Coaching in a spreadsheet
We make CoachBlocks, which is programming software for coaches. It replaces one part of what your spreadsheet does and none of the rest, so you should read this knowing who wrote it.
Most coaches who read this page should not switch. A spreadsheet you built yourself and know your way around is a genuinely good tool, and swapping it for software you have to learn is usually a bad trade. This page is an honest account of where the spreadsheet stops paying, so you can work out whether you are near that point or nowhere near it.
There is one argument here and it is narrow. Working out next month's loads for a whole roster is the part of the job a spreadsheet makes you do again by hand every block. That is the part we do differently. One set a client actually did goes in, and four weeks of loads come back. The client opens a link with no account and sees only today, and the block after that is drafted from what they logged rather than from what you wrote. That is the only reason to consider moving.
What a spreadsheet is genuinely good at
It is free, at any number of clients, forever.
It bends to whatever you want. Any column, any formula, any structure. If you coach in a way nobody built software for, a spreadsheet is often the only thing that fits, and the same is true in Excel.
You own the file. It sits in your Drive, it opens without us, and if you stop paying somebody it does not go anywhere. That is worth more than it usually gets credit for.
It holds everything. Training, nutrition notes, check-ins, measurements, video links, invoices, the lot, in one file you can see all at once.
And you both already know how to use it. Your client does not have to learn anything, and neither do you.
A coach who has spent two years building a sheet that works has something better than a generic tool. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
The four places it breaks
Not ten. Four, and only one of them is the reason we built anything.
The arithmetic is manual, and you do it again every block. Every four weeks you open last month's file, find what each client actually managed, and work forwards from it. Twenty clients times four or five lifts each is a few hundred numbers, none of them hard, all of them yours to look up and type. The formulas help with the multiplication. They do not help with the looking up.
Rounding quietly lies to you. Take a 15 kg dumbbell curl and put 95, 100 and 105 percent through it. You get 14.25, 15 and 15.75. Round those to something you can actually pick up and you get 15, 15, and 15. Three identical weeks that look like a working block on the page. Nothing in the sheet tells you this happened, and it happens on every light lift, which means it happens most on accessories and on the clients who are newest.
The client is scrolling a grid on a phone in a gym. They are looking for row 34, week 3, between sets, on a screen the width of their hand, in a file where one wrong tap deletes a formula you wrote six months ago. Most of them cope. Some of them stop filling it in, and you do not find out until you sit down to write the next block.
What comes back is patchy, so next month starts from the wrong number. When the log has gaps, you programme from what you asked for last time rather than what they did. That is the drift. It is not dramatic, and it is why a block can look right on paper and feel wrong in the room.
The line, and which side you are on
The figure people in this industry repeat is somewhere between ten and fifteen one-to-one clients. Below it a spreadsheet is the fastest and cheapest way to deliver good programming. Above it the admin starts to cost more than the software would. We did not measure that and it is not our number, but it matches what coaches say and it is a reasonable place to draw the line.
Stay on Sheets if:
- You have fewer than about five clients, or you are not trying to grow.
- You enjoy building systems and yours works.
- Your programming is not mostly load progression. Conditioning, classes, skill work and rehab do not fit what we do.
- You need one file to hold training, nutrition, check-ins and invoicing.
- You want to own the file outright. See the next section, this one is fair.
- You programme groups or teams rather than individuals.
Consider moving if:
- You have roughly ten to thirty one-to-one clients.
- Most of what you write is barbell, dumbbell and machine work with loads that climb.
- Your Sunday goes on looking up last month's numbers and recalculating percentages.
- Your clients do not reliably fill the sheet in, so what you get back is thin.
What CoachBlocks does not do
It is the part worth reading twice.
No nutrition. No check-in forms. No messaging. No payments or invoicing. No video hosting. No group or team programming. No custom branding. All of that stays wherever you keep it now, which for most coaches is a spreadsheet and WhatsApp.
There is no export. Not a CSV, not a PDF, not a print view. If you put a year of training into CoachBlocks today, there is currently no button that gets it back out. Your spreadsheet has no such problem, and if data portability is what decides it for you, that is a good reason to stay where you are.
Your client only ever sees their newest block. The history is yours, not theirs. If you want them looking back over twelve weeks, a shared sheet does that and we do not.
Every load rounds to one increment, 2.5 kg or 5 lb, whatever the exercise. That is right for a barbell and coarse on a cable stack.
If you do move
Adding a client is a name, three dropdowns that arrive already filled in, and then the part that matters: the exercises they are doing now, with the weight, reps and sets from their last session. That last bit is the whole intake. It is the same information you already have in a column somewhere.
You do not need to bring the history. The next block is built from what they log from here, so the sheet can stay exactly where it is as an archive, and probably should.
The first client is free and stays free. Past that it is $39 a month for up to thirty clients. Not a trial, no card, no countdown.
While we are small we will do the first migration with you on a call, free. Just ask.
Try the arithmetic before you try the product
If the rounding problem above is the bit you recognised, there is a free calculator on this site that does that part and nothing else. Put in a set one of your clients actually did and it gives you four weeks of loads, rounded to plates you can genuinely load. No account, no email, nothing to install.
If it does not save you anything, you have lost two minutes and you have a spreadsheet that already works.