01How to read this
This is a draft for your trainer to approve, amend and film from — not credentialed programming. It is written deliberately conservative so that the amendments are likely to be additions rather than removals.
Three design choices worth knowing, because they are load-bearing:
- Four movements per session, not eight. Your paywall says four, and four is right — a deconditioned 57-year-old learning ten new movements in one session retains none of them. Each movement recurs two or three times across the week, which is what actually builds the pattern.
- Nothing on the floor in week 1. Getting down and back up is the outcome being trained, not the entry requirement. It appears from week 3, with support, and it is one of the week-4 retests.
- Nothing on one leg in week 1. Even for the balance archetype. Especially for the balance archetype — she told you she is unsteady, which is a reason to prepare longer, not to start sooner.
Names are written as she would hear them, per the voice rules — turn and look, not seated thoracic rotation. The clinical name is kept alongside for the trainer.
02Week 1 — the same for everyone
Any three days, consecutive or not. Rest days only matter once there is load, and there is none until week 3 — so do not impose a gap she has to schedule around. Every session opens with two minutes sitting and breathing and closes with two minutes standing tall; the bookends are the same all week, so by the third session she starts and finishes on autopilot.
Alongside the three sessions there is a daily three minutes that is deliberately not a session — see below. Three is the right number of workouts for week 1; it is the wrong number of exposures for mobility.
Why movements repeat
Six of the twelve slots are repeats. That is deliberate: a movement seen once is a demonstration, and a movement done three times in a week is a skill. It also halves what you film — and it is why turn and look on Friday needs no new clip.
The morning routine — daily, and not a session
Three sessions is the right number of workouts for week 1 and the wrong number of exposures for mobility. Range adapts to frequency more than to session length; strength is the opposite, which is why 3× is correct from week 3 onward and thin before it.
The fix is not a fourth session. Her stated problem is starting and quitting, so three sessions is already three chances to fail. Instead: a daily sequence on the edge of the bed, before she stands up, that is never called a workout.
The morning rule: no end-range spinal flexion in the first hour
Intervertebral discs are maximally hydrated on waking, which makes deep forward bending measurably riskier then than at any other time of day. That rules out cat-cow in its full form, seated forward folds and toe touches — and permits mid-range motion, rotation, side bend and extension.
So the spine work below is extension-biased. M6 Grow tall is the morning-appropriate replacement for cat-cow, and it does the same job: it tells the spine the day has started.
Three tiers, all of them complete
Making it comprehensive introduces the exact risk the original three minutes avoided: at six and a half minutes it starts to feel like a fourth session, which is something she can negotiate with herself about. The sequence is therefore ordered so that stopping early still leaves a coherent routine.
| Tier | Movements | Time | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core | 1–4, all seated | 2½ min | A bad morning, or a rushed one. Counts as done. |
| Seated | 1–9 | 4½ min | Most mornings. Also the ceiling for anyone who gets light-headed standing. |
| Full | 1–13 | 6½ min | The default she is shown. |
One rule, and it is not negotiable
The morning routine is additive-only in the tracker. Days she does it are marked; days she misses show nothing at all — no gap, no broken streak, no amber. The moment it can render as a failure it becomes a fourth way to let herself down, and it is worse than not existing. Any tier counts as a mark.
Framed correctly it is the best retention instrument in the product: a daily touchpoint tells you she is drifting on day three, not on day nine when a session goes missing. For something whose whole thesis is the programme she does not quit, a daily signal is worth several times a triweekly one.
03The filming day, as a shot list
Fifteen movements — ten for the sessions, five more for the morning routine — each filmed standard and gentler, plus four substitutions for the most-flagged regions. Fifteen to thirty seconds each, long enough to show two clean repetitions.
| # | Movement | Clinical name | Appears | Clips |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sit tall and breathe | Diaphragmatic / lateral rib breathing | 3× | 1 |
| 2 | Turn and look | Seated thoracic rotation | 2× | 2 |
| 3 | Rock your hips | Seated posterior/anterior pelvic tilt | 2× | 2 |
| 4 | Marching, sitting down | Seated hip flexion march | 1× | 2 |
| 5 | Push your hips back | Supported hip hinge | 2× | 2 |
| 6 | Wake up your ankles | Seated ankle pumps & circles | 1× | 2 |
| 7 | Open the hip | Seated figure-four | 1× | 2 |
| 8 | Up on your toes | Supported heel raise | 1× | 2 |
| 9 | Shift your weight | Bilateral lateral weight shift | 1× | 2 |
| 10 | Up and down from the chair | Assisted sit-to-stand | 1× | 2 |
| 11 | Reach up and over M5 | Seated lateral flexion | Morning | 2 |
| 12 | Roll your shoulders M7 | Shoulder circumduction + retraction | Morning | 2 |
| 13 | Grow tall M6 | Seated axial & thoracic extension | Morning | 2 |
| 14 | Swing the leg H5 | Standing hip swing, supported | Morning | 2 |
| 15 | Reach to the ceiling M8 | Standing reach + gentle extension | Morning | 2 |
| S | SubstitutionsKnee-safe hip opener · wall-supported hinge · head-only rotation · seated heel raise | Regional guarding, routed by planAround() | — | 4 |
Thirty-four clips. Add three establishing shots — the chair set-up, the room, the trainer introducing herself — and it is still half a day.
The five morning movements shoot in a different setting: on the edge of a bed, in what she would actually be wearing at seven in the morning. Worth blocking as its own set-up rather than trying to pass a dining chair off as a bedroom.
04Week 2 — still shared, now with effort
The last shared week. Same movement vocabulary, three changes: the hands come off, the range opens, and one genuinely new movement arrives.
- Up and down from the chair — hands off the thighs, arms folded across the chest. Reps 5 → 8. This is the single most valuable movement in the programme and the one the week-4 retest measures.
- Push your hips back — one hand on the chair instead of two, range deepens to comfortable.
- Push the wall (new) — standing wall press, hands at shoulder height, body straight. First upper-body loading. Gentler: stand closer to the wall.
- Shift your weight — progresses to one hand on the chair. Still both feet down.
Two new clips
The wall press, standard and gentler. Everything else in week 2 is a rep or hand-position change to footage you already have — announce it in the session sheet, not with a new video.
05Weeks 3–4 — where the four plans separate
Week 3 is where balance enters and where the archetypes stop sharing a session. Week 4 is the retest, which is shared in shape — everyone redoes the same four checks — but differs in which result leads.
Mobility primary
Range, then the floor
She said mornings are stiff and getting off the floor is hard. Week 3 goes after the range itself; balance enters at the minimum safe dose.
- Week 3
- Deeper hip and upper-back work. First floor transitions — standing to half-kneeling to kneeling and back, with the chair under both hands throughout. Balance: weight shifts progress to narrow stance, one hand.
- Week 4
- Retest, led by morning stiffness and the floor transfer.
Balance primary
The slowest ramp of the four
She told you she is unsteady. Nothing here is unsupported, and single-leg work does not appear until week 5 at the earliest — the trainer's call, not this document's.
- Week 3
- Support reduces before the task gets harder: two hands → one hand → fingertips on the counter. Stance narrows: hip-width → feet together → semi-tandem, heel beside the other instep. Every progression is a whole session, not a set.
- Week 4
- Retest, led by the one-leg check. If she cannot hold semi-tandem for twenty seconds with fingertips down, week 5 repeats week 3.
Strength primary
Load the pattern she already owns
She stops partway up the stairs and needs a hand off the floor. The movements are unchanged; what changes is what she is holding and how low she sits.
- Week 3
- Sit-to-stand from a lower seat, or slower on the way down. Wall press moves to a kitchen counter. Step-ups onto the bottom stair, one hand on the rail. Household load — a full kettle, then a shopping bag.
- Week 4
- Retest, led by the stairs check and the floor transfer.
Energy primary
Same movements, less rest
The one archetype that is genuinely independent of the other three — it never touches the floor-transfer question. It is trained by how the work is structured, not by different work.
- Week 3
- The four movements run as a continuous circuit rather than as sets: through all four, rest, repeat. Rest 60 sec → 45 sec. Session extends to 20 minutes. Plus a walk — timed, not distanced, starting wherever she already is.
- Week 4
- Retest, led by the mid-afternoon check and the stairs.
The retest, in full
The same four checks she answered in the quiz, so the comparison is against her own words rather than a new baseline. This is what measureRows() was written to project against — and closing that loop is what makes week 4 the payoff rather than an admin week.
| Check | Quiz item | How she retests it |
|---|---|---|
| Getting off the floor | s2-2 | Down and up once. Records what she needed — nothing, one hand, both hands, or avoided. |
| Stairs with the shopping | s2-3 | One normal flight carrying what she normally carries. Records whether she stopped. |
| Standing on one leg | s2-4 | Beside the counter, hand hovering. Counts seconds to a maximum of ten. |
| Mid-afternoon | s2-5 | Same four-option question as the quiz, answered about the past week. |
| Morning stiffness | s2-6 | Which areas, from the same list. Fewer areas is the win. |
06Weeks 5–8 — one theme each, no session detail
Written as a block theme rather than as sessions, because weeks 5 to 8 are built from the week-4 retest. Specifying them now would either be guesswork or would make the retest decorative.
Mobility · weeks 5–8
Own the range you have opened
Load starts moving through the new range rather than alongside it. Floor transitions lose their support one hand at a time. Sit-to-stand deepens. By week 8 she should be getting to the floor and back with one hand, and the morning-stiffness list should be shorter than the day she filled in the quiz.
Balance · weeks 5–8
Take the support away, then add the distraction
Fingertips come off before anything gets harder. Then tandem stance, then single-leg with a hand hovering. Only once that is steady does the task change — head turns while standing, then a folded towel underfoot, then a controlled step-and-catch. Distraction is the last thing added, never the first.
Strength · weeks 5–8
Add weight, keep the range
Household load rises — bags, bottles, the laundry basket — and step-ups climb from the bottom stair to two. Sit-to-stand goes to a lower seat, then to one leg assisted. The rule for the whole block: if the range shortens, the weight was too much.
Energy · weeks 5–8
Keep going for longer
Circuits go two rounds to three, rest falls 45 seconds to 20. The walk extends by roughly a tenth each week and gains one gentle hill. Conversation is the gauge: she should be able to talk, in short sentences, throughout.
07Weeks 9–12 — her own numbers, moved
No session content at this distance, and no theme either. What she sees is a target — and the target is her own quiz answer, moved one or two steps. This is exactly the output measureRows() already produces and nothing currently renders.
| Archetype | Leading target at week 12 | From her quiz answer |
|---|---|---|
| Mobility | Down to the floor and back up, unaided | s2-2 · with effort → without hands |
| Balance | Ten seconds on one leg, unsupported, either side | s2-4 · a few seconds → ten seconds |
| Strength | Stairs with the shopping, no stop | s2-3 · puffed at the top → no stop |
| Energy | Still going by mid-afternoon | s2-5 · flagging → still going |
Say why the far weeks are thin
On the page, in her words: weeks 5 onward are built from your week-4 retest, so they are set then rather than now. Unexplained vagueness reads as a gap. Explained, it reads as the plan paying attention — which it is.
Week 8 gets a second retest, and week 12 a third. Three data points is the difference between “she felt better” and a line you can put in front of the next cohort.
08Safety rails
Before day one
A short screen, answered before the first session unlocks. Any yes routes to “see your GP before starting” — not a block, a redirect.
- Chest pain, pressure or unusual breathlessness on exertion
- A fall in the last twelve months, or dizziness on standing
- Surgery in the last six months, or a joint replacement not yet signed off
- Diagnosed osteoporosis, or a fracture from a minor knock
- New or worsening fatigue — routed specifically off an energy-primary result, where anemia, thyroid, sleep apnea and menopause-related sleep disruption all sit behind the same symptom
Stop rules, said plainly in every session
- Sharp pain, as opposed to effort or stretch — stop, do not work through it
- Dizziness or light-headedness — sit down, and it does not resume that day
- Pain that is worse the next morning than the evening after — drop back to the gentler version
The pelvic floor is not in this programme, and that is deliberate
Your paywall names pelvic floor work twice. It is genuinely specialist: cueing a woman to squeeze can make a hypertonic pelvic floor worse, and the symptom she reports does not tell you which kind she has. This draft goes no further than breathing that lets the pelvic floor move naturally, and prescribes no contraction.
Either bring in a pelvic health physiotherapist to write that strand, or take the claim off the paywall. It is the one place where getting it wrong makes a woman worse rather than merely disappointed.
What still needs a credentialed sign-off
Movement selection, progression rates, and every regression above are a conservative reading of standard practice for deconditioned adults over fifty — not a clinical prescription. The trainer should approve or amend this before a single clip is filmed, which is the argument for hiring before the shoot rather than for it.