An exercise sits inside a workout and carries everything the client needs to perform it. Most of the fields are obvious; a few change what the client can do back.
The style
Every exercise has a style. Conventional describes one movement with its own sets and rest. Versatile groups several movements under one heading, for supersets, tri-sets and cluster sets. Conventional is the right choice unless the movements have to be performed together. Conventional and Versatile exercise styles covers the difference.
The prescription
- Title: the exercise name as your client reads it. Use the name they will recognise in a gym, not the one in your certification textbook.
- Sets: how many.
- Reps or time: with a unit, so the same field covers 10 reps and 45 seconds. Set the unit deliberately. A plank prescribed in reps confuses everybody.
- Rest: also with its own unit, so you can prescribe 90 seconds or 3 minutes without doing the arithmetic yourself.
- Weight: with a unit. Set it to whatever your client's gym actually uses. A kilogram prescription in a pounds gym gets rounded badly.
Notes, and the warning on them
The notes field carries an explicit instruction: notes must not contain personal or private information.
That is worth taking seriously. Coaching notes drift naturally towards health details, such as an old injury, a diagnosis, or something a client told you in confidence. Keep the notes about the movement: cues, tempo, what to watch. "Keep the knee tracking over the toe" belongs here. "Careful, she had surgery in March" does not.
What the client can send back
Two switches on the exercise decide this, and both are easy to skip past.
- Comprehensive updates: allows updates with sets and reps, not just notes. Off, your client can only tell you how it went in words. On, they send you numbers.
- Unilateral updates: records sets and reps individually for each side. Turn it on for anything single-limb where the two sides genuinely differ, and leave it off elsewhere. It doubles the logging work for no gain on a back squat.
With sets and reps on, your client can also mark any set they log as a warm-up, and with unilateral updates on they pick left or right for each set. Warm-ups show as W in the update, so there is no need to prescribe them as extra working sets just to see them.
Video
You can attach a demonstration: one of your own uploads, searched by name, or an external link. External links are subject to review. Whoever hosts one can also delete it or put advertising in front of it. Attaching a video to an exercise covers both routes.
Order within the workout
Exercises have their own order, changed separately from the workout order. Get it right before the client starts. Reordering a workout they are halfway through is disorienting.