Keep what you built.
Most training plans do not fail in a busy season. They go quietly to zero, because the full plan stopped fitting and nobody picked a smaller one.
This card picks the smaller ones. Two of them, so the day is never lost. It takes about five minutes, and you do not have to be motivated while you fill it in.
"Go to the gym three times a week" is an action. "Hold the muscle I built this year" is a goal. Of everything you built this year, name the one thing you would hate to rebuild in January.
One thing. A plan that protects everything protects nothing you can see on a report.
Hold on to that distinction. It is about to do the real work.
That distinction in step 1 was not pedantry. One goal has many actions that serve it, and this is the part most goal-setting gets wrong. It hands you a single action and calls it the goal. Then the plan has one way to succeed and a hundred ways to fail, and the first Tuesday you miss, you have not missed a session. You have failed the goal.
So write down everything that would move the thing you named. Every one of them is a lever you can pull. Big ones and small ones, and do not be embarrassed by the small ones, because one of them is about to become the most useful line on this card.
These are your words, not ours. Write what you would actually do, in the way you would actually say it.
Then score each one out of ten, twice. Effect: how much does this move the thing you are protecting? Ease: how easy is it to actually get done on a crowded day? Add them together and you get the Leverage Score.
| What I could do | Effect 1–10 |
Ease 1–10 |
Lev. |
|---|
Nothing else to do here. What you write above fills in step 3 by itself.
Not one. Three. That is the whole trick.
These three come straight out of your own table. If the arithmetic picked something you disagree with, change it with the dropdown underneath. You are the tiebreaker, not the maths.
Outstanding
Waiting on your table
The best thing on your page, whether or not you will manage it often. It stays on the calendar and you do it when the week allows.
Target
Waiting on your table
Highest Leverage Score. The best balance of works and gets done. This is your default for the next three months.
Win
Waiting on your table
Small enough that there is no honest version of "I couldn't." This is the one that means you never actually stop.
Here is what happens when you only have one.
You cannot make it to the gym. So the day is lost, and you will make it up tomorrow.
And you do not do the push-ups, because push-ups feel like a cop-out rather than a win. So you do nothing, which is clearly worse, and you know it is worse while you are doing it.
That is not a discipline problem. It is what all-or-nothing does to everybody, and a plan with one option walks you into it every time.
Three options means the question stops being did I do it and becomes which one today. The Win is not a consolation prize. You chose it in advance, while you were thinking clearly.
You always have a win.
A floor you never check is a good intention with a table attached.
Your training log is enough to start. A measurement is better, because it does not care how the month felt, and in January you will remember the month the way you want to remember it.
A floor protects something specific, so it helps to know the size of the specific thing. A DEXA scan tells you the lean soft tissue you are carrying and where. A VO2 test tells you the effort levels a shortened session has to reach to count. An RMR test tells you what your body uses at rest, which matters the moment your eating changes with the season.
None of them writes your card. Each one tells you what you are protecting, and gives January something real to compare against.
Book a baselineBoth scores are your own estimates, not measurements. Score honestly and the ranking still works. This is a planning tool, not medical advice.