The case against random workouts (and what to do instead)
Most apps serve up a fresh workout daily. Variety feels productive — but if you never progress the same lift, you never get stronger. Here's the protocol our coaches actually use.
The first lift I ever loaded was a 20kg barbell in a Westlands gym in 2009. The coach — a sprinter named Otieno — wrote three exercises on a chalkboard and told me to do them every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For four months. I asked when we'd swap them out. He laughed.
I added 35kg to my squat in those four months. It is, statistically, the most progress I've made in any single training block, before or since. The reason isn't a secret — and it isn't novel. But it goes against almost every default a fitness app ships with today.
The variety trap
"Today's session" — a daily auto-generated workout — feels great as a product feature. Engagement metrics love it. But for the user trying to actually get stronger, it's a quiet disaster. You can't progress a lift you've only done twice.
"Strength is the same conversation, repeated until it changes. Most apps interrupt that conversation every 24 hours."— Dr. Elizabeth Maina, KU Sports Sci.
The protocol our coaches use
Pick three to five compound lifts. Train them on a repeating weekly schedule. Progress them — by load, reps, or sets — for as long as progress is available. Misuli's auto-progression layer is just a thin wrapper around this idea, with the velocity tracking doing the math you used to do in a notebook.
The Westlands Five
Squat · Bench · Row · OHP · Deadlift. Three sessions per week, two of each lift, +2.5kg / week when you hit the rep target. We've built it as a free template in the app.
The good news, if you're staring at a chaotic training history: you don't need a new program. You need the same one, twice in a row.
Writes about programming, recovery, and the boring math behind getting strong.