I have color coded this section. When you receive my training sheets, they won't be colored. This is done here only to help explain their formatting.
The first thing you will notice is the red heading Max Strength. This is what the goal of the particular phase of the program.
Below this will either be a day, Monday in this case, or a letter. This day or letter designates the workout's place in the week. Some clients prefer to train on specific week days hence the use of the weekday name. If a client needs more flexibility or if the workout training day varies by week, then a letter designation is given.
Across the top of the page reads Set 1, Set 2,.... up to a rare maximum of 10 sets of one exercise. To determine the exercise to be performed, look right beneath the warm up, in this case Box Squat is the first exercise. To determine the number of sets to do, you should look across from the exercise name to the right. If you see reps listed under each rep box you have a set of that many reps. In this case for Box Squats you would perform a set of 6, one of 4 and one of 2, following a warm-up of 2-3 sets. The number of warm-ups is located under the exercise name along with any other notes. In this example there is a note to use a wide stance. I intentionally leave the warm-up rep range up to each athlete. Many athletes like to use a few higher rep sets, and some would rather keep the reps equal to those to be used in their first work set or real set. Either method is fine as long as the athletes are correctly prepared for the work sets. For Good Mornings you would perform 1-2 warmups followed by 2 work sets of 6. When the athlete attempts the work sets, they record both the poundages used and the reps they achieved in the set. For more info on determining the lbs to use, click here.
Just to the right of the exercise name is the WK no. This is the week number or if doing the workout multiple times in one week, then it would read WO No. (Workout Number). Just right of this is the tempo. For box squats the tempo is 311. This means that the muscle lengthening phase ("eccentric", often when the weight is being lowered) should take 3 seconds, a pause should occur for 1 second, and the muscle shortening ("concentric" often the raising) phase should be over 1 sec. To the right of this is the RI or rest interval. This is the amount of seconds one should wait between each set. In place of a tempo for the Good Morning exercise is the designation 1.5. This is a bodybuilding technique used to increase the total time under a load. The lifter will do the concentric motion, then half the eccentric motion, then repeat the top half of the concentric motion and then the full eccentric motion. This would constitute one repetition. The final thing to note is the arrow symbol between Tricep Pressdown and Curls. This means that you would do the set of Tricep Pressdowns then immediately do the curls, and then take your rest interval.
| Max Strength | |||||||||||
| Monday | Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | ||||||||
| WK No. | Tempo | RI | Wt | Rep | Wt | Rep | Wt | Rep | |||
| Warm Up | 10 mins basketball | ||||||||||
| Box Squat | 6 | 4 | 2 | ||||||||
| wide stance | 1 | 311 | 240 | ||||||||
| 2-3 warmups | 2 | 311 | 240 | ||||||||
| 3 | 311 | 240 | |||||||||
| 4 | 311 | 240 | |||||||||
| Good Morning | 6 | 6 | |||||||||
| 1-2 warmups | 1 | 1.5 | 180 | ||||||||
| 2 | 1.5 | 180 | |||||||||
| 3 | 1.5 | 180 | |||||||||
| 4 | 1.5 | 180 | |||||||||
| Tricep Pressdowns | 15 | 15 | |||||||||
|
|
1 | 311 | |||||||||
| 2 | 311 | ||||||||||
| 3 | 311 | ||||||||||
| 4 | 311 | ||||||||||
| Curls | 10 | 10 | |||||||||
| 1 | 323 | 60 | |||||||||
| 2 | 323 | 60 | |||||||||
| 3 | 323 | 60 | |||||||||
| 4 | 323 | 60 |
