Perch PLAN

Overview

Write and deliver individualize programming for teams and athletes.

Perch PLAN is a full suite of programming tools integrated into Perch TRAIN and Perch EVALUATE, so you can incorporate VBT goals and readiness assessments directly into your training sessions.

Perch PLAN lets you:

• Build individual training session and programs
• Assign workouts directly to athletes and teams
• Publish workouts to distribute to mobile and weight room devices
• Periodize efficiently via Load Progression editor
• Create and use Tasks to communicate with athletes without muddying up your database
• Build a custom exercise library, including non-tracked movements and renamed exercises
• Create templates to easily reuse frequent patterns
• Gain insight on athlete compliance via post-workout compliance reporting

Explore our PLAN FAQ's and How To articles to get tips on how to get the most out of PLAN.

Getting Started

Build a Program 

Organize your daily training sessions into days and weeks to deliver a full phase or block of training directly to the Perch Training app for athletes to access. 

Not just tracked movements! You can program your full training session, including adding your own custom non-tracked exercises without your athletes switching apps.

Start by navigating to the Plan Library and selecting the blue "Create New" button and choosing "Program." 

Choose a name (i.e. "Summer Phase 2" or "Football Preseason 1") and description (i.e. "4 weeks" or "Strength phase", "Prepping for power"). The name and description will be visible on the Training app home tab to help your athlete select the current training program. 

Fun Fact: You can change the names of your weeks and days to create thematic playlists for your athletes to select. 

Start adding activities for each day using this quick editor view, or search your library for a template for even more efficient program building! 

Tip: Start by creating the first full week and then use the duplicate function to quickly create multiple weeks worth of programming.

Note: You can use exact numbers for Rep and Load prescription, or you can use ranges! This includes ranges, less than, or greater than.

Once you have a few weeks of training sessions programmed, you can change the program editor view to Load Progression to periodize your program.

Once you have built a programme, you can create multiple tracks, which allows you to tailor programs by position, group or individual athletes. You can create a multi-track programme via the program settings cog in the top right.

Learn more about how to use the Tracks feature HERE

See the Athlete View for more details on how Assigned programs will display on the Training app.

Assign a Program 

Within the quick editor, you can assign teams, positions or individual athletes to your program. 

Assigning a team or athlete will display the program and associated workouts in the "Assigned" view on the Training app.

There are no limits to the number of teams, positions or individuals you can assign.

Note: Assignment is not private to the athlete. All athlete's in your organization can find a published programs by navigating to the "All Available" view in the Training app.

Publish a Program 

Publish your program directly in the Program Editor, or from your Program Library.

Published programs are available to all athletes within the organization and can be found on the tablet Training app by navigating to the "All Available" chip.

Plans can be fully published, partially published, or unpublished, based on what you'd prefer to display on the tablet. Publishing a single workout or "Day" within a program will mean an athlete will only be able to view and select that workout on the tablet. This will help you to keep things as simple as possible, and not give athletes the opportunity to select the incorrect workout. 

See Athlete View for more details on how the program will display on the Training app.

Publishing from the Program Library 

Select the "published" icon to open the Publish modal and select which workouts or weeks should be published: 

Publishing from Program Editor

There are several options for publishing/un publishing parts of a program:

• Select the "published" icon in the right corner to open the Publish modal
• Toggle publication On/Off from the Program Editor navigator

• Select a menu within a "week" to bulk publish all workouts in that "week"

Create Tasks

Tasks are items that you can insert into your plans to identify things that athletes should be doing at various points in the lift, but that you might not want tracked as sets to avoid sending them into your database. This will allow things to stay nice and clean when you go in to analyze, while also instructing the athletes and allowing the lift to flow as smoothly as possible. 

To create a task, select the blue "Create New" button and select "Task" from the list. This object will display in yellow, as opposed to the deep blue for exercises or light blue for assessments. 

From here, you can name and then describe your task. One main function of this may be to enter your warm up sequence - tasks have multi-line functionality in the "Description" box, so if you want to separate things out and still have the athletes see them all, you'll have the ability to with tasks!

Once entered, publish and save your plan or workout and head to the tablet where you'll be able to find the task available for you. You'll complete a task the same way you would an untracked exercise, and it will check the box for you.

Create Custom Exercises

Add both tracked and non-tracked exercises to your Exercise Library to program your full workout within the Perch app.  

There are 2 ways to add exercises:

1. During program creation in the Program Editor: 

   

2. Before or after program creation in the Exercise Library:

   

When creating custom non-tracked exercises in the library, specify metadata for each exercise, including Movement Pattern, Equipment, Sidedness, Load Configuration, Body Segment and Applied Force. 

Reach out to customer support (support@perch.fit) for assistance adding custom tracked exercises.

Rename Exercises

Exercises come with default names, but as an Admin, you have the ability to change the names of the exercises to match what the naming structure is within your program. This is especially useful for things like consistency of your naming structure, or language changes. This is applicable for custom exercises created by you as well as global exercises created by Perch!

To rename an exercise:

1. Navigate to the Plan page
2. Switch to the Exercise tab
3. Find the exercise you'd like to rename
4. Click the 3 dots next to the name and click Edit
5. Enter the new name into the text box at the top
6. Save

This will be what you see when adding the exercise into Programs, Workouts and Templates, as well as when you're on the tablet!

Create Templates

Templates allow you to re-use exercise progressions to help with faster programming i.e. frequently repeated warm-ups or strength progressions. 

Drag-and-drop these templates in the program editor to quickly create weeks of programming in minutes.

Stand Alone Workouts

For publishing single, one-off workouts that are not linked to any programs, select "Workout" and use the expanded editor view to create a Stand Alone Workout. 

Note: Templates are not currently compatible with Stand Alone Workouts and must be used within the Program editor.

Athlete View

There are 3 categories an athlete can explore when selecting a program:

• Last Program: If an athlete has previously selected a program, the next workout will be highlighted in blue based on what was last completed.
• Assigned: Displays any workouts that are specifically assigned to the athlete's profile that is selected.
• All Available: Includes any Program or Stand Alone Workout that is published.

Please note the only published days or weeks will display in this view!

Athlete Results

View details of completed training sessions within Plan Results Compliance report. Learn more about Perch insights and reporting here!

• Sets, reps, tonnage and goal accuracy.
• % complete (default view), total prescribed, total completed 

Tip: Select "Manage Columns" to view all the metrics available. Sets, reps and tonnage are color coded green for above prescription and yellow for below prescription.