Every program I write starts on paper, the night before it starts, with your last block open next to me. No template library, no drag-and-drop app spitting out a generic push-pull-legs. That sounds inefficient because it is. It is also the only way the plan reflects the person it belongs to.
This is the whole process, in order, so you can see what you are actually paying for when you hire a physique coach — and so you can pressure-test whoever you hire, including me.
Step one: the structural audit
Before a single exercise gets chosen, I need to know what I am building on. The audit covers four things.
- Leverages: limb length relative to torso, hip structure, clavicle width, ankle and shoulder mobility
- History: every injury, surgery, and chronic complaint, plus what aggravates each one
- Current inventory: which muscle groups already carry your look and which ones lag hard enough to change the silhouette
- Life load: hours slept, hours worked, travel weeks, kids' schedules, how many sessions you can actually protect
That last one is not filler. A brilliant five-day program you complete three days a week is worse than an honest three-day program you complete every week. Most plans fail on the calendar, not on the science.
“A brilliant program you finish three days a week loses to an honest program you finish every week.”
Step two: the phase map
Next I map the year backwards from what you want. Not the month — the year. If the target is a stage in October, then July through September is peak week logistics and conditioning, March through June is the taper down, and everything before that is the build. If there is no stage and the target is simply to look like you train, the map is mostly build with two short sharpening phases so you get to see the work at some point.
Each phase gets three things written next to it: the goal, the primary lever, and the exit condition. The exit condition is what most plans are missing. It is the specific, measurable thing that has to be true before we move on. Not a date on a calendar — a condition. Waist under a set measurement. Top-set load on a chosen movement. Weekly average weight in a defined band. When the condition is met, the phase ends. When it isn't, we find out why before we add another variable on top of a problem.
Step three: exercise selection by intent
Every movement in the program has to answer one question: what is this here to do? There are only a few valid answers — load a pattern heavy, accumulate stretch-biased volume on a specific muscle, fix a positional weakness, or maintain something we are not currently prioritising. If a movement cannot answer that question, it is filler and it gets cut. Filler is expensive; it costs recovery you needed for something that mattered.
Selection then gets filtered through the structural audit. Long-femur lifters usually get a heeled squat variation or a hack-slide before a low-bar back squat. Someone with a cranky shoulder gets pressing angles they can own rather than a barbell bench they have to negotiate with. This is not about avoiding hard work. It is about spending hard work where the return is highest for your body.
Step four: progression rules, written down
A program without a progression rule is a workout list. The rule I use most is double progression inside a rep bracket: pick a range, work to the top of it on every set with clean technique, then add the smallest available load and start again at the bottom. Simple, ruthless, and it removes the daily negotiation about what weight to use.
- Weeks 1 to 2: establish working loads at 2 to 3 reps in reserve
- Weeks 3 to 5: add reps first, then load, only where technique held clean
- Week 6: deload — cut roughly 40 percent of the volume, keep the intensity honest
- Restart the next block at the load you finished on, not the load you started on
Alongside that runs a simple readiness check. If sleep drops under six hours for three nights, or resting heart rate jumps noticeably, we cut the back-off sets before we cut the top sets. Intensity is the stimulus you protect. Volume is the dial you turn.
Step five: nutrition as levers, not rules
Protein gets set first and stays set — 0.9 to 1.1 grams per pound. Fat gets a floor around 0.3 grams per pound. Carbs are the working lever, and they move in 10 percent increments based on two weekly data points: your seven-day average body weight and your waist measurement. That is it. There is no secret third thing.
If you want to see roughly where your own numbers land before we ever speak, the calculator on this site runs the same Mifflin-St Jeor baseline I start from, then applies an activity multiplier and a goal adjustment. Treat the output as a starting hypothesis, not a verdict — real numbers come from two weeks of honest tracking.
Run your starting numbers in the nutrition calculator →
Step six: the review loop
Every week you send the same four things: training log, weekly average weight, waist, and a short note on sleep and stress. Every week I read them and adjust one variable, not five. Changing five variables at once means you learn nothing when it works and nothing when it doesn't.
Roughly every four to six weeks we zoom out and check the phase exit conditions. That is where the plan gets rewritten rather than nudged, and that is when a program stops feeling like a document and starts feeling like a build with a direction.
What this is not
There is no yelling, no bro-science, no guru posturing, and no shame as a motivational tool. If you miss a week because your kid was sick, we adjust the plan around real life instead of pretending willpower is the missing input. Direct feedback, warm delivery. Those two are not in conflict.
And there are no prices on this page, because the right program depends entirely on what the audit turns up. The conversation comes first.
Read next: why the off-season is the part nobody photographs →
Compare Off-Season Build, Contest Prep, and Online Physique Coaching →