What a template is here
A template is a programme — weeks, sessions, exercises, sets, prescriptions — saved without a client attached. Assigning it to someone makes a copy that belongs to them. From that moment their version is theirs: adjusting a load for one client never reaches back into the template or into anyone else's copy.
That copy-on-assign rule is the whole design. A shared living document that changes under forty people at once is how a coach ends up prescribing last month's block to somebody who moved on from it.
What belongs in a template
The structure, not the numbers. Sets, reps, tempo, rest and exercise selection travel well. Absolute loads do not — they belong to a person. Prescribe against a percentage of a tested max, or a rate of perceived exertion, and the template stays true for a beginner and a national-level lifter at once.
Progression rules. "Add 2.5 kg when all sets are completed at the target RPE" is a template that keeps working in week six. A fixed ladder of weights is one you rewrite every time you use it.
Notes to the client, in their language. A cue that stops a knee caving in is worth more than a fourth accessory exercise, and it costs nothing to carry.
Substitutions. Name the alternative for the machine that half of the gyms your clients use will not have. It is the single most common reason a session gets skipped.
Adapting per client without breaking the library
Assign, then adjust. The common adjustments — a swapped exercise, a shortened session, a deload week, a different day of the week — are all edits to the client's own copy and none of them fork the library.
When you find yourself making the same adjustment for the fifth client, that is the signal to make it a second template rather than a fifth manual edit. Two clean templates beat one template with a page of exceptions.
Keeping a library that stays useful
Name for the job, not the aesthetic. "Hypertrophy, upper/lower, 4 days, intermediate" is findable in a year. "Block A v3 final" is not.
Prune on a schedule. A library nobody trusts is one where six variants of the same block sit next to each other and nobody remembers which is current. Delete the losers.
Write down who it is for. One line at the top of the template about the athlete it suits — training age, days available, equipment — saves the future version of you from opening four of them to find the right one.
Where to start
Start from a programme you have already written for a real client and worked. Strip the loads out, replace them with percentages or RPE, and save it. A template derived from something that worked beats one designed in the abstract, every time.
Team plans share one library across every coach in the organisation, so the person who joins in March inherits the thinking rather than starting a parallel folder.
Questions about a specific setup: contact@agonos.app.