Coach HubBuilding the first program
How many sessions?
Clients sometimes come in wanting to train far more than their results or experience level need. Remember the desk worker from Module 2 who wanted to train twice a day: first gear, not third.
The default range is 3–5 sessions a week. Ask what they can commit to without their week unravelling, then prescribe at the top of that real ceiling, not a fantasy one.
- Beginners thrive on 3 well-built sessions
- Intermediates usually need 4–5 to fit the work in
- Women often do well on 4–5 (4.6)
Choosing a split
| Days a week | Good starting splits |
|---|---|
| 3 | Full body ×3 (beginners, busy schedules, returning lifters). Upper / Lower / Upper, or Lower / Upper / Lower for glute priority. |
| 4 | Upper / Lower ×2 works for almost everyone. Push / Pull / Legs + Upper. A dedicated glute day for women who want it. |
| 5 | Push / Pull / Legs + Upper / Lower. For women: three glute-touching days. |
Pick the split that fits their days and goal first. Worry about exercises second.
Listen to the intake
Go back to what they told you in the intake about favourite and least favourite exercises. The fastest way to make a client feel unheard, misunderstood and undervalued is to program a movement they specifically said they dislike.
Keep it in the back of your head, because it tells a story. Someone who struggles with a barbell Romanian deadlift and mentions a past back injury? Those two are very likely linked, physically and psychologically. They probably need to work on controlling their centre of mass and on core stability. Blend that into the plan first, educate them on why the RDL felt wrong before, and reintroduce it later in the program.
Exercise selection, in order
- Best stimulus for the fatigue (4.3), from the equipment they actually have
- Cover the patterns: a squat or leg press, a hinge, a horizontal and vertical push, a horizontal and vertical pull
- Equipment realism: the perfect exercise they can't access is a bad exercise
Session shape
- Open with a compound (5–10 reps, about 1 in reserve)
- Then 2–4 machine or isolation exercises (8–15 reps, to failure)
- Once the foundation is built, add an intensifier where it fits: a drop set on the last set of a machine exercise
- Higher-rep work (15–25) for things like calves, abductions and lateral raises
Reps are prescribed as a range (for example 8–12), not a single number. That's what makes progression work (4.5).
Time-poor clients: build around what's realistic
Don't just ask how long they want to train. Ask: "How much time could you realistically spend in the gym?" People often answer the first question with their ideal, not their Tuesday.
Then do the maths. Work out how long their warm-up takes and how long the main session takes, rest times included. If the answer doesn't fit, adapt the program to fit. A 30–45 minute session is fine. So is a session that's a warm-up plus 3–4 exercises all up. I've written programs with 3 exercises in the main body and maybe an accessory before, for clients who simply didn't have the time. A short session they actually do beats a long one they skip.
When something's busy or broken
Don't skip it, swap it. Keep the same movement if possible (barbell bench to dumbbell bench), then the same muscle (barbell bench to chest press machine). Only change the target muscle in an emergency.
The cardio bunny: when the answer is less
Remember her from Module 1: morning runs, boxing, hot Pilates, glutes-only gym sessions. Her first program has fewer sessions and more structure: 3–4 real lifting sessions covering the whole body, steps for her daily movement, and the classes she genuinely loves kept as the fun extra rather than the plan. Frame it as training smarter, not doing nothing.