PERFORM. REBUILD. THRIVE.

Join thousands of athletes of all ages who have successfully changed the way they workout and bought into the value of thoughtful and purposeful training.

Exceptional strength and rehab programming by two strength coach physical therapists.

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Sustainable Strength

Most people are spinning their wheels with their fitness journey, doing redundant programs, using ineffective exercises for strength, and bouncing around trying to burn fat. There won’t be any of that with us.

We’ve specifically formulated our programming by science-based principles and organized it from our years of coaching and training to ensure that it delivers a framework for optimal physical health.

Getting results that last is not easy work. Knowing what exercises, when to do them, and how much to do can be a lot. It can all feel overwhelming. If you combine our guidance with your efforts, you can achieve the best fitness of your life.

Build foundational strength with multi-joint exercises like the squat, deadlift, lunge, hinge, press, row.

Learn how to incorporate plyometrics, medicine ball work, and simple jumping drills to boost your athleticism. Optional sprint intervals, movement, and sport specific training. Train like an athlete for peak physical fitness.

Movement prep, range of motion, and movement variability is good for the body. We include just enough to keep you healthy without spending too much time on it.

Adding lean mass to your physique via hypertrophy training helps to build robust tendons, strong and mobile joints, and increase bone density. Simply put, it can be injury protective.

We care about aesthetics, we know you do too. Build functional muscle and improve your physique at the same time.

Ask questions, submit videos for form review, brag about a PR, or just complain about your DOMS. We’re here to listen. Sam and Teddy are active daily on the app forum.

App features: daily workout at a glance, choose alternate exercises for different goals, record your weights and track your progress over time.

All training sessions can be easily modified for minimalist workouts. At the very least, you can get by with bands and some light dumbbells or a kettlebell. We also include home and minimalist specific a la carte workouts.

Life gets in the way. We’ve all been there. Just get the lift in. Drop your accessory work from 3 sets to 2, emphasize the primary lift, skip the optional work, take minimal rest and cut sessions down to 30-40 minutes.

Reboot your fitness journey with the BASE and RAMP programs. These 3 or 4 day programs are designed to acclimate you to all the fundamental movement patterns. We recommend following each track for 3-6 weeks if you’re unsure about your readiness for the daily programming.

Every exercise has an expert video demonstration with voiceover instructions and coaching cues. Our exercise library has over 1200 videos. Additional instructions and specific guidance are provided within each workout.

In a periodized and organized training model, points of emphasis are cycled in and out throughout the year. We use a modified conjugate training approach. In addition to being fun and keeping things fresh, this helps to ensure adaptation never stops.

Workouts include modifications and alternative exercises. We also feature beginner and beginner-intermediate programs: BASE and RAMP, which are designed if you’re restarting your fitness journey, or trying something new.

Rehab Programs

3x week, 20 min./day, fix-yourself programs

Injuries suck! Let us help you get back to doing what you love. Perform these programs at home or in the gym.

Our longest and most thorough rehab program: this 6-phase, 24-week shoulder rehab template focuses on improving activation of the rotator cuff, shoulder stability, shoulder external rotation strength, and full pain free motion.

Each phase builds on the last one through a natural evolution of increasing strength, range of motion, speed, volume, and intensity.

The 16-week knee rehab program begins with foundational exercises that address critical aspects of knee health to optimize range of motion and quadriceps strength.

It moves on to faster movement, larger ranges of motion, and increasing degrees of challenge. Don’t skip the easy stuff, rebuilding takes time.

Strengthen and prepare your knees for jumping and running. Tendon related pain doesn’t improve with rest, but it’s hard to figure out exactly how much to do.

This program serves as an entry point for exercise when you’re dealing with anterior knee pain and can be scaled up or down according to your symptoms.

A 16-week program to help individuals struggling with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) symptoms. We begin with a focus on fundamental hip strength and avoiding symptom provoking positions.

The programming focuses on improving hip range of motion and strength, and restoring functional movement patterns such as the squat, lunge, and hip hinge.

Training Support

a la carte exercise programs

Unique Add-ons to Customize Your Citizen Athletics Experience

Learn

Feed Your Inner Nerd 🤓

You Ask, We Answer. Deep Dives. Long Form Content

Watch how Teddy and Sam coach common movements like the squat, deadlift, plank, push up, and more. Learn common mistakes and how to optimize your form.

Learn how to modify common exercises for at home, how to put together a home gym, our top home gym hacks, and what items to prioritize on a budget.

Learn when to back off, and when it’s ok to work around pain. Follow a simple process of adjusting tempo, weight, range of motion, or exercise selection.

Learn the basics on how to set up macronutrients, make healthy food choices, and start a weight loss, lean bulk, or massing diet.

Samuel Spinelli

Helping people conquer injuries & lead their best life!
Cofounder @e3rehab
@Legion Code DrSam
Proud Husband & Father

Teddy Willsey

🏋🏽‍♀️ Sports Rehab & Performance
🔬 Science & Research Based
💪🏽@citizenathletics1
💥 Online Training & Rehab ⤵️

Meet The Team

Citizen Athletics was founded and built from the ground up by two doctors of physical therapy with extensive strength & conditioning backgrounds. Sam and Teddy met in February 2018 and launched Citizen Athletics 6 months later.

They instantly bonded over a shared passion for their work, and equally strong passion for living life to the fullest, pushing yourself, and holding yourself accountable to be the best human possible.

They came up with the idea of Citizen Athletics because they wanted to create a workout and rehab platform that was different from everything else out there, and actually worth every penny.

They wanted to market it in an honest and transparent manner, and not make outrageous claims or use predatory tactics. They wanted to over-deliver.

Sam and Teddy aim to convey their wide breadth of knowledge and expertise in a meaningful way, and help as many people as possible experience the joy of physical health, strength, and fitness.

Join Citizen Athletics and finally get the gains you've always dreamed of

No Contract, Cancel Anytime

Black Friday Yearly Savings!

$199, billed yearly

$16.58

/ Month

Monthly

$29, billed monthly

$29

/ Month

Quarterly

$79, billed quarterly

$26

/ Month

Yearly

$249, billed yearly

$21

/ Month

FAQ

Sustainable Strength is your solution to staying healthy, getting great results, and building your strength and athleticism. This programming does a great job of staying fresh and coming up with new creative twists on training, while still honoring the beauty and simplicity of training the functional movement patterns.

Sustainable Strength is an optional 3, 4, or 5 day/week full body comprehensive workout updated weekly. It includes relevant and intelligently planned warm ups and a wide variety of movement variability to keep things fresh and keep you moving well. At its core, this programming blends elements of performance, barbell lifting, and physique focused training in order to create resilient and functional athletes.

This program is best for someone who wants routine and consistency. If you’re looking for structure, and you don’t feel like coming up with your own workouts, but you still need an option that has some flexibility, Sustainable Strength will hit the spot.

With decades of experience as physios and coaches, Sam and Teddy are skillfully adept at designing programming and offering alternative options that make Sustainable Strength work for nearly everyone. 

Sam and Teddy are accustomed to working with people across literally all levels of fitness, all age ranges, and all phases of fitness from rehabilitation to performance.

Sustainable Strength is updated weekly with modifications primarily centering around changes in volume and intensity. Every 4 weeks, a new block is released, with a new grouping of exercises and shifted training goals. We follow a modified conjugate approach, where primary exercises are cycled in and out throughout the year.

Our programming has a seasonal and yearly cycle to it. We focus on long term structure and organization by following principles of periodization in order to maximize adaptation and plan ahead for defined periods of overreaching and deload. We take time to build strength, improve technique, and ingrain positional competency.

Our athletes are invested for the long run and they’ve seen the light when it comes to strength training and staying healthy. It’s literally impossible to follow this programming and not achieve phenomenal results.

Sustainable Strength follows a full body style of training, meaning that if you select any two days to train, you will still perform all 4 primary movement patterns: an upper push, upper pull, lower push, and lower pull.

Typically we make days 1 & 3 more lower body focused, days 2 & 4 more upper body focused, and day 5 athletic / full body. If you train two days per week, you can pick one lower and one upper dominant day. If you train a third day, you can add in either an upper, lower, or athletic dominant day as you feel best meets your goals.

Training sessions are typically 60-75 minutes for the long option, and 40-50 minutes for the short option.

If you follow this program 3 day/week, choose moderate weights, skip the optional work, and drop the accessory work from 3 sets to 2 sets, workouts are 40-50 minutes and cover all the essentials you need and gain strength as a beginner or intermediate.

If you choose to follow all 5 training days and perform the primary lifts with barbells, utilizing progressive overload, sufficient rest periods, and escalating weight, this program will build your squat, deadlift, jump height, and sprint speed.

The standard version of our programming is written for a fully stacked gym. We avoid most machines and stick to free weights, cables, bands, suspension training (TRX or rings), sliders, and bodyweight exercises.

Although we use barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells, we provide alternative options for different training settings and preferences.

About one third of our members work out at home with a wide variety of home gym set ups. The absolute bare minimum equipment we recommend are bands, a few dumbbells, sliders, and a suspension training device.

Our optional athletic programming can include medicine ball work, plyometrics with varied height boxes, and movement that requires at least 5-10 yards of open space. We offer alternatives here as well.

If you’re coming back after injury, or time off, or you just need a slower build up to Sustainable Strength, we offer our BASE and RAMP program. These programs are a great way to take advantage of the physio and strength coach backgrounds of Teddy and Sam.

Each program is meant to be done for 4-8 weeks, progressing at your own pace. This is a safe and effective way to build back up and bridge the gap between your current fitness level, and where you want to be.

YES. We strongly encourage all trainees to use our app to log your workouts and keep track of the weights you use each week. This is an extremely effective method to ensuring you’re making gains, and also not pushing yourself too much.

In addition to built-in logging, we also offer educational videos about how to best use this method to make consistent gains and decide when to increase or decrease weight.

We do not offer an archived version of the weekly program. We like to keep each week fresh and updated. This allows us to make seasonal training goals and changes. Our goal with Sustainable Strength is to work through the program as a group and be united in our efforts, rather than just be a program you download and do on your own or save for later. Additionally, this method ensures you get the best results and follow the programming as closely as possible.

Don’t stress it! This is totally understandable and workable to still get amazing results. We offer a forum and community message board within the app that can provide ideas for modifications– Teddy and Sam are active on their daily.

There is also a lot of educational content with technique tips, modifications, working around an injury, and at home modifications that can be helpful as well.

Most training programs need to be modified by 20%. This happens even with the most customized programming. Life, travel, family, school, work, injuries, equipment availability, and individual preferences will all play a role in how closely you can follow this programming. Don’t sweat it if you miss a few, or have to modify. Also, don’t overcorrect, just stay the course.

If you have an injury that limits you, then consider checking out our rehab programs and templates, or post in the community forum. And if this is a more serious injury that you think might require the help of an in-person professional, please do not hesitate to seek professional physio and medical care.

Our app is flexible and gives you the option to use a calendar and customize your training days each week. There is no one perfect answer here. Our general recommendation is to take a rest day after 2-3 days in a row of training, however recovery and training frequency can vary a lot from one person to another.