Training Program Templates and Instructions
- Erik Melgaard
- Oct 6
- 3 min read
These are BLANK templates. You must fill in the exercise you are programming for, the starting weights for each exercise, and select the variation in weight, reps, and sets, between the days in the week, the weeks in the cycle, and between each cycle.
The weight, rep, and set jumps are how much that variable will change over that time period. Templates are available for 2, 4, and 6 week cycles. 3 week cycles are available for one of the variations.
I included templates for up to 21 lifts. Most will only need program 3-7 lifts however some may find these larger programs useful.
There are other variations in the frequency of training for each lift as well as the total number of training days. If you see a template you like but it has too many lifts, feel free to delete or hide the rows as necessary or otherwise modify the spreadsheets. I am providing these as a starting point.
Each template name tells you how many lifts there is space for (more could be added if necessary) how many times per week each lift is trained, and if the times per week is different than how many days of training are programmed each week the number of days per week is included as well, lastly the length of the cycle is shown in the template name.
Start simple.
You can use the sheets for creating simple programs and following them or just create programs and see how the weight, sets, and reps will vary over time and use your imagination to determine how effective and doable that program might be.
Start by programming three lifts or even just one. You can put all of the lifts you are doing in if you are ambitious but it will be easier to understand how the sheets work by starting with simpler programming.
Regardless of where you are in your programming I would recommend keeping reps and sets constant and using the sheet to vary your weight first. See how you can manipulate the weight jumps day to day, week to week, and cycle to cycle and how those jumps progress over the length of a program.
Once you get a feel for varying the weight then begin playing with the sets and reps. If you are still a beginner this may not be necessary.
Use the principles and examples in the blog on "Selecting and Progressing Weight, Sets, and Reps" as guidelines for creating your program.
As a general rule of thumb: use the simplest program that will get you the results you desire. If you run a program and aren’t getting the results THEN go to a more complicated program.
In general this might mean only changing the variables every cycle initially. Then beginning to add waves in the variables from week to week. Then adding waves within the weeks from day to day. The programming will begin to be an example of “two steps forward, one step back” or three forward, one or two back four times and then two or three steps back after that cycle and restart.
Again start with waving just one variable in this manner. Then increase the complexity by waving the other variables.
Many people will never need these levels of complexity to get stronger.
Keep in mind the total amount of work required in each session. You may have a great program written for each lift individually, but all of the lifts together add up to more work than you can recover from. You may need to adjust the waves so that as one lift is peaking another is falling, or as they all go up in weight they go down in total number of reps. There are many ways of adjusting the program with this in mind.
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