Progressive Overload
How to write a workout plan for a friend
For the person who keeps getting texted "what do I do for back today"
Ask three questions: how many days they can genuinely train, what equipment they have, and what hurts. Then give them one session per training day, five or six exercises each, with sets, reps and a starting weight. Repeat the same sessions every week and change nothing for a month.
Writing someone's first program is easier than writing your own, because their needs are simple and yours are not. The mistakes people make are almost never about exercise selection. They are about giving too much, and about how the plan gets handed over.
Ask these three questions first
1. How many days a week, honestly?
Take whatever number they say and subtract one. Someone who says five will train three. A three-day plan they complete beats a five-day plan they abandon in week two, and abandoning a plan you wrote makes them feel like they failed you personally.
2. What equipment do you actually have?
A commercial gym, a hotel gym and a garage with two dumbbells are three different programs. Ask them to send a photo of the gym floor if you have never been. It takes them thirty seconds and it saves you writing a plan around a cable machine that does not exist.
3. Does anything hurt, or has anything ever?
Old shoulder, bad knee, disc episode two years ago. You are not diagnosing anything. You are avoiding the one movement that will make them stop training and quietly blame the plan.
Pick the split from their day count
| Days | Split | What each day contains |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Full body, twice | Squat pattern, hinge, push, pull, one accessory |
| 3 | Full body, three times | Same five slots, rotate which exercise fills each slot |
| 4 | Upper / lower, twice each | Upper: two pushes, two pulls, arms. Lower: squat, hinge, one single leg, calves |
| 5+ | Do not | Not for a beginner. Give them four and let them ask for more |
For anyone in their first year, full body two or three times a week is the correct answer far more often than the internet suggests. Every muscle gets trained two or three times a week, and missing one session does not cost them a whole muscle group.
How much detail to give
This is where most homemade plans fail. You know a lot, and it is tempting to include it. Do not.
Include: the exercise, the number of sets, a rep range, and a starting weight. That is four pieces of information and they can act on all of them.
Leave out: RPE, tempo prescriptions, periodisation blocks, deload weeks, anything about bar speed. All of it is real and none of it matters yet. Given to a beginner it does one thing, which is add a decision to a moment where they already have too many.
Give them the progression rule, not just the plan
Write this at the top: "When you hit the top of the rep range on all sets, add the smallest weight available and start again at the bottom of the range." That one sentence is what turns a list of exercises into a program, and it means they can progress for months without asking you anything. It is double progression, and it is the whole job.
The part nobody warns you about
You will write a good plan. It will go into a note on their phone, or a photo of a piece of paper, and within three weeks one of these will happen:
- They lose the note, or cannot find it while standing in the gym.
- They text you a photo of a machine asking if it counts as a row.
- They forget what they lifted last week, so they use the same weight forever.
- They quietly stop, and neither of you brings it up.
The last one is the common one, and it is worth understanding why. A static plan cannot tell them whether it is working. Without that feedback, training becomes a chore with no visible reward, and chores lose.
The texting is the second problem. You wanted to help your friend, and you have accidentally become on-call. That is the thing that ends most of these arrangements, usually with a bit of resentment on both sides.
How to hand it over so it survives
- Put it somewhere they cannot lose it. Not a note, not a photo. Something that opens on the day and shows that day's session.
- Make sure every exercise is identifiable. "Cable row" means nothing to someone who has never used the machine. A picture solves this permanently.
- Give them a way to record what they lifted. Without it, they cannot progress and you cannot see what happened.
- Agree on one check-in a week. Not open-ended availability. One message, one day, and you look at their numbers rather than answering questions from memory.
Where this app fits
Progressive Overload was built for this exact arrangement. Add your friend with a code, and you can build and reorder their training days from your own phone. They open the app and their session for today is already there, with an illustration and animation for every exercise so the "which machine is this" texts stop.
You see their logged sets, so your weekly check-in is you looking at real numbers instead of asking how it went. Free for both of you.
Common questions
Am I allowed to write a workout plan for someone if I am not a trainer?
Writing a plan for a friend is not personal training, and there is nothing to stop you. Charging for it is a different matter and varies by where you live. Do not prescribe anything for an injury, and send them to a physiotherapist if pain is involved.
How many exercises should their session have?
Five or six. Enough to cover the body, few enough to finish in under an hour on a bad day. Beginners who are given nine exercises do the first five and skip the rest, which means you chose their accessories for them by accident.
How often should I change their program?
Every eight to twelve weeks, and only if something has stopped working. New lifters make progress on the same five movements for a long time, and changing the plan resets the one thing that was tracking their improvement.
What if they are not making progress?
Look at the log before changing the plan. Nine times out of ten the plan is fine and the person has been using the same weight for six weeks because nobody told them when to add. See how to tell if you are actually getting stronger.
Should I write their diet too?
No. You will end up responsible for two things instead of one, and the training is the part you can actually observe. If they ask, tell them to eat enough protein and leave it there.