Chris Schuhmacher Pitched a Dream in San Quentin. Today, Fitness Monkey is a Reality.

By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile.

Before Chris Schuhmacher could build Fitness Monkey, he walked the San Quentin prison yard, rehearsing how to explain it.

The idea grew from his own recovery: help people overcome substance abuse through physical fitness, structure, and support. He pitched it onstage through The Last Mile’s entrepreneurship program, despite having no experience with smartphones or coding skills.

Today, it has launched as an app people can download to support their own journey with sobriety. When we interviewed Schuhmacher after the launch, he traced its beginnings through sobriety, handwritten code, and nearly a decade in the tech industry.

The Decision That Changed Chris Schuhmacher’s Life

Schuhmacher describes a relatively stable upbringing. However, substance abuse became central to his life early on. Alcohol and drugs increasingly shaped his identity and choices.

Eventually, while under the influence, he took someone’s life and was sentenced to 16 years to life in prison.

“It’s been really important for me to take accountability for those things and really understand the harm that I caused,” he said. That work also meant examining why substance use had occupied so much of his life.

His decision to pursue sobriety came immediately after the crime, and continued into his incarceration. Maintaining it required daily effort in a prison environment where alcohol and drugs remained available.

For Chris, fitness provided sobriety and the structure it needed to thrive. During lockdowns, he did push-ups and burpees inside his cell. For resistance training, he filled a laundry bag with National Geographic magazines and fashioned a handle.

“We had to develop workout programs where you could do burpees, you could do push-ups,” he recalled. Limited space dictated the routine, but he found ways to work his arms and shoulders with makeshift weights. “I had to get creative,” he said. Each adaptation gave him another way to keep moving, even when lockdowns kept him from the yard.

Behind that resourcefulness was a growing understanding of what helped him stay sober. Exercise gave him something constructive to return to each day. For Chris, fitness helped “get my mind off the addiction and replace it with healthier daily habits.” Repeating those habits gave him a practical way to follow through on his decision to change.

Discovering a Path Forward in The Last Mile

For years, Schuhmacher prepared for a release date he could not predict. Even the possibility of freedom brought difficult questions.

“What the hell am I gonna do when I get out of here?” he recalled wondering. “And who’s gonna be willing to give me a chance?” 

Chris’ concerns were valid – they reflected a system where a criminal record can limit access to employment, housing, and lasting stability. Those barriers often reinforce one another, making it harder to rebuild a life and increasing the risk of returning to prison.

In 2012, he attended The Last Mile’s first Entrepreneurship Demo Day. Sitting in the audience in the San Quentin Chapel, Chris watched men stand onstage pitching technology businesses, including mobile apps, despite having no access to smartphones.

Schuhmacher had never seen a smartphone, yet he understood it was the future of life after prison in Silicon Valley. Watching the men on stage, he suddenly saw an education like this that could help him imagine a future beyond prison.

The Origins of Fitness Monkey In TLM’s Classroom

Since its founding, The Last Mile’s entrepreneurship program helped participants turn their interests and lived experiences into business ideas with a social purpose. Developing and pitching those ideas gave students practice solving problems, communicating their vision, and imagining themselves as future founders.

Today, TLM has relaunched entrepreneurship within its expanded curriculum, giving a new generation of students opportunities to develop that same mindset.

Chris joined the second cohort that The Last Mile ever delivered. The initial assignment asked participants to connect a personal passion, technology, and a social cause. For Schuhmacher, those elements came together in Fitness Monkey.

 “I initially pictured it as an online life coaching platform that could help people overcome substance abuse with physical fitness,” he said. “Fitness had been such a huge part of my own journey to sobriety.”

Over six months, he developed the concept. Yard walks became pitch rehearsals, sometimes alone, sometimes with classmates offering feedback. 

On Demo Day, Chris faced an auditorium of peers, investors, and Bay Area technology professionals. Fitness Monkey drew an enthusiastic response, and Chris was featured in multiple news stories following the event. 

“I feel like it was the first time in a long time that I could see what life could look like on the outside of prison,” he said.

Writing Code On Paper Before He Could Run It

The pitch attracted encouragement, but Schuhmacher still lacked the skills to build the app. “So it kind of sat on the shelf,” he recalled.

In 2014, The Last Mile launched its coding program. Schuhmacher was one of the first 18 students to join it at San Quentin. 

Coding combined two of his passions: mathematics and learning languages. Without internet access, students relied on textbooks and one another. Classroom instruction took place four days a week. 

At night, Schuhmacher returned to his cell and wrote code with a pencil, continuing his learning on paper. “We learned from each other,” he said. Together, classmates identified gaps in their knowledge. As Schuhmacher put it, “We learned to thrive in ambiguity.”

Eventually, he built a Fitness Monkey prototype. In a later pitch, during his coding-program years, he described how it tracked workouts and recovery progress.

“Fitness Monkey is a product of my life and my life sentence,” he told that audience. The idea he had envisioned, both in classrooms and in countless walks around the yard, now had working software behind it.

Building a Career After Prison

Schuhmacher left prison on May 4, 2017, after 17 years inside. Reentering society presented immediate challenges and demands, including finding housing, securing employment, and rebuilding relationships.

The Last Mile offered an early foothold. As a web developer with The Last Mile, he helped build a learning management system packaging San Quentin’s coding curriculum for other prisons.

His first professional work helped extend the education that had prepared him for employment. Later that year, he joined Fandom as a software engineer. Following that position, he worked at Checkr and Fanstake, and also held a leadership role as an engineer at Dignifi, an organization focused on reentry support. 

He gained experience and confidence to pursue his original idea. Chris Schuhmacher could now take responsibility for building the product himself.

“I thought this was something that I could finally build myself,” he said. “And so I did.”

Inside Fitness Monkey: Recovery Through Daily Habits

Fitness Monkey brings together the practices Schuhmacher credits with rebuilding his life: movement, reflection, and consistent effort.

The platform’s initial focus is helping people recover from substance use. Chris sees potential to support other behavior changes as Fitness Monkey develops. 

“Recovery from substance use is where Fitness Monkey starts, but I could eventually see it helping people overcome other addictions and unhealthy habits as well.”

The app tracks sobriety milestones, workouts, and journal entries. Daily reflections encourage users to consider their progress. These tools reflect Schuhmacher’s own successful practice and his belief that recovery grows through repeated, achievable actions.

Fitness Monkey

Recovery meets fitness.

Build a stronger life.
One day at a time.

Track your sobriety, build momentum through movement, and understand your daily habits. Bring your recovery and fitness journey together in one app.

01 / YOUR PROGRESS

Make every day count.

Track sober days, watch your streak grow, and celebrate milestones along your recovery journey.

02 / YOUR MOVEMENT

Build momentum.

Log your workouts, follow your progress, and try guided daily sessions matched to your recovery.

03 / YOUR REFLECTION

Reconnect with your why.

Journal the moments that matter, record triggers, and recognize patterns in how you feel and respond.

04 / YOUR NEXT STEP

Keep moving forward.

Explore personalized AI insights and practical prompts to help you navigate challenging moments.

Created from lived experience.
Built by Chris Schuhmacher, alumnus of The Last Mile.

Get Started With Fitness Monkey →

The Fitness Monkey website also touts features like meeting attendance, trigger logging, workout recommendations, and personal records. Progress charts and milestone badges help users see their accumulated effort. Weekly AI insights aim to highlight patterns across their activities.

Together, those features give recovery and physical activity a shared place in someone’s daily routine. Each workout, reflection, and sober day can each become something worth recording. 

Schuhmacher wants early users to help determine what comes next. Members of The Last Mile community already helped test the app before launch.

“I would love for folks to download it, to use it, to see what’s cool and what can be improved,” he said. “The most important part of Fitness Monkey is helping people  feel like they are not alone in their addiction.”

Day One Is Always A Win

Years ago, Schuhmacher walked the yard practicing a pitch for an app he couldn’t build yet. Today, he can invite people to try it.

His journey shows how an education can keep creating possibilities long after someone leaves the classroom. The Last Mile’s original entrepreneurship program helped Chris imagine a business rooted in his own experience. Coding gave him the tools to begin building it. Years of professional work helped him bring that vision to life.

That legacy continues through alumni building careers, sharing their knowledge, and creating tools that can reach people across the country. With entrepreneurship now part of TLM’s expanded curriculum, a new generation of students can build on those beginnings. Their experiences carry the seeds of ideas that may one day serve communities far beyond prison walls.

For Chris, the next chapter depends on people willing to give Fitness Monkey a try. Visit Fitness Monkey for the iOS and Android download links or to sign up online. Explore its tools, tell him what works and what could improve, and share it with someone pursuing sobriety or greater daily structure. Your feedback can help shape an app that began with one person’s recovery into something useful for many others.

For someone taking that first step, Schuhmacher offers a simple reminder: “Day one is always a win.”

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By Robert Roche, VP of Marketing at The Last Mile.

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