FiteraCase study

Dense Club: how we turned Keegan Smith's Dense Method into an app

By Max Litvinov, founder of Fitera
Updated · 7 min read

Dense Club is the training app Fitera built and runs for strength coach Keegan Smith. It turns his Dense Method, an EMOM strength system, into features built for it: scheme-based workouts like 10D5, load predictions from one PR, Force and Skill Scores, recovery tracking and leaderboards. We shipped on 122 days between April and September 2026.

On this page · 7 sections
  1. The method
  2. What we built into the app
  3. Tools for the coach
  4. Timeline
  5. How we ship
  6. RealMVMT
  7. What it means for your app
Disclosure

Fitera built Dense Club and runs it with Keegan. We don't publish his members, revenue or retention: those numbers are his business, not ours. Everything below is what we built and how we work.

The method

Keegan Smith coached strength for the Sydney Roosters and the Catalans Dragons, and trained Ben Patrick (@kneesovertoesguy) before ATG became one of the most-followed training communities in the world. His system is the Dense Method.

It is built on EMOM work: a set every minute, on the minute. "10D5" means 10 one-minute rounds of 5 reps, and Dense Club treats each scheme as data, not a note.

What we built into the app

Each of these exists because the Dense Method needs it.

Dense Club Today screen: a recovery chip and workout cards with 10D5 and 5D10 schemes and percent-of-max targets Dense Club analytics screen with training progress Dense Club Recovery Score charts
Today, analytics and recovery in Dense Club

Workouts in Dense schemes

Every exercise shows its scheme, like 10D5, with Easy, Normal and Hard targets worked out from the member's own max.

Dense Calculator

Log one lift, and the app predicts the load for every other scheme from that single PR.

PRs per scheme

Records are tracked per exercise and per scheme, by estimated max, volume and reps, with a card to celebrate each one.

Force Score and Skill Score

Two 0–100 rings, built from the member's benchmark lifts and skills. They are kept apart, never merged into one number.

Recovery

A check-in before training (energy, sleep, soreness, bodyweight), a fatigue survey after, and a daily 0–100 Recovery Score.

Skills and structural balance

Calisthenics skills in levels, each with a lesson video. A balance tab checks lift ratios and says in plain English what to add.

Leaderboards

Force, Skill and Conditioning boards per exercise and scheme. Keegan can open a custom board where members submit a video as proof.

Community and education

A feed with comments and automatic PR posts, plus courses and lessons with video, in the same app.

Wins

A running list of what went right: new records, level-ups, and the same work done at a lower effort.

Tools for the coach

The coach side is built for the method too.

Timeline

  1. Before

    A no-code app

    Dense Club first ran on a no-code builder.

  2. April 2026

    Rewritten from scratch, live in 12 days

    Max Litvinov, Fitera's founder, rewrote the app himself on a custom stack and moved members' data over. First commit on 6 April, in production by 18 April. Scores, load predictions, skills, analytics, recovery, leaderboards and the coach panel all landed that month.

  3. May–June

    Recovery Score, payments, offline logging

    Conditioning and micro-programs, the Recovery Score, Stripe and a shop, offline workout logging, progress photos and custom leaderboards.

  4. July–August

    Coach tools and Wins

    Coach-set maxes, achievements, projected volume, standards boards, self-serve programs and Wins.

  5. September

    A new-member flow

    New members now get a guided start, and the paywall work is under way.

How we ship and run it

We treat Dense Club as a product, not a finished project. Between April and mid-September 2026, the app got 1,949 commits on 122 separate days: 505 new features and 759 fixes.

Commits per monthDense Club repository, main branch. September to the 15th.

Commits to Dense Club per month, April to September 2026
  1. April535
  2. May412
  3. June670
  4. July126
  5. August149
  6. September57

RealMVMT: a second product for the same method

For trainers who learn Keegan's system, we built RealMVMT: a social network and certification portal, started on 7 July 2026.

Certification runs in strict stages: courses, then quizzes, then practical tasks filmed on video and reviewed, then a certificate. Around it: a feed, events, a shop, a public coach directory and Dense Club inside the membership. realmvmt.com

What this means for your app

A white label platform would have given Keegan his logo on someone else's workout tracker. The Dense Method would have been text in a notes field.

A custom app starts from your method instead. On a Fitera partnership there is no upfront fee: we design, build and run the app, and you keep 50% to 70% of net revenue. Read how a partnership works, or compare white label and a custom app.

Have a method people follow?

Tell us about your audience and how you coach. We reply personally, and we talk to every creator before we say yes.

Apply: 2-minute form

No commitment · no upfront fee · we read every application

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