workout_program_design v1.0.0

name: "workout_program_design" description: "Design a multi week workout program that actually progresses: audit goals, time, and equipment, pick a weekly structure by goal, set progression and deload rules, gate load increases on form checkpoints, and read a training log to decide progress, hold, or deload. Use when someone wants a program built or fixed, a split designed, a plateau worked through, or a home or dumbbell only plan, rather than first time coaching on a single lift. Covers strength, hypertrophy, general fitness, and muscular endurance goals in a full gym or at home."

Workout Program Design

Purpose

Build workout programs that hold together for a full block of training, not single good sessions. The job is design and adjustment: match structure to goal and equipment, write the progression rule before week one starts, plan the deload, and use logged data to change the program only when the data says to.

Scope limits: general education for healthy adults. Not medical advice, not rehab, not a plan for a diagnosed condition. A beginner who needs setup and cueing taught lift by lift needs a beginner strength coaching skill first. This skill assumes the person can already perform the movements in the program safely, or has a coach checking them.

Workflow

1. Audit before writing anything. Ask for: one main goal (strength, muscle size, general fitness, or muscular endurance), training history in months, days per week and minutes per session that are real, equipment actually available, movements that cause pain, and any fixed test or date. If two goals compete, rank them. A program with two main goals usually serves neither.
2. Check the dedupe line. If the request is really a first program plus form teaching for the main barbell lifts, hand it to beginner strength coaching. If the request is structure, progression, equipment limits, a plateau, or a block plan, stay here.
3. Pick a template from references/program-templates.md and adapt it. Full gym strength runs 3 days, hypertrophy runs an upper and lower split over 4 days, home training runs a dumbbell and bodyweight ladder. Keep exercise order as the ACSM position stand sets it: large muscle groups before small, multi joint work before single joint work, heavy work before light work.
4. Cover the basics. Every program trains all major muscle groups at least twice a week where the schedule allows, which lines up with the muscle strengthening baseline in the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans summarized by the CDC: strengthening on 2 or more days per week plus 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity for adults. Say plainly when a 2 day schedule cannot cover a goal at the rate the person wants.
5. Write the progression rule into the program before it starts. Default is double progression: work a rep range, add load only when every set hits the top of the range with at least 1 rep in reserve, then drop back to the bottom of the range. Novices on a simple full body plan may add a small fixed increment each session instead. Pick one rule per lift and write it down.
6. Set effort with RIR. Hard sets end 1 to 3 reps short of form breakdown. Log RIR on the last hard set of each exercise. RPE is the same scale read the other way, RPE = 10 minus RIR.
7. Plan the deload in advance. Default block: 3 to 4 loading weeks, then 1 deload week at about half the hard sets and loads light enough that every set ends with 3 or more reps in reserve. Move the deload earlier if the tracker flags fatigue. Never stack a deload and a test week.
8. Gate load increases on form. Run the checkpoint list in references/form-checkpoints.md for each movement pattern in the program. A lift that fails its checkpoints does not get a load increase that week, whatever the rep numbers say.
9. Track from day one. Hand over assets/tracking-sheet.csv as the log format: date, exercise, muscle group, weight, reps, sets, RIR. After at least 3 sessions per exercise, run bin/track.py on the log to get weekly hard sets per muscle group, best estimated 1RM per lift, and a progress, hold, stall, or fatigue verdict per exercise.
10. Review at the end of each block. Keep lifts that progressed, swap one variant for each lift the tracker calls a stall, and change only one variable at a time: load rule, set count, rep range, or exercise. Changing everything at once destroys the comparison the log just gave you.

Output Contract

• An audit summary in a few lines: goal ranked first, days and time, equipment list, limits named.
• A weekly schedule: days, exercises in order, sets and rep ranges, rest guidance (2 to 3 minutes for heavy compound work, 60 to 90 seconds for smaller work unless the template says otherwise).
• A progression rule per lift, a block length, and a planned deload week with its exact reductions.
• Form checkpoints for every movement pattern in the program, copied from references/form-checkpoints.md.
• A tracking sheet in the CSV format above, plus the review date and the tracker verdicts that will trigger each change.
• Safety lines where they apply: stop rules for pain, and a note that medical conditions, pregnancy, and recent injury need a clinician or qualified coach, not this skill.

Operating Rules

1. Accuracy rule: every factual claim must be verified against a primary source or cut. Guidelines cited here trace to the ACSM position stand on progression models, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans as summarized by the CDC, and the RIR based RPE work by Zourdos and colleagues. Do not invent study results, percentages, or timelines.
2. Estimated 1RM comes from the Epley formula, weight x (1 + reps / 30), and is an estimate. Treat sets above 10 reps as low confidence, which bin/track.py flags. Never present an estimated 1RM as a tested max.
3. Progression is earned by reps and form, not by the calendar. If the rule says the top of the range was not reached, the load does not go up.
4. Volume changes stay small. Add or remove 2 to 4 hard sets per muscle group per week at a review, not a rewrite. Sudden volume jumps are the most common self inflicted stall.
5. Pain rules override program rules. Sharp pain, joint pain that changes a rep, numbness, dizziness, or chest pain ends the session and goes to a clinician. Soreness and effort do not.
6. One main goal per block. Conditioning add ons and endurance work from the templates are allowed, but they do not get their own progression chase in the same block.
7. Test the tracker before trusting it: python3 bin/track.py --demo should report the squat as progress, the bench press as hold, and the leg press as fatigue. If it does not, the log format or the script is broken, fix it before using verdicts on a real program.