Do your workouts

A strength and conditioning programme is the work that makes a player robust enough to train and play at this level week after week. When your S&C coach publishes one to your squad, a Workouts tab appears at the front of Health with every session, a demo for each exercise, and somewhere to record what you actually lifted. The coach reads what you log to progress the next block, so the more honest the diary, the better the programme fits you.

You'll know it's there because a notification arrives with the programme's name, for example Pre-season strength is ready, 12 sessions over 4 weeks, with demos and somewhere to record what you lift.

• Workouts is on the player's own login. Parents viewing their child won't see the tab, so Milan logs his own sessions on his phone.
• The tab appears once a programme is published to your squad, from a week before the block starts, and stays for two weeks after it ends so you can catch up. It works in pre-season too, because that is often when the block runs.
• The programme is guidance about what to get through each week, not a fixed timetable. Train on the day that suits you and log it on the day you did it.
• Your coach can also set a programme just for you, like a goalkeeping block. It's marked Set for you and shows first. If two are running at once, the tab says "You have 2 programmes this week. Your coach expects both."

Tap Start a session at the bottom of the tab, or pick a session from the week. If you're halfway through one, the button reads Continue and the session's name.

A session is one page, worked top to bottom: Before you start (your coach's warm-up and notes; Warm up on a run), The workout (or The run), then How did it go?

For each exercise you'll see the target sets and reps, the rest, and the tempo and RIR (reps in reserve) where the coach set them. Tap the picture to play the demo. If the coach offered alternatives, Swap lets you choose one that suits the equipment you have, until you've logged your first set of it.

Logging a set is built to be one tap. The reps box shows what the coach prescribed and the weight box shows what you lifted last time, so if you did exactly that, just tick the set. Only type when a set was different. Everything saves as you go, so you can close the app mid-session and pick up where you left off.

When you're done, tap Finish session at the bottom of the screen. For a gym session it also shows how many exercises you've completed, for example 6 of 9 done. Under How did it go?:

• How hard was that session? A 1 to 10 rating, from 1 · Very easy to 10 · Maximal. It's optional, but as the app says, it is what your coach reads first.
• How long did it take? In minutes. With the rating, this is how your coach sees the real load of the session.
• Note to your coach for anything the numbers don't show.
• Something feels off (1) for anything tight, sore or not right. See the next section.

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After you finish you're taken back to Workouts. If you need to change something, open the session again: the button now reads Update this session, and the app reminds you Everything above was saved as you went. This just tells your coach you are done.

A gym session counts as Done when every exercise in the Strength block has at least its minimum sets logged. A "2–3 sets" exercise is finished at two. Warm-up and accessory work are there to be done, but they never stop a session counting.

If you finish with some of the strength work short, your coach sees the session as Partial. That's honest, and it's far more useful to the coach than not logging it at all. A run counts as done when you finish it. What the S&C coach acts on is the pattern over weeks, not one busy day.

Tick Something feels off and say what, in a line: Left hamstring tightened up on the second set. Your S&C coach and the club's physio get a notification straight away. What you wrote stays with them and the club's medical and welfare staff. The technical director can see that a niggle was reported, but not what you said. The coach who picks the team sees Stopped — niggle if you ended the session early, but never what you wrote.

If you stopped the session because of it, tick that too. It's the right call, and your coach's board shows the session as Stopped — niggle rather than a missed session. That's the only part the team coach sees, and it tells them you did the right thing rather than skipped the work.

A niggle mentioned on the day is a far smaller problem than one mentioned in three weeks. The players who say something early are the ones who miss the fewest weekends.

Trained yesterday and forgot to log it? Tap Did one earlier? Log it to a past day, choose the session, then pick the day under When did you do it? You can't log a day in the future, or before the block started.

When a block passes its target date, it shrinks to one small row at the bottom of the tab, marked Finished with the date, showing how many sessions you did. It stays there for two weeks so you can still log one you did before the end, then disappears by itself.

While a block is running you get at most one workouts notification a morning, at a time your club sets. It folds everything due that day into one message: your next session (Gym — full body is next), a weekly weigh-in, if your programme uses one, for players 18 and over in a senior squad (Monday weigh-in), or a reminder as the block closes (Last day of Pre-season strength is tomorrow). Nobody under 18 is asked for their bodyweight. You can turn them off with Workout Reminders in your notification settings, and the tab still shows what's next whenever you open it.

You won't see the Workouts tab when viewing your child, and that's by design: it's the player's diary and their conversation with the S&C coach. What helps most from the outside is making the gym time exist in the week, and treating "something feels off" as a normal thing to say in your house.

• This week's sessions are logged, including the partial ones.
• Weights are going in, so the coach can progress them next block.
• Each finished session has a rating and a time.
• Something feels off has been used when it was true, and the physio followed up.