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Excel Training Designs

March 11, 2026 · 3 min read

Free Google Sheets Workout Template (Our Excel Templates Work in Sheets)

Prefer Google Sheets over Excel? Good news — every free Excel Training Designs template opens and runs in Google Sheets. Here's the 60-second upload, and what to check after.

Short version: yes, you can run our templates in Google Sheets. They're built in Excel, but the moment you upload an .xlsx to Google Drive and open it with Sheets, everything that makes the template work — the max inputs, the percentage math, the auto-calculating sets — comes right along.

So if you're a personal trainer or coach who lives in Google Sheets instead of Excel, you don't need a separate file. You need a free download and about 60 seconds.

Why there's no separate "Sheets version"

We build in Excel because that's the most universal spreadsheet format — and Google Sheets reads it natively. Maintaining two parallel files would mean two places for a formula to break. Instead, we keep one clean Excel template and let Sheets do what it already does well: open it, convert it, and run it.

The result is the same free workout template, working in whichever app you prefer.

Upload an Excel template to Google Sheets (60 seconds)

  1. Download the free template. Grab any of the free templates — the personal training template is the usual starting point for trainers.
  2. Drop it into Google Drive. Go to drive.google.com, then either drag the .xlsx file into the window or click New → File upload.
  3. Open it with Google Sheets. Right-click the uploaded file and choose Open with → Google Sheets.
  4. Save it as a native Sheet. With it open, click File → Save as Google Sheets. That converts the workbook to a true Google Sheet you can edit, share, and use on your phone.

That's it. Enter an athlete's max, and the working sets calculate exactly the way they do in Excel.

Want every upload to convert automatically? In Google Drive, go to Settings → General and turn on "Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format." After that, uploading an .xlsx makes a Sheet every time.

What carries over (basically everything you care about)

The whole point of these templates is the math — type in a max, get a full program back. That logic is built on standard spreadsheet formulas and percentages, and those carry over to Google Sheets cleanly. So do your headers, tabs, and the structure of each week.

A couple of small things to glance at after converting:

  • Formatting can shift slightly — a cell color or border here and there. Cosmetic, never the calculations.
  • Drop-downs and conditional formatting usually carry over; if one doesn't, it's a 10-second fix in Sheets and the numbers are unaffected.
  • Sharing is now easier than Excel — send a link, set view or edit access, and your athletes always see the current version.

Use it on your phone, in the gym

Once it's a Google Sheet, the free Sheets app on iPhone or Android opens the same file — so you can pull up an athlete's program on the floor, log a set, and have it sync everywhere. That's the real upside of running the template in Sheets: it goes wherever you coach.

Get the template

Download it free, upload it to Drive, open it in Sheets — done. The personal training template is the most popular with trainers, or browse all the free templates and convert whichever ones you need.

Free templates

Put it to work with a free template.

Coach-built Excel templates that track athlete maxes and auto-calculate every working set. Free to download.