Workout planner tool inspired by 3DMJ's book Muscle & Strength pyramid

S

savis

New member
I recently finished the 3DMJ's books - the training pyramid and the nutrition pyramid. They're so awesome! Probably the best books I've read so far on lifting and nutrition.

It felt a bit tricky to apply the program building principles in practice. For nutrition, they have FitGenie app (which is actually great), but not for the training planning.

Eric lists a bunch of principles how to build programs, like sets per muscle group ranges, strength / hypertrophy split, how to plan mesocycles (like - reducing volume / increasing intensity), etc, etc. Kinda a lot of variables to keep in my head.

Since I'm a software engineer, I decide to write a tool for that (when you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail).

So, meet the Workout Planner: https://www.liftosaur.com/planner

It allows to plan your workout programs, to ensure you have proper number of sets per muscle group, or per movement (push, pull, etc). It also tries to predict the total workout time based on the exercises in the workout and the number of sets x reps.

Type your exercises in the text field for each day (it'll show the autocompletion to speed it up), and put your sets x reps after the slash (/). One exercise per line. I.e. something like this:

Code: 
Bench Press / 5x5  
Bicep Curl / 3x8  
Standing Calf Raise / 3x8-12
// ... and so on ...

If you put a cursor to some exercise, it'll show additional info - info about that exercise muscles / muscle groups, also intensity and volume graphs week over week for multi-week programs. The graphs and the weekly stats may help to plan intermediate / advanced weightlifting programs, with mesocycles, volume accumulating blocks, deload periods, etc. In the Settings, you can specify the set ranges per muscle group, your desired hypertrophy/strength sets split and rest timer.

You can also share to the programs built in that planner, by clicking on a "link" icon it'd copy the URL. E.g. this is the novice program from the 3DMJ's book: https://www.liftosaur.com/n/8608cecb

And this is a multiweek program by Cody Lefever - GZCL: The Rippler: https://www.liftosaur.com/n/79520ff

The tool specifically doesn't try to specify solve progressive overload - it's IMHO orthogonal to picking exercises and spreading volume across days / weeks. Yes, you need it, but it's a next step.

So, what do you think? Useful tool? Or overcomplicated thing nobody needs? :)
 
@savis I created an Excel spreadsheet for the 3DMJ Muscle and Strength Pyramid book. It calculates Volume, Intensity, and Frequency per week.

Here's a link to an Excel spreadsheet I created that will calculate the Volume, Intensity, and Frequency of your workout plan, based on the Muscle and Strength Pyramid book. I am not affiliated with 3DMJ in any way, I just thought others who are on the program might find this as useful as I do.

M&S.xlsx

It's not all encompassing, as it isn't designed for tracking progress over time, diet, or anything else, but it takes the work out of calculating volume and intensity on a weekly basis, which I found extremely helpful.

Description:
  • Create up to 6 workouts for the week, with up to 8 exercises each.
  • Reps per body part per day are calculated, along with weekly totals.
  • Percent of 1-6RM of total volume and percent of 6-12RM of total volume are calculated. Which one is shown is based on whether you select the Strength or Hypertrophy radio button.
  • Totals within the desired range are placed on a spectrum from light green (low end) to darker green (high end). Totals above the desired range are light red and totals below the desired range are light blue. I tried to make them more subtle in the spirit of the book's loose rules.
  • The main exercises from the book are in the "Exercises" tab, but there is room for up to 100 exercises, with up to 6 muscle groups worked for each.
  • If you enter in an exercise that is not in the list, it will let you know, and you can then go ahead and add the custom exercise in the "Exercises" tab.
  • Desired daily rep range is adjustable.
  • Desired weekly intensity is adjustable.
  • The sample program is based off of the Intermediate Bodybuilding Sample Program from the book.
I believe it is bug free, but if you use it and find something strange please let me know!
 
@liz1965 Oh nice, kinda similar to what I made, that's good :) Also doing the set number per muscle group, split between strength/hypertrophy, frequency - cool! Thanks for sharing!
 
@liz1965 Should anyone want it, I have a new one that has been updated based on the second revision of the book, where volume requirements are based on total number of sets, but I’ll need to go dig it up.
 
@happynlife71 Quick question: Is it possible to change the muscle groups? For example if I change Upper Back to "Lats", it isn't recognised on the main screen.

Any ideas?
 
@javetuka I wanted to make the muscle groups customizable, but that was a little complicated so I never got around to it. But if you’d like to change them manually here is how you would do it:

The first thing to note is that there are a couple hidden sheets, where most of the magic happens. These are called "Volume_Calc", "Intensity_Calc_Strength" and "Intensity_Calc_Hypertrophy". In them you'll find all the calculations I did.

Here are the steps you'll need to take to add more muscle groups:
  1. In the three hidden spreadsheets, add additional columns for whatever muscle group you want. Then, copy over the calculation cells to the new column.
  2. On the Main spreadsheet "Weekly Volume, Intensity, and Frequency" table, add extra rows for the new muscle groups.
  3. For Volume and Intensity, you cannot directly copy the cells down. This is because on the hidden spreadsheets, the muscle groups advance by column, and not row. All you have to do is to change the column letter to the appropriate value. For Volume it's obvious, and for Intensity, you only have to change the letter that follows the exclamation point.
    4.Frequency is a direct copy.
 
@savis What do all the different parts of the bodypart breakdown mean?:

Code: 
Shoulders: 37↓ (9.5s, 27.5h), 4d

And why is it sometimes green/red?
 
@sspx_teen That means that you have 37 sets hitting shoulders weekly. If the exercise has that muscle group as target muscle - we count as 1 set. If the exercise has that muscle group as synergist - we count as 0.5 set (configurable in Settings).

Red color means you're way outside of the recommended set range per muscle group. Green - you're in the recommended set range per muscle group (ranges are also configurable in settings). ↓ means you're higher than recommended range for that muscle group, and should lower the number of sets for that muscle group.

(9.5s, 27.5h) - means there's 9.5 sets in "strength" rep range (1-7), and 27.5 sets in "hypertrophy" range (8+ reps).

4d is frequency - means you hit this muscle group 4 times a week.
 
@savis That makes sense. Is it possible to configure the synergist muscles at all? For example triceps makes sense as a synergist on OHP and I'd be happy to count that .5 set, but counting biceps on deadlift seems like a bit of a stretch to me so I'd not want to count those.
 
@sspx_teen For built-in exercises you cannot change target/synergist muscles. But you can create a custom exercise, and specify the target/synergist muscles. So, you can create "Deadlift 2" or something like that.

To do that, you can either click on one of the muscle groups in the day stats, or just type "Deadlift 2", it'll show an error there's no such exercise, and there'd be a link to create one.
 
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