How to run this on paper
The app is bookkeeping, not the method. Everything here works in a notebook, and it worked in a notebook first. If you'd rather not carry a phone into the gym — or you want to understand what the app is actually doing on your behalf — this is the whole thing.
What you need
One page per workout, ruled into a grid. Exercises down the left, one column per session. Keep A and B as separate grids: every rule in the program compares a session to the one before it, so consecutive sessions of the same workout need to sit side by side where you can see them together.
What you write
A number and, occasionally, one character. That's it — roughly a dozen numbers and usually zero marks. If it takes longer than a minute it won't survive, and the grid should shrink before the program does.
| Workout A | 12 Aug | 15 Aug | 17 Aug |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squat | 100 | 100 - | 105 |
| Bench | 70 + | 70 + | 70 + |
| Rows | 60 | 62.5 | 62.5 |
| BSS | 20 | 20 | 22.5 |
| Wipers | bent | bent | ½ straight |
| Cut? | Y | ||
| Note | L elbow twinge |
Movements with no weight — hanging windshield wipers, wall tibialis raises, step-ups, the ab wheel, single-leg calf raises — get a word instead of a number. Write the leverage: the variation, the lever length, the tempo. That's their progression variable, and "bent → ½ straight" is a real step forward in exactly the way 100 → 105 is.
The four marks
One character, written only when something deviates. The blank is the common case and it carries information: it means the set landed where it was supposed to.
| Mark | Meaning | Trigger |
|---|---|---|
| (blank) | Landed in the zone — a hard set with a couple of reps still in you. | Nothing to do. |
| - | Too easy. More left in the tank than there should have been. | Two in a row → add load. |
| + | A genuine grinder, right at the top of the range. | Three in a row → back off about 10%. |
| ! | Had to stop the set part-way. | Two in ten workouts → pull the whole block back. |
The polarity is counter-intuitive, so read it twice. - means the set was easy and leads to adding weight.
+ means it was hard and leads to taking weight off. They
describe how far the set sat from the target, not what happens to the bar. (This is exactly
why the app doesn't reproduce these symbols on screen, where + would read as
"add weight".)
Reading it back
Up and down are deliberately different
Two easy sessions is enough to add weight; it takes three hard ones to take any off. That asymmetry is the point. Being under the target is outside the range — an under-dosed lift, correct it quickly. A hard set is the top of the range, not an error, so only persistence means the load has genuinely drifted. One easy day is usually just good sleep. Being at the top is allowed. Living there is not.
Count consecutive sessions, not consecutive days
"Two in a row" means two consecutive times you did that exercise — which is why the
A and B grids are separate. A session where you skipped the exercise is a gap in the evidence,
not a reset: - (skipped) - is still two easy sessions in a row.
One lift misbehaving is a load problem. Several at once is not.
A single exercise sitting at +++ means that lift is too heavy — dial it back and
leave everything else alone. Several lifts backing off inside the same ten workouts is cumulative
fatigue, and the answer is a light week at about 80% across the board, with the prehab work
kept in and the option to cut the session short taken off the table.
The two footer rows are not optional
Cut? — mark it every time you stop after exercise 8. Stopping there is a legitimate, complete session, but it's meant to be an exception. More than two in ten workouts means something structural: the session is too long, recovery is short, or life has changed shape. Re-evaluate rather than keep cutting. Worth knowing what cutting actually deletes: the arm work, the calf work, the direct hamstring work and every prehab item — plus, on Workout A, the Romanian deadlift, which is the one below-the-line item that is genuinely a main lift.
Note — this is where forearm and elbow niggles get caught before they become a pattern. Two notes about the same elbow inside ten workouts is a signal to act on, not to train through. Write which side.
When the weights don't cooperate
"Add about 5%" assumes a bar you can load finely. Plenty of equipment isn't: a leg press stepping 20 kg has no setting that gives you twelve reps at the right effort once twelve at the lower weight has gone easy. On paper the answer is the one most people arrive at anyway — move the reps instead.
Add reps at the same weight until the next weight becomes takeable, then take it at fewer reps and climb back toward twelve:
100 × 12 → 100 × 14 → 100 × 16 → 120 × 10 → 120 × 12 → 120 × 14
Weight and reps are two axes of the same ladder. Where the equipment is fine-grained, none of this comes up and every session is twelve reps.
The two workouts
Four to six days a week, alternating. There's no calendar to fall behind: do whichever one you didn't do last time.
Workout A — Squat, horizontal push/pull, knee and ankle prehab
- 1 front squat
- 2 barbell squat
- 3 barbell row
- 4 choice of two
- 5 bss contralateral
- 6 alt gorilla row
- 7 choice of two
- 8 hanging windshield wipers
- 9 push ups
- 10 romanian deadlift
- 13 triceps pushdown
- 14 single leg press
Cut line after 8. Prehab is interleaved below it rather than tacked on the end, and none of it is ever taken hard.
Workout B — Hinge, vertical push/pull, shoulder and hip prehab
- 1 front squat
- 2 choice of two
- 3 barbell ohp
- 4 pull up
- 5 suitcase deadlift
- 6 alt db ohp
- 7 alt sa lat pulldown
- 8 ab wheel
- 9 db lateral raise
- 10 choice of two
- 11 leg curl unilateral
- 12 single leg calf raise
Cut line after 8. Prehab is interleaved below it rather than tacked on the end, and none of it is ever taken hard.
If you'd rather not do the counting
All of the above is arithmetic across a couple of dozen exercises and several sessions a week. It's not hard, it's just relentless, and it's the part that quietly stops happening. That's the only job the app has.