Upright
In private beta · iPhone

Today's session,
ready when you are.

Upright turns the CHOP Modified Dallas POTS Protocol into one calm screen a day. Heart-rate guidance included; pressure not.

Currently in private beta. I'll be in touch about trying it. No newsletter, no marketing.
iPhone Apple Watch AirPods Pro Bluetooth HR straps
9:41 ● ● ●
Base Pace · Interval 2 of 5 11:24
Heart rate
128
bpm · in zone
108 148
9:41 ● ● ●
Upright Week 3 · Day 2
Today's session
Base Pace
Recumbent cardio · ~22 min
Target zone 118–138 bpm
Below In zone Over
This week
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Based on the CHOP Modified Dallas POTS Protocol Apple Watch · AirPods Pro · Bluetooth straps On device. Always.
What is POTS?

Standing up shouldn't take everything you have.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome makes the heart race abnormally on standing — bringing fatigue, brain fog, and exercise intolerance. It's often dismissed as anxiety, frequently misdiagnosed, and disproportionately affects young women. Numbers grew sharply after 2020 as long-COVID dysautonomia surfaced in millions of new patients.

The protocol

The protocol is the thing. The app just gets out of the way.

The CHOP Modified Dallas POTS Protocol is the exercise approach most widely recommended in the POTS community. 8 months, 224 sessions, recumbent cardio progressing slowly, with heart-rate targets set as a percentage of your max — which you're left to calculate. Fu et al. showed it outperformed beta-blockers. It's also a long, prescriptive 30-page PDF — and the app's whole job is to make that easier to follow.

Read the original protocol (PDF) →

"Exercise training but not propranolol treatment improved adrenal function, POTS symptoms, and most importantly, patient quality of life… it is reasonable to conclude that this non-drug therapy is superior to β-blockers."

Fu et al., Hypertension — PMC3142863
Peer-reviewed CHOP / UT Southwestern
How it works

Three things. That's the whole app.

Calm, low-friction, and quiet on a low day. Nothing here is gamified.

01
Today's session, decided for you.
Open the app and see exactly what to do — which week, which day, which kind. No spreadsheets, no guesswork, no maths.
02
Stay in zone, in real time.
Heart rate from Apple Watch, AirPods Pro or a Bluetooth strap. A gentle haptic and voice cue when you drift — nothing louder than that.
03
Strength, with the equipment you have.
Exercise images, reps, sets, weight logging — at the gym or at home. The program adapts to your context, not the other way round.
Who it's for

For you — or someone close to you.

IF YOU HAVE POTS
You won't be told to "just push through."
  • ·One session a day, ready when you wake up.
  • ·Out-of-zone? A quiet buzz, not a klaxon.
  • ·Miss a day — makeup logic handles it without judgement.
  • ·Mood and notes for the days that need them.
IF YOU'RE SUPPORTING SOMEONE WITH POTS
The printout, finally usable.
  • ·224 sessions, scheduled and adapted automatically.
  • ·No need to calculate heart-rate zones by hand.
  • ·No nags, no streaks, no pressure to "stay on track."
  • ·Their data stays on their phone — never sent anywhere.
The story

Built for one person. Shared in case it helps someone else.

My daughter has POTS. Research pointed us to an exercise protocol with strong evidence behind it — the kind of thing that might actually help. The catch: it comes as a 30-page PDF. Eight months of sessions. HR zones to calculate. You're on your own to figure it out and stay on track.

I'm a developer. So I built her something quieter — the same protocol, one screen at a time. No spreadsheet, no mental arithmetic, no wondering what's next. It tells you what to do, keeps you in zone, and marks it done.

I put it on the App Store because she isn't the only person working from that PDF. If you're another one — or someone you care about is — maybe it helps.

— John Woffindin
Privacy

Your data is yours. It stays on your phone.

No accounts. No server — with one small exception. The app itself never sends us anything: the right answer to "how secure is our data?" is "what data?" — there's nothing to leak, lose, or sell because we never receive any of it. The waitlist form does send your email to a tiny AWS function that forwards it to John. Nothing else about you or your visit is collected or sent anywhere.

No accounts.
No sign-up, no password, no email needed to use the app.
No server.
There is nothing to breach because there is nothing to send.
On device only.
Profile, sessions, heart rate — all stored locally, encrypted by iOS.
HealthKit native.
Heart rate and workouts flow through HealthKit, under Apple's own privacy framework.