Inside the OPEX Method Mentorship Week 6: Program Design, Planning, And CoachRx
This blog series will document the 10 week experience of Dr. David Skolnik as he goes through the OPEX Method Mentorship. Follow along as we add to this blog each week.
Week 6: Program Design, Planning, And CoachRx
Program design looks simple from the outside. Sets, reps, a few conditioning pieces, maybe a test or two. But if you want to be a professional coach who can guide clients for years, not weeks, you have to think much bigger than that. You have to think in systems.
Week 6 of my OPEX Method Mentorship was all about that bigger picture. Long term, medium term, short term. Macro cycles, mesocycles, micro cycles. And how to turn those ideas into a clear, usable plan inside CoachRx for real clients.
This post walks through what I learned, how I am using it in my own coaching, and why it has already changed the way I think about programming for both my clients and the coaches I teach.
What Week 6 Looked Like Inside The OPEX Method
My calendar right now has a nice rhythm:
Tuesday: Lecture with Carl, where we learn the concepts.
Thursday: Small group call with my mentor, Anaki, where we apply those concepts to real clients and real programs.
This week, the focus was long term program design and how to build structure into the process instead of writing workouts on an island.
Lecture day: Concepts and big picture
On Tuesday, Carl walked us through:
Macro cycles, mesocycles, and micro cycles.
How to think in 6 to 12 month arcs, not 6 to 12 workouts.
How assessment results guide priorities and training phases.
The goal was not to memorize labels. It was to train our brains to zoom out, pick a clear endpoint, then zoom back in and decide what should happen in the next block, week, and session to move toward that endpoint.
Small group day: Application with CoachRx
On Thursday, Anaki took those same concepts and helped us apply them inside CoachRx, the coaching software I use for all my in person and online clients.
We did three key things:
Looked at real client examples.
Built long and short term plans directly in CoachRx.
Practiced using the planning functions that tie the whole process together.
I have been using CoachRx for months and it has already made my life easier, but I had never really explored the built in planning features. That changed this week, and it will stay changed.
Thinking In Long, Medium, And Short Term Plans
Every client I work with signs a minimum 6 month commitment. That time frame alone pushes me to think in longer arcs.
From there, I like to set:
3 month and 6 month goals, both objective and subjective.
A rough 6 to 12 month plan, based on assessment, training age, and lifestyle.
Clear blocks of training that link together instead of fighting each other.
The OPEX framework helped me refine how I structure those pieces.
Macro, meso, and micro in real coaching language
Instead of getting lost in terminology, here is how I now think about it:
Macro cycle: The 6 to 12 month story. What mountain are we trying to climb together?
Mesocycle: A 8 to 12 week phase with a strong theme. For example, accumulation or intensification.
Micro cycle: The weekly rhythm. Which days, which patterns, which energy systems, and how they repeat and progress.
Program design becomes a process of connection. Each workout is part of a week, each week is part of a block, each block is part of a year.
CoachRx gave me a practical place to put that entire structure so it is visible every time I sit down to program.
Using CoachRx For Long And Short Term Planning
CoachRx has long and short term planning functions built into the calendar. I had seen them before but never committed to using them.
Once I started building real plans with them, a few things became obvious:
My thinking was already long term, but my screen did not match my brain.
I was relying too much on memory and scattered notes.
I could be more accurate and faster if my plans lived in one place.
Now, when I open a client’s calendar, I see at the top what I decided the focus of that day and week would be. I no longer have to dig through old notes or second guess my original plan.
From assessment to priorities
Inside CoachRx, you can build a structured objective assessment, plug in a client’s results, and then mark priorities.
The clever part is this: when you go to program for that client, CoachRx suggests priorities based on the assessment results you entered.
This matters for a simple reason. If you coach more than a handful of people, you will forget details. It does not matter how sharp you are. If an assessment was 2 weeks ago or 12 months ago, some nuance will slip through the cracks.
On our call, even with the priorities visible on the screen, I still missed one for a sample client. That was a good reminder that tools like this are not a luxury, they are support for real human limits.
Example: Building an accumulation phase for a beginner
To make it concrete, here is a sample client I built in CoachRx during the session.
Training age: Beginner to intermediate.
Current phase: Accumulation.
Primary focus: Hypertrophy, with moderate intensity and moderate to high volume.
Aerobic level (OPEX language): MAP 8 for this block.
Inside the long term planning view, I set:
The phase name: Accumulation.
The main objective: Build muscle, joint tolerance, and basic strength.
Aerobic focus: MAP 8.
Weekly rhythm: Training on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.
Then I defined simple objective goals for the end of the block:
ObjectiveMovement / TaskTargetLoaded carryCarry at least 50% of body weight30 seconds unbrokenSquat strengthGoblet squat at least one third of body weight10 repsTrunk enduranceSide plank30 seconds without form breakdown
Now when I go to Monday of week one in the calendar, the top of the screen tells me:
The patterns I decided to train that day.
The target intensity range.
The aerobic work that should be present and at what level.
From there I can fill in the exact movements, sets, and reps while staying inside the plan I already built.
I no longer have to keep two or three windows open just to remember what the 12 week arc is supposed to look like.
Why Planning Systems Matter For Coaches
Effective programming is not only about picking hypertrophy or strength and then assigning sets and reps. It is about holding two things at once:
What the client wants subjectively.
What the assessment says they need objectively.
You also have to balance:
Their schedule and capacity.
Their history and training age.
Their rate of progress and feedback from each block.
A structured planning system helps you do all of that with less mental friction.
Efficiency, quality, and confidence
A few benefits that stood out to me during this week:
You become more efficient. When the work is organized in one place, you spend less time hunting for notes and more time thinking deeply about the client.
You deliver better results. Clear plans support better progress checks and cleaner adjustments.
You can take on more clients without dropping the ball. When you are not relying on memory, you are free to scale.
You speak with more confidence. It is easier to explain your choices when the plan is visible and logical.
This is especially important for newer coaches. Early in your career, you are naturally inefficient. You are learning, second guessing, and trying not to miss anything. A tool like CoachRx can remove some of the friction so you can put more energy into learning and thinking instead of searching for scattered notes.
If you want to explore the platform I am using, you can grab a free trial of CoachRx directly through their professional coaching software trial.
Teaching Coaches While Becoming A Better Coach
Outside of the OPEX Mentorship, I teach an in person course for coaches here in Arizona. These are coaches who want to level up and become elite, long term professionals.
The timing of this week could not have been better. In my own course, I am in a two week program design block. At the same time, I am learning new ways to think about programming inside the OPEX Method.
That overlap gives me:
A fresh lens to look at my own systems.
New insights I can bring back to my students.
A chance to show them how program design works inside a real platform like CoachRx.
For coaches in my course, I can now not only teach concepts like macro cycles and progression strategies, but also pull up my own client examples and show how that looks on screen.
If you want more education resources beyond the mentorship itself, OPEX shares a lot of free material, including guides and tools, through their fitness coaching downloads and the CoachRx free resources library. Their broader coaching education lives on the main OPEX Coaching Education site, and they also publish quick daily lessons through LearnRx.
The Mountain Range Analogy For Long Term Coaching
Anaki used a simple visual that has stuck with me.
Think of a client’s fitness journey as a mountain range. Lots of peaks and valleys, many possible routes, plenty of points where the path can change.
Our job as coaches is to:
Pick a single peak for the next 12 months.
Map the possible routes, paths, and base camps.
Decide what equipment we need at each stage.
Along the way, a client might get halfway up and say, “You know what, I actually want to go climb that other peak instead.”
When that happens, a strong planning system lets you:
Look back at the last 6 months of data.
See what base camps you already reached.
Adjust the plan to head toward the new peak, without throwing away the work you have done.
You can only do that cleanly if you have been tracking the route from day one and thinking long term from the start.
Conclusion
Week 6 of the OPEX Method Mentorship was a clear reminder that good programming is not about random creativity. It is about clarity. Clarity of goals, clarity of phases, and clarity of what each session is supposed to do inside the bigger picture.
For me, combining the OPEX framework with the planning functions inside CoachRx has already changed how I design programs and how I teach other coaches to do the same. It helps me think more strategically, work more efficiently, and deliver a coaching service that matches the expectations I set.
My mission is to leave a positive mark on how the public views health by educating the next generation of coaches. Putting better systems behind our coaching is one practical step toward that goal. If you are a coach, ask yourself: what is the mountain range you and your clients are looking at, and do you have a clear map for the next peak?
Next Steps
Become A Professional Coach.
Wherever you are on your coaching journey, learn a repeatable and proven system to simplify program design and build a sustainable career. See how the OPEX Method Mentorship can help you find your version of success as a professional coach.
Elevate Your Coaching Business
CoachRx empowers fitness coaches to excel in program design, nurture client relationships, and scale their businesses with unparalleled efficiency and insight. Discover why CoachRx is the preferred choice for fitness coaches seeking to differentiate and deliver exceptional services.
Continue To Learn & Grow
Whether you want to write better training programs, increase your knowledge of nutrition & lifestyle protocols, or work on your coaching business, LearnRx has got you covered with courses, playlists, tools, and resources on demand. New content added monthly.
