger, adjusting your plan so you keep progressing week after week. It’s like having a coach who knows exactly when to push you harder or scale things back.
In short, 12REPS provides you with structure, clarity, and motivation, all in one simple app. No more wandering the gym floor or repeating the same routine forever. You open the app and know exactly what to do next to achieve your goals.
Why It Works
Most fitness apps are cardio-focused or built around follow-along classes on a screen. That’s fine for home aerobics, but not for serious strength training. 12REPS was built for people who want to lift more, build muscle, and get stronger, whether you’re training in a fully equipped gym or with a pair of dumbbells at home.
By focusing 100% on strength, 12REPS avoids the fluff. There’s no endless scrolling through workouts that don’t apply to you. Instead, you get a plan that targets the muscle groups you choose, with the optimal exercises and volume. This eliminates the paralysis of choice and “program hopping” that stalls the progress of many lifters. The app also removes the intimidation factor of the weight room by guiding you through each exercise with confidence. When your workouts are clear and custom-tailored, you’re far more likely to stick with them, and consistency is what delivers results.
Who’s Behind It?
12REPS was founded by Will Duru, a London-based personal trainer with 10 years of experience coaching clients. After working with hundreds of people, he noticed the same problem: outside of their sessions, clients struggled to follow a proper plan on their own. Will poured his expertise (and even £35,000 of his own savings) into creating 12REPS to help anyone train as if they had a coach by their side. Every exercise in the app was hand-picked and filmed under Will’s guidance, ensuring the app’s content is grounded in real-world training knowledge, not gimmicks. The app launched in April 2025 and saw over 300 people download it in the first few weeks (with 30 paying subscribers already), even before any money was spent on advertising. This early traction speaks to a real need in the market for a strength-focused fitness app.
The Goal
12REPS isn’t just another workout logger or exercise library. Its goal is to become “the Strava of strength training”, a social, powerful tool that makes lifting smarter, easier, and more fun for everyone. In practice, this means helping people train more effectively and stay consistent. Whether you’re a beginner or experienced, the app adjusts to your level, allowing you to continue progressing. The vision is a community where users can share workouts, celebrate PRs, and motivate each other, much like how Strava turned running and cycling into social activities. In short, 12REPS aims to revolutionise strength training the way Strava did for endurance sports, helping millions of people achieve results faster by combining smart technology with community support.
And yes, 12REPS is all about getting real results. When your workouts are personalised and precise, you stick to them. Many users report that they’ve made more progress in a couple of weeks with 12REPS than in the past year of trying to figure it out on their own. The app’s core philosophy is simple: when you can see your progress and feel yourself getting stronger, you build momentum. Momentum keeps you coming back, and consistency builds strength. It’s a virtuous cycle that 12REPS strives to kickstart for every user.
It’s no coincidence that 12REPS aspires to be the “Strava of strength training.” In fact, Strava itself could be the key to unlocking 12REPS’s full potential. Strava is the world’s largest fitness community, with over 150 million athletes across 185 countries. However, its platform has historically focused on tracking endurance activities, such as running and cycling. Strength training is an untapped frontier for Strava – and a growing one.
According to Strava’s own 2024 data, weight training was the fastest-growing sport type among women on the platform, with a 25% increase in uploads that year. There is clearly a huge audience of Strava users who lift weights or do gym workouts, yet Strava currently offers them little beyond basic activity logging.
Meanwhile, Strava has signalled a strong interest in offering personalised training tools to its users. In early 2025, Strava made high-profile acquisitions of Runna (a running training app) and The Breakaway (a cycling training app) to provide guided plans for runners and cyclists. As TechCrunch noted, Strava’s moves indicate “an extreme interest in selling training plan tools” to its community. What’s missing from this picture? A dedicated strength training solution. This is where 12REPS fits in perfectly.
By acquiring 12REPS, Strava would instantly gain a proven, focused strength-training platform to complement its endurance offerings. It’s a win-win scenario:
- Complete the Ecosystem: Strava could become a true one-stop fitness hub. A runner on Strava might use Runna for a marathon plan, log their race on Strava, and then use 12REPS to follow a weightlifting program in the off-season—all under the Strava umbrella. This keeps users engaged year-round. Strava’s CEO has discussed reducing friction in the athlete’s journey by integrating planning and tracking, and 12REPS would extend that philosophy to the weight room.
- Leverage Strava’s Resources: With Strava’s vast resources and engineering talent, 12REPS could scale up rapidly. Strava’s data infrastructure and experience handling millions of users would help 12REPS grow from a few hundred early adopters to potentially millions of strength enthusiasts. Strava’s financial backing could also accelerate the development of new features in 12REPS (such as the upcoming AI-generated workouts and equipment detection) and enhance the app’s overall polish.
- Built-in Community: Strava’s social features would amplify 12REPS. Imagine 12REPS users being able to share their completed gym sessions on Strava feeds or compare strength progress with friends just as they do for runs and rides. The sense of community and competition that makes Strava so addictive would carry over to lifting. This could drive more people to take up strength training, knowing they can get kudos for a gym PR just like a fast 5K.
- Strategic Growth for Strava: Strength training is a massive part of fitness. Health authorities worldwide recommend at least two strength sessions per week for adults, and interest in weightlifting and functional fitness has boomed in recent years. By investing in 12REPS, Strava would tap into this trend and capture a segment of the market that might otherwise use separate apps (or none at all). It expands Strava’s addressable market and gives existing users one less reason to leave the Strava ecosystem for their gym needs.
In summary
12REPS offers something Strava currently lacks: a tailored strength-training experience. Strava’s platform, in turn, offers something 12REPS needs: scale and exposure. Given Strava’s recent acquisition spree of training apps for runners and cyclists, picking up a strength training app like 12REPS could be the logical next step to round out its portfolio. It would help 12REPS grow with Strava’s resources and reach an audience that’s already primed for fitness technology. Don’t be surprised if, in the near future, you see “Powered by Strava” on the 12REPS app – it just makes too much sense.
Whether or not a Strava acquisition happens tomorrow, 12REPS is already a game-changer for anyone serious about strength training. The app is continuously evolving, with new features in the works such as:
- AI-Generated Workouts: Soon, the app will utilise artificial intelligence to create even more intelligent routines tailored to your past performance and goals.
- Equipment Detection: The team is experimenting with allowing you to snap a photo of your home gym setup, after which the app can recognise the equipment you have and suggest workouts accordingly.
- Social Sharing & Challenges: As the community grows, features to share your progress, join challenges, and compete with friends are on the roadmap, bringing that Strava-like social element into the app.
- Enhanced Progress Tracking: More charts and analytics will be added, allowing you to see your strength gains over time, not just feel them.
It’s still early days for 12REPS, which means that users who join now will be part of shaping the app’s future. The developers are actively gathering feedback and rolling out updates. In the first few weeks after launch, over 300 people downloaded 12REPS, and dozens became paying subscribers, primarily through word of mouth. This type of organic growth demonstrates that the app is fulfilling a genuine need. By trying it now, you’ll not only start improving your workouts immediately, but you’ll also help refine one of the most exciting new fitness tools out there.
Get Stronger with 12REPS
If you’re serious about strength training, or you’re someone who has always struggled to stick with a lifting routine, give 12REPS a try. It’s simple. It’s smart. And it’s built to make you stronger, faster. You can download 12REPS on iOS or Android and get started with a tailored workout plan in minutes. The first week is free, allowing you to try it out with zero risk.
Whether you’re an experienced lifter looking for more structure or a complete beginner who needs guidance, 12REPS adapts to you. It takes the planning and guesswork off your plate, so you can focus on what matters: putting in the work and getting results. And with potential backing from a fitness giant like Strava in the future, 12REPS could soon become an even more powerful ally in your fitness journey.
Bottom line: 12REPS is not just another fitness app – it’s one of the best upcoming apps dedicated to strength training. It helps you train smarter and improve faster. With its innovative approach and a potential boost from Strava’s vast community, 12REPS is poised to grow into the go-to app for anyone who wants to lift, learn, and consistently improve. Don’t miss out on getting stronger with 12REPS – there’s never been a better time to start.
Sources
- Strava’s acquisition of Runna (a running app) and The Breakaway (a cycling app).
- Strava Year in Sport report – Weight training saw a 25% growth in uploads, making it the fastest-growing sport for women in 2024.
- Strava press release (April 2025) – Strava has over 150 million athletes and is expanding its platform with new training apps.
- 12REPS launch announcement – the app focuses on personalised strength training to help users build muscle, burn fat, and achieve lasting results.
