'Training done': what counts, and what quietly doesn't

Of the six daily targets, five are numbers. This one is a judgement call, which makes it the easiest to fudge and the most important to define.

Here's the standard the program actually holds you to, and the honest minimum for the days when the standard isn't available.

The standard

The tick means you completed the day's prescribed session: the warm-up, every working set at a weight that satisfies the rule of two, and the finisher or core block if the day has one.

It does not mean you went to the gym. It does not mean you did something. Attendance and effort are different variables, and only one of them is the training stimulus.

• Warm-up completed — it's four minutes and it's part of the session
• Every prescribed set done, with the last two reps genuinely difficult
• Rest periods roughly as written, because they're part of the dose
• Core or conditioning block finished, where the day includes one

What still counts

Substitutions count. If the rack is taken and you do the same movement pattern with dumbbells, that's the session. If your gym is closed and you run the bodyweight version, that's the session. The program cares about the pattern and the effort, not the equipment.

Reduced load counts, within reason. On a day after four hours of sleep, holding the reps at a lighter weight is a legitimate training decision, not a compromise — and it's a better one than grinding a heavy set with degrading form.

What doesn't

Half the sets isn't the session. Swapping the strength day for a walk isn't the session. And a session cut short because you ran out of time is an honest miss — take it as a miss, keep the other five targets, and move on.

The reason to be strict here is not moral. It's that a checkbox you're willing to tick loosely stops carrying information, and within a week the dashboard is telling you a story instead of a fact.

The bad-day protocol

There is a floor, and it's deliberately low: the warm-up plus the first exercise of the day, done properly. Ten minutes. Do that and you've very often talked yourself into the rest of it — and if you haven't, you've kept the context intact, which is what the repetitions are actually made of.

If the answer is a genuine no — illness, injury, a day that got away from you — take the miss cleanly. One missed session costs six percentage points of compliance. Trying to make it up with a double session tomorrow costs considerably more.

“Showing up isn't the target. Finishing the session is the target.”