A concept for taking your coaching off Google Sheets — keep the programming brain, kill the weekend rebuild, and finally see what your clients actually lifted.
Two problems, both baked into spreadsheets. One eats your time; the other means you're coaching half-blind.
A new block means duplicating and re-typing a workbook per client. Change one exercise across everyone and you're editing 15 files by hand. It's a whole weekend, every cycle.
Tiny cells on a phone between sets? Nobody does it. If they don't log during the session, they log nothing — so you never really see reps, loads, or whether the plan is landing.
Keep the parts of your spreadsheet you love — the %-of-max math, the block structure, the total control. Put them in a tool that writes once and updates everyone, and that closes the loop the sheet never could: the client's real training flows back to you automatically.
Build a block, assign it to whoever you want. Tweak the master and it updates every client — with per-client overrides that stick.
If they train on a Garmin, their sets are captured automatically. If not, a one-tap logger that never loses a set. Reports happen without "doing reports."
Planned vs actual, adherence, PRs, and who needs attention — filled in for you. No chasing, no manual tallying.
The thing a spreadsheet can't do: a feedback loop between what you prescribe and what actually happened.
Build/adjust a block once; it cascades to every assigned client.
They open "Today," do the session. Watch captures it, or one tap logs it.
Actual reps & loads land against the plan — adherence, PRs, flags update.
Scan the roster, watch a form video, nudge next week. Edit propagates.
Open the app and see every client at a glance — adherence, last session, and the things worth your attention, surfaced for you.
| Client | Adherence (4wk) | Last session | Needs you |
|---|---|---|---|
Marina K. Hypertrophy · wk 3/6 |
94% | Squat day · 2h ago | new PR · squat 120×5 |
Dmitri R. Strength · wk 5/8 |
71% | Bench day · yesterday | form video to review |
Sofia L. Peaking · wk 7/8 |
100% | Deadlift day · 1h ago | deload due next wk |
Andrés M. Off-season · wk 2/6 |
38% | 5 days ago | 2 sessions missed |
Elena V. Hypertrophy · wk 1/6 |
88% | Squat day · today | on track |
Pablo G. Strength · wk 4/8 |
96% | Bench day · today | est 1RM +6 kg |
Illustrative data. Flags (PR, missed, form-video, deload-due) are computed from what flows back automatically — you don't tag them.
Percentages off each client's own training max, supersets, tempo, RPE — the spreadsheet math, in a builder. Assign to a group; edit the master; every client updates. Per-client swaps (bad shoulder, missing rack) stay put.
This is the weekend-rebuild killer — the one thing spreadsheets and most coaching apps still make you do by hand.
The client opens the app to exactly one thing: today's session. As they lift, a Garmin fills the numbers in automatically; anything it misses is a single tap. No spreadsheets, no "doing reports."
The lift app you already use — now with the coach's plan on top.
Today no coaching app captures real strength sets from a watch — a Garmin lifting session lands in the others as a meaningless "cardio" blob. Making the log effortless is the difference between data you can coach on and the silence you get from spreadsheets.
The client gets the stats page you liked — est. 1RM, top set, volume, PRs. You get the same, per client, plus their form-check videos to scrub and comment on.
Felt like my elbows flared on the last rep?
Yep — tuck them ~15°. Watch 0:04. Keeping this weight next week.
Illustrative. The video review closes the "am I doing it right?" gap that text-in-a-sheet never could.
Every coaching tool imports steps, sleep and heart-rate — but a strength session off a Garmin shows up as a blank "cardio" entry with no sets. This is the one thing lift already does, and the thing that turns "did you train?" into "here's exactly what you lifted, and here's how it's trending."
The strength-capture engine is the live lift app. The rest is the coach side and the two-way link. Straight read on where the data comes from:
| Source | Real sets (reps × weight)? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Garmin | Yes — today | Already live in lift; a durable official path exists to grow into. |
| One-tap manual | Yes — everyone | The universal floor. Any client, any device, offline-safe. |
| Hevy app | Yes | Clean official sync for clients who already log there. |
| Apple Watch / Health | Summary only | No per-set data available to a server — so those clients use manual or Hevy. |
| Whoop / Oura / Strava | No sets | Recovery & cardio context only, later — not the strength log. |
Verdict: the client experience is proven; the build is the coach dashboard, the program builder + cascade, and the plan↔actual link. A focused first version, not a moonshot.
The point: your weekend back, clients who actually log because it takes one tap, and — for the first time — seeing the real training you're programming for.