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Programming & client experience
How to make a workout plan for an online coaching client
The plan is the easy part. The hard part is progressing the client through it once life, recovery, and adherence start moving the numbers.
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The short answer
A good workout plan for an online coaching client starts with eight inputs: goal, training age, schedule, equipment, injuries, current lifts, recovery, and preference. From those you write the structure: split, exercise selection, sets, reps, RPE or RIR target, rest, and a progression rule. Most coaches stop there. The real job starts after the plan is delivered. Workout logging is useless if the coach has to manually read all of it. The strongest setup keeps plan delivery, log capture, signal extraction, and weekly intervention on one surface, so the coach is making decisions against reality, not memory.
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Inputs
Eight inputs before you write a single set.
A workout plan that survives Tuesday is built on eight inputs, not on what the coach feels like writing today. Skip these and the plan looks clean on paper while drifting inside the first week.
01. Goal
Fat loss, hypertrophy, strength, sport-specific, general fitness, or return from layoff. The goal sets rep ranges, intensity, recovery cost, and what counts as progression in week one.
02. Training age
Months or years lifting consistently. Beginners progress on light loads weekly. Late intermediates need volume management and longer cycles. Advanced clients need exposure to harder positions, not more sets.
03. Schedule
Days the client can train, session length, time of day, and what days are realistically protected versus aspirational. Three solid days beat five squeezed days every time.
04. Equipment
Full gym, hybrid home setup, dumbbell-only, bands, or a hotel-week version. The plan changes shape, not just exercise selection, when equipment is limited.
05. Injury constraints
Current pain, prior surgeries, ranges they cannot load, and movements they should avoid for now. List them next to the prescription, not as an afterthought.
06. Current lifts
Working weights for the main lifts (estimated 1RM is fine), or what they hit last cycle. The first week's loads come from this, not from a generic percentage table.
07. Recovery
Sleep average, life stress, food intake. A client sleeping six hours and eating in a deficit gets a different plan from one running an off-season build.
08. Preference
What they actually like training, what they hate, what they are willing to do. A plan they enjoy gets done. A perfect plan they resent gets half-done and quietly skipped.
If you do not have answers to all eight, the right move is one more onboarding message before the plan, not a plan written around the missing inputs.
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Worked example
A 4-day upper/lower for an intermediate hypertrophy client.
Sample plan for a 75 kg male client, 18 months consistent training, four sessions a week, full gym, no injuries, prioritising chest and back size. Numbers are illustrative. Loads are starting points the coach refines after week 1 logs land.
Day 1. Upper, push-emphasis
Bench press 3 sets of 6 to 8 at RPE 8, 2.5 min rest. Incline dumbbell press 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Cable row 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Lateral raise 3 sets of 12 to 15 at RPE 9, 90 s. Triceps pushdown 2 sets of 10 to 12 at RPE 9, 90 s.
Day 2. Lower, quad-emphasis
Back squat 3 sets of 5 to 7 at RPE 8, 3 min rest. Romanian deadlift 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2.5 min. Leg press 3 sets of 10 to 12 at RPE 8, 2 min. Walking lunge 2 sets of 12 each leg at RPE 8, 90 s. Standing calf raise 3 sets of 10 to 12 at RPE 9, 90 s.
Day 3. Upper, pull-emphasis
Pull-up or lat pulldown 4 sets of 6 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Chest-supported row 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Dumbbell incline press 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Face pull 3 sets of 12 to 15 at RPE 9, 90 s. Hammer curl 2 sets of 10 to 12 at RPE 9, 90 s.
Day 4. Lower, hinge-emphasis
Conventional or trap-bar deadlift 3 sets of 4 to 6 at RPE 8, 3 min. Front squat or hack squat 3 sets of 6 to 8 at RPE 8, 2.5 min. Lying leg curl 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Hip thrust 3 sets of 8 to 10 at RPE 8, 2 min. Seated calf raise 3 sets of 12 to 15 at RPE 9, 90 s.
Notes for the client
Warm-up sets do not count toward prescribed sets. RPE 8 is two reps left in the tank. Log the actual weight and reps, the RPE you felt, and any rest you cut short. If a movement hurts, stop it and message me before next session.
This plan is intentionally underspecified at the load level. The first week's logs tell the coach where to anchor week 2. That handoff is where most templates fail: they cannot carry information forward.
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The deeper truth
Workout logging is useless if the coach has to manually read all of it.
Most online coaching breaks here. The plan is delivered, the client logs sets, and the coach now has a wall of numbers to scroll through every Monday across 30 clients. Reading every set manually does not scale past 10 clients. The hard part of workout coaching is not writing the plan. It is progressing the client through it: catching missed sessions early, spotting plateaued lifts before two weeks pass, and deciding when to add load, add reps, change exercise selection, or pull back.
- The problem is not collecting workout data. It is getting the right analysis out of it.
- The coach needs signal and intervention, not just logs.
- Most workout apps aggregate numbers instead of driving decisions.
- The real job is progressing the client through the plan, not writing the plan.
That is why a good plan and a good intake are necessary but not sufficient. The system around the plan decides whether the coach can actually progress the client.
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How the system carries the load
Plan delivery, log capture, and signal in one surface.
TrainedBy delivers the plan to the client app, captures sets, reps, RPE, and prescribed-versus-actual load as structured data, and surfaces what changed for the coach instead of dumping every number on them. Missed sessions, repeated load stalls, and exercise substitutions show up as flagged rows in the Weekly Cockpit. The coach operating system framing covers why this lives next to payments, check-ins, and adherence rather than in a separate workout app.
For the AI-prompt version of the same question, the make-me-a-workout-plan post is the next read. For the week-to-week mechanics, the progression post covers the decision rules.
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Common questions.
What inputs do I need before writing a workout plan?
Goal, training age, schedule, equipment access, injury constraints, current working weights, recovery, and preference. Without those, you are writing a guess that will need rewriting inside two weeks.
How many days a week should the plan be?
Whatever the client can sustain. A clean three-day full-body that gets done beats a perfect six-day split that gets half-completed. Adherence is part of the design.
Where does TrainedBy fit once the plan is written?
It is the system for delivery, log capture, signal extraction, and weekly progression. The Weekly Cockpit is where missed sessions, plateaued lifts, and progression decisions actually surface for the coach.
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Related
Read next.
- Programming & client experience
Make me a workout plan for my client
If you ask AI to make a workout plan, the prompt matters more than the model. And the plan is the easy part: real coaching starts after the prompt is run.
- Programming & client experience
How to progress a client's workout plan week to week
Progression is the real coaching job. The plan only sets the starting point. Whether the client gets stronger comes down to the decisions made between weeks.
- Programming & client experience
How to analyse workout logs without reading every set manually
Reading every set across every client every Monday does not scale past 10 clients. The job is to extract the signal, not to consume the data.
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The plan is the start, not the job.
The real coaching work is progression, intervention, and adapting around what the client actually does. That is where TrainedBy carries the load that the spreadsheet was never going to.