How to Write a Strength & Conditioning Program (Coach's Guide)

Writing a strength and conditioning program isn't about knowing a thousand exercises. It's about a handful of decisions, made in the right order, that turn a goal into a week-by-week plan. Get the order right and the program almost writes itself. Get it wrong and you end up with a random pile of workouts that look busy but don't build toward anything.

This is the framework we use. Follow it top to bottom and you'll have a complete program — and at the end, free templates that handle the math for you.

What does a strength and conditioning program include?

Before the first session, a complete program answers five questions:

• Who is it for, and what's the goal? (Sport, position, training age.)
• When does it need to peak? (The season opener, the meet, the test.)
• What are the main lifts and qualities you'll train?
• How heavy and how much — the loads and volume per phase?
• How will you know it's working — the tests you'll re-check?

If your plan can't answer all five, that's the gap to close before you program a single set.

Step 1 — Test first, so you're programming off facts

You can't write loads for an athlete you haven't measured. Start with a short testing day on the lifts you'll actually program — a squat, a press, a hinge, a power marker. Those numbers become the anchor for everything that follows. (More on turning test data into loads in our guide on calculating training volume in Excel.)

Step 2 — Set the structure before the sessions

How to structure a strength training program is mostly about phases. Lay the season out in blocks, each with one job:

• Off-season: build a base — volume and work capacity
• Pre-season: convert that base into strength and power
• In-season: maintain — keep athletes strong and fresh
• Peak/taper: sharpen for the date that matters

This is the skeleton. Every workout you write hangs off whichever phase it's in.

Step 3 — Anchor every set to a percentage

Here's how you design the actual sessions without guessing. Tie each working set to a percentage of the max you tested:

• 80–92% for low-rep strength work
• 65–78% for volume and hypertrophy
• 30–60% for speed and power, moved fast

Now "315 for a triple" becomes "85% for a triple" — and the moment an athlete re-tests, the weight updates itself.

Step 4 — Build progression into the plan

A program is a plan for the future, so next week should already be decided. Advance the work deliberately — add a set, bump the percentage, or drop the reps from week to week — so the athlete is always being asked for a little more. Then schedule a deload before fatigue piles up.

The difference between a program and a workout list is direction. A program knows where week eight is going before week one starts.

Step 5 — Re-test and adjust

Every 4–6 weeks, re-check the lifts you anchored to. Athletes change; their percentages should too. Without a re-test, you're prescribing 85% of a number that's no longer true — and the program slowly drifts off target.

Don't write the math by hand

You can run this entire framework in a spreadsheet so the loads calculate themselves. Our free templates are built around exactly these steps:

• Evaluations & Testing template — turn max testing into programming
• Strength & Conditioning template — tier-based team programming
• Personal Training template — individual client programs
• Seasonal Planner — map the phases across the year

They're all free to download. Write the program once using the framework above, let the template handle the arithmetic, and re-test on schedule. That's a complete strength and conditioning program — built on purpose, not by accident.