One Week, No Engineers

Dispatches from the tech half

I’m writing this from Naples, where my analog half is learning pizza from the Neapolitan traditionalists. Their approach to the craft borders on theology. It’s one of the most fascinating cities on the planet — and the perfect place to be living what I wrote about a few weeks ago: the 50/50 life.

The gist of 50/50 is that the most fulfilling and effective way to live in 2026 may be at the intersection of two extremes: fully present and screen-free on one side, tech maximalist on the other. Lately I’ve been running well over 50% analog, which has been a blessing.

But I did find time to experiment with some of the new AI coding tools that have been reshaping software development. And what Sadie, my Squadra co-founder, and I were able to build in a short amount of time is genuinely shocking.

This post covers two things: what we built, and how the Squadra program works as we approach the deadline to sign up. If you don’t care about fitness or what’s currently happening in software development, skip it. No hard feelings. This is a fairly detailed explanation of our app and program.

Though some background before I get into the app: Squadra is a fitness community I built around accountability and team competition. Members earn weekly points for healthy habits and workouts — and compete individually and as a team across a full season. It’s somewhere between a benign fitness cult and a wellness color wars.

Why We Built This

For seven years, Squadra ran on spreadsheets, group chats, and AirTable. It worked, but we hit a ceiling. Too much manual tracking. Too many “what’s my score?” messages. The problem was obvious: our tech was lame. The solution (a real app) wasn’t practical, because we weren’t about to spend $50–100k on a small community. I donated my meager profits from the program last year to a cancer charity. There’s not a lot of margin for a moonshot.

Then we recently got a real look at the new AI coding tools. In about a week, Sadie and I built what would have taken a professional development team months. The entire program — scoring, tracking, leaderboards, your profile, your team — in one place. Pretty and adaptive.

The program and app has two levels: standard and pro. Everyone who joins belongs to the standard program, but we now also allow the more elite members to opt into a more rigorous set of benchmarks. More on that in a bit.

The Standard Program

The Standard program is the core Squadra experience. Every week, you earn up to 100 points across four categories: the Squadra 10 (our ten core movements), Steps, Habits, and Flex (basically our way of allowing you to adapt this to your own needs and interests). The rubric stays the same every week, so a score of 78 always means the same thing. You can track your growth (or descent).

Your Weekly Scorecard

When you open the app, the first thing you see is your week.

Every category is laid out with simple controls to log your activity, with a special emphasis on the Squadra 10 (which, again, are our 10 most important movements).

The Norwegian 4x4 is our main cardio protocol. It consists of four rounds of 4-minute intervals at 85–95% max heart rate, developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. It’s the single most effective thing you can do to improve your VO2 max, which happens to be one of the strongest predictors of how long and how well you’ll live. It earns the most points per session of any movement in Squadra, and for good reason.

Steps are tracked by tier: 7,500+ earns 5 points, 10,000+ earns 7, and 12,500+ earns the full 10.

Flex Points are our catch-all. Anything you do for your health that isn’t covered by the Squadra 10 — a yoga class, a sauna session, a cold plunge, a long bike ride — earns Flex points. One point per 15 minutes of cardio or strength, one point per 30 minutes of recovery. Capped at 25 points per week.

For food, you choose your track: either log your meals every day using any app or journal, or hit a daily protein target based on your body weight. The alcohol scoring is refreshingly simple (yet annoying if you, like me, like to drink) — zero drinks earns the max 5 points, and it scales down from there. And every week there’s a new challenge, like a special workout or habit goal.

Track Your Lifts

The Track section is where you log your working sets for each of the Squadra 10 movements. Pick your exercise, enter your weight and reps, and hit Log. The app tracks your progress over time and shows you your best performance across each movement or lift.

The progress chart is one of my favorite features. Seeing a visual representation of your back squat going from 245 to 315 over two months hits differently than a number in a spreadsheet. And it feeds directly into a separate leaderboard across the entire community.

Leaderboards & Competition

This is the heartbeat of Squadra. The leaderboard shows individual scores (this week, prior week, and rolling average) and team standings — all live, all updated as people log their week.

We also have leaderboards for teams. You’re assigned to a team of 8 to 12 people at the start of the season. Your team’s score is the average of its members. That means if you slack, your teammates feel it. And if you show up, you lift everyone. It’s summer camp color wars for adults who care about their health.

We also have a leaderboard to see who can get to 100 Norwegian 4x4s first.

There are many more features to the standard program, but those are just a few.

Squadra Pro

Squadra Pro is an advanced, performance-focused layer on top of the Standard program. I developed it with the help of some former Navy Seals who wanted to find a way to continue to push themselves to greatness after their service. Where the Standard program is all about your inputs, Pro gives you an objective, monthly fitness assessment across ten outputs — and distills it into a single score out of 100.

Your Pro scorecard shows your overall score, your fitness level classification (from Beginner all the way up to Elite), and a radar chart mapping your performance across all ten categories: Hex Bar Deadlift, Strict Pull-ups, Bench Press, Plank Hold, Broad Jump, Farmer’s Carry, 400m Run, 1000m Row, VO2 Max, and Body Fat %.

Each category is worth up to 10 points, scored across six levels. The radar chart instantly shows you where you’re strong and where you need work. Below the chart, you can drill into each category to see your exact scores and level:

The levels — from Beginner to Elite — are calibrated to real fitness standards (and indexed to your age). Scoring “Pro” in a category means you are legitimately strong or fast in that domain. Scoring “Elite” means you’re exceptional. The system is intentionally extremely hard so that you can spend a lifetime working towards 100.

Pro has its own leaderboard, separate from Standard. Each member’s total score and level badge is displayed — you can filter by gender and toggle between the current and prior period.

Join Us

Our season runs from March 22 through December 12, 2026. It’s for anyone serious about taking their health to the next level. You don’t need to be in peak shape, but you do need to be ready to work. We’ve had members from their twenties to their sixties, beginners to former college athletes, parents juggling young kids to executives with packed schedules. The program is flexible, the community is real, and the accountability is what makes it stick.

We will be accepting members on a rolling basis throughout the year (something that wasn’t possible before this new app), but if you want to commence the program at the very start of the season, then you should submit an application by end of day tomorrow, March 6th.

Sign up now at JoinSquadra.com