About WorkoutSmart · Since 1999
A coach's method, written as software.
WorkoutSmart builds your training program the way a strength coach builds one for an athlete. It starts with your goal, your schedule, and a strength test, then runs Dan Wirth's periodization through the Wave Engine to produce a block of workouts that fit you. As you train and rate your sets, the weights adjust. The structure of the program, the part that took decades to get right, stays put.
The coach
Dan Wirth, MA, CSCS
Dan Wirth, MA, CSCS, is Assistant Athletics Director of Sports Performance at the University of Tennessee, where he has directed strength, speed, and conditioning for the Olympic sports since 2017. In 2023 the National Strength and Conditioning Association named him College Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year. He spent ten years at the University of Arizona, the last six as Director of Strength and Conditioning over 19 sports and more than 550 athletes, including the 1997 national champion men's basketball team. Between the two universities he founded and ran his own training facility in Tucson for 16 years. He played linebacker at Iowa. He still designs the programs on this site.
The programs on WorkoutSmart are designed by Dan. The periodization maps, the loading tables, the rules for which exercises appear in which weeks, and the notes you see on your workouts are his.
Read Dan's story
The method
12-week waves, leveled to you.
Dan's programs are 12-week waves. Volume starts high and intensity starts low, the balance shifts as the block goes on, and a very hard week is always followed by an easy one. Loads are set from your own tested max and leveled to your strength-to-bodyweight ratio, so two people on the same program lift different weights and, at different strength levels, work through different phases. The Wave Engine holds all of that and adjusts your loads from the feedback you give after each session.
Read the full methodThe company
Built in 1999. Rebuilt ever since.
Dan and Jeremy O'Day built the first version of this system in 1999 as a web program generator for Dan's athletes and clients, and have rebuilt it more than once since. WorkoutSmart is the current version: a web and phone app, an exercise library, and a coaching surface for trainers who want the engine to write programs for their roster. It is a small company. Dan writes the programs and Jeremy writes the software.
WorkoutSmart is operated by StrengthEngine.com, LLC in Arizona.
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