New Product from Perch: Perch PLAN

Perch PLAN is here. Program with Purpose. Train with Precision. With Perch PLAN, effortlessly write, deliver, and individualize workout programs. Measure workout compliance and validate the effectiveness of programs. Build programs on the web for athletes to train through on the tablet on the floor.

Elevate your weight room experience by pairing our best-in-class weight room performance tools with seamless programming capabilities with Perch Plan.

How Does Perch PLAN Work?

To create a program with Perch PLAN, you'll be able to start in the Perch Web App. From here you can create a new workout under the PLAN tab and name it. You will be able to add exercises to the program here. This initially will just be Perch tracked exercises, but non-tracked and accessory movements will be added. This means that Perch PLAN can become your in-weight-room programming tool. Perch PLAN will also have compliance and progress dashboards for coaches to understand performance over time as athletes log workouts.

Perch PLAN allows for you to preset exercises, sets, reps, primary metric, goals, and load. Each of these components is optional to preset. Once you have written a program, simply save and publish it and the program will become available on your tablets

Training With Perch PLAN

Once a program is published, your athletes will be able to enable it on the tablet. You will be able to see what the exercise is and what set number the athlete is on for the selected exercise in blue to the right of the exercise. Perch PLAN will move the athlete through the workout and show green checkmarks for each complete each set. Once an athlete has completed the workout, they will end it and all data will upload to the cloud. This again is where coaches will be able to see what work was done, and understand athlete compliance and progress.

If athletes complete extra sets, that data will be available and flagged as additional in both the tablet and web app. At the moment, there can currently only be one active plan per tablet - two athletes cannot perform their own plans on the same tablet. And in order to use Perch PLAN, at least one athlete must be logged in.

There is a link between sets and users, meaning that if things need to be reassigned to different athletes or the order of sets needs to be changed, you can assign them properly by clicking on the title of the plan in the top left hand corner of the screen, which will take you to the workout summary page. Once there, any unassigned sets can be properly assigned or unassigned by selecting the Edit button in the bottom right hand corner of the page.

Keep in mind that you can still use Perch TRAIN in its standard mode without any PLAN selected if you choose to!

Perch PLAN User Stories

Coach Wes Bordelon at University of Maryland has been an early adopter of Perch PLAN and had this to say about it:

"Perch PLAN has been huge for us. If you're programming traditionally where you have 3 major movements, so let's say an olympic movement, a strength movement, and then another big movement later in the workout - all of these movements are going to have a different intent. We've transitioned into an overall VBT program, so not as much 1RMs, but relying on set velocities. Historically we've had to manually set those on tablets or pre-Perch we'd have to just tell a guy what to look for on a Tendo unit. When Perch first told us about PLAN and I knew it would save us a ton of time and a ton of headaches in the workout. And it makes sure that we program and hit the intent that we have for each day. So it's been really great for us. We want to customize velocity zones for our lifts, and now with Perch PLAN it has streamlined our programming and process, we're not wasting time going in and selecting exercises and zones . We can preset those zones and it just helps us move through workouts easier. Coaches only have to worry about coaching the athlete and not about the tech in the weight room during the lift."

When asked how athletes are taking to the new product, Wes said this:

"Using PLAN is an easy way to get the athletes to buy-into what you're doing too. They see the PLAN on the tablet, they know what they're doing, we educate them as to why, and they can work it while we coach it. It makes things a lot more streamlined and easier. They see that immediate feedback and all that work that they have to do."

As for how long does it take to write a program? Wes has an answer for that too:

"It was really funny, one day the PLAN wasn't up on the tablets when athletes came in, and they were freaking out because they're used to it being there. We realized it and I ran into the office, quickly wrote and input the program on the Perch web app, and immediately it was on the tablets ready to go."

Coach Mike Nagler at UC Irvine has also been using PLAN regularly. Here's his user story:

"Plan has been outstanding. You used to have to select exercises, and now you don't. The program is set for athletes as they come in. I'll put the Leaderboard up so they can see where they are as they go through the workout relative to the team, I like to put it on Power so both load and velocity are considerations. And they see velocity on the tablet, so as far as hitting their zones - they see on the tablet if they're doing the right thing, if they need to speed up or add more weight. But now they get to se the entire workout on that tablet with Plan. And that Leaderboard is great, I like to take a photo and send it to the head coach of that sport team so they can see everyday where their athletes are at and if they're having good days competing and who is at the top."

Longtime Perch User, Jeremy Jacobs, now at Texas A&M had this to add:

"We use Perch PLAN daily, we'd been asking for something like it and didn't realize the difference it was going to make. The workouts are up all over the room at all times, but for an athlete to see what it is, and see completion as they go makes a big difference. Plus how Plan looks on the app is great.

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If you're looking to learn more about Perch Product offerings including Perch PLAN, reach out to us at https://www.perch.fit/contact