FIELD NOTES / 001 — PROGRAMMING
The five questions
behind a training plan.
Before choosing a split or counting sets, take a step back.
A useful plan starts with the questions you ask.
A training template is a set of choices. Understanding those choices makes the template easier to explain, compare, and revise.
Volume 04 organises this conversation around five questions: outcome, constraints, slots, dose, and review. They are an editorial framework, not a research-validated formula or a personalised training plan.
Use them to examine the reasoning behind a plan. They do not tell every reader to train on the same days, use the same exercises, or follow the same progression.
QUESTION 01 / OUTCOME
What are you trying to change?
Start with the purpose of the plan. Strength in a particular movement, muscle development, and maintaining a familiar practice are different intentions. Describe what you want to understand before selecting the exercises.
QUESTION 02 / CONSTRAINTS
What does your week actually allow?
Time, equipment, experience, and recovery opportunities shape what is workable. Write down the training windows you can usually protect and the parts of your schedule that tend to change. A template should respond to those constraints.
QUESTION 03 / SLOTS
Which tasks deserve a place?
Think about the role of a movement before choosing its name. A squat, hinge, push, or pull is a way of organising choices, not a requirement to include every variation. Each place in the plan should have a purpose you can explain.
QUESTION 04 / DOSE
How will you organise the work?
Sets, load, effort, frequency, rest, and progression belong in the same conversation. This framework does not supply a universal target for them. It asks you to make the choices explicit so they can be reviewed together.
QUESTION 05 / REVIEW
What would make you reconsider?
Choose what you will observe and when you will look back. Note changes in equipment, technique, available time, or circumstances that make comparisons less straightforward. A useful review can lead to keeping a plan, changing it, or seeking qualified advice.
A FICTIONAL EXAMPLE
A changing calendar.
Lee wants to maintain a familiar strength practice while spending more time on endurance activity. Several training windows are usually available, but their days move from week to week.
Rather than forcing a fixed calendar, Lee starts by identifying a priority movement and the other tasks that could fit around it. The review asks whether the priority work remains comparable and whether the week is workable.
This illustrates the order of the decisions. It is not a schedule or a recommendation for an individual reader.
SOURCE & SCOPE
Adapted from “The planning grammar” in Strength and Muscle Programming Guide, Volume 04. The five-question framework and Lee’s example come from the book’s editorial explanation; they are not findings attributed to a clinical trial.
Educational information for adult recreational trainees. Individual circumstances may require qualified coaching or clinical guidance.