PR Boards for the clients (Personal Bests all listed together)
I feel the current "Personal Bests (aka PR) to Beat" runner for exercises needs to be updated. It currently showing
- Max weight ever
- Max volume ever
- Est 1 rep max (love this, I think it's the ultimate PR)
- Best 1, 5, 7, 10 rep PR's
- Then history
All limited into a runner showing 1 thing at a time.
The upgrade that I feel will be better would be:
- Expand the runner into a PR Board
- With "best ever" for every rep number. (ex: 2x295, 3x285, 5x260, 8x230, 15x185, etc). The top ever for 1 set of each rep number
- When the same reps are hit with a higher weight: PR triggers, and replaces the last PR (Ex: hit 5x265)
- When the higher reps are hit with the same weight: PR triggers, and replaces both PR's (Ex: you hit 3x295. Now 3x285 got replaced, AND 2x295 is no longer a PR so it gets removed. Now you don't have a 2 rep max on the PR board. This saves space and prevents clutter, especially when people start doing bodyweight stuff for 20-40 reps)
- At the top would be the BIG BOYS (Definitely Highest Est 1RM ever, and you can also do volume and and max weight if you feel those are important too)
- History: I would consider either keeping this under the PR board like it is now. Or having it as a separate feed/page
Why do you feel these changes are necessary?
- I have been using a separate workout tracker for myself for the last 5 years that does this great. RepCount. This week I have transitioned to using my client profile in Trainerize to be able to be involved in Groups and Challenges with my clients. I ALWAYS check the PR Board before my sets and try to hit some PR somewhere on the board (a new 5rm, 8RM, "what was my 9rm last time?")
- What was the coolest thing in a high school football locker room? Getting on the PR board. But instead of competing with others, let's allow our clients to compete with themselves.
- I hit a PR by hitting the weight I did last week for 5, for 6 today. I did NOT get a PR/PB medal at the end of the workout. This is objectively a PR and the biggest focus for our clients that want to build muscle and strength. I do not think we should ONLY count 1,3,5,7,10 rep sets specifically as the only PR's we track. You can even simplify the medal system for Personal Bests to just be a generic PR medal without having a specific rep associated with the medal. This way you don't have to now create 1-20 specific medals, like we currently have with 1,3,5,7,10 reps.
- When I tell clients to "hit 2 PR's every workout," and they hit a PR, but it wasn't 10 reps.. then I think that would be deserving still of some positive reinforcement of what I feel is the most important thing for building muscle and strength. (I am TOTALLY FINE with my clients feeling flooded by PR medals, it is super important that they are progressing)
Ultimately, I love that we have a good history tracking system now. But, the PR/PB medal system can be updated to encourage more progression for our clients, objective visual data for what they need to hit to progress during a session, and this will help with the challenges and groups where hitting Personal Bests is even more incentivized.
(Context about me, been using Trainerize since 2018, coached >1250 clients on it since, and am a big fan. This is why I am so passionate about making it the best it can be. AND, I am now using it as my primary workout tracker. My history is a pro natural bodybuilder, team USA powerlifter, and I've trained for 16 years. I try to be in the trenches as well with my clients)
Thank you!
Would love to help out more on this if necessary!