Diagramming a Push/Pull/Legs Prep — A Workout Case Study

Heads up: this post is really an excuse to show off a lot of chart types at once. We took a made-up client, gave them a deadline, and used Diagrammo diagrams to plan the whole thing. Every chart below is live dgmo source — copy any fence into the editor and edit it yourself.

Meet Jordan. Twelve weeks out from a Caribbean cruise, running a classic Push / Pull / Legs split. The goal: hit peak strength, dial in the macros, and step onto the beach lean and full. Here’s how the prep looks when you plan it in diagrams instead of a spreadsheet.

The clock is running

Nothing focuses a training block like a hard deadline. Diagrammo’s countdown chart turns the trip into a live ticking target — drop it at the top of the plan and every session has a number attached to it.

countdown Caribbean Cruise
target 2026-10-05
expired ⚓ Bon voyage!

Twelve weeks. Enough time to make real change, short enough that skipped sessions cost you. Now let’s fill them.

Where Jordan is vs where they need to be

Before writing a single session, we assess. A radar chart overlays today’s numbers against the cruise-ready target across every quality that matters — it’s instantly obvious which spokes are short.

radar Fitness Assessment
series
  Current blue
  Target green

Strength     55  85
Cardio       45  80
Flexibility  40  70
Endurance    50  80
Mobility     45  75
Body Comp    50  90

The gaps write the program: cardio and body composition need the most work, so those drive the conditioning and diet; strength is already decent, so we maintain and sharpen it. The whole plan below is just closing this radar’s gaps.

The split, drawn on the body

The fastest way to see whether a training week actually covers everything is to paint it onto the muscles. Diagrammo’s body chart does exactly that — name a muscle, tag it, and it lights up.

Push day

body Push Day
muscle
front

tag Effort as e
  Primary red
  Secondary orange
  Warm-up yellow

chest        e: Primary
  Barbell bench press — 4×6
front-delts  e: Primary
  Overhead press — 4×8
triceps      e: Secondary
  Rope pushdowns — 3×12
side-delts   e: Secondary
  Lateral raises — 3×15
abs          e: Warm-up
  Hanging leg raise — 3×12

Pull day

The back half of the split — flip the figure around and the pulling muscles are all on the posterior chain.

body Pull Day
muscle
back

tag Effort as e
  Primary red
  Secondary orange
  Warm-up yellow

lats         e: Primary
  Weighted pull-ups — 4×6
trapezius    e: Primary
  Barbell rows — 4×8
rear-delts   e: Secondary
  Face pulls — 3×15
biceps       e: Secondary
  EZ-bar curls — 3×12
lower-back   e: Warm-up
  Back extensions — 3×15

Leg day

Legs earn both views — quads on the front, hamstrings and glutes on the back.

body Leg Day
muscle
front
back

tag Effort as e
  Primary red
  Secondary orange
  Warm-up yellow

quadriceps   e: Primary
  Back squat — 5×5
hamstring    e: Primary
  Romanian deadlift — 4×8
glutes       e: Secondary
  Hip thrust — 3×10
calves       e: Secondary
  Standing calf raise — 4×15
adductors    e: Warm-up
  Copenhagen plank — 3×30s

Three charts, one glance, and it’s obvious the week hits push, pull, and legs with nothing skipped.

The actual workouts

Body charts show what gets trained; a plain table shows exactly how. Standard markdown tables render right alongside the diagrams.

Push

Pull

Legs

Fueling it — the macros

Twelve weeks of hard training only works if the diet backs it up. Jordan’s a high-protein, moderate-carb setup on ~2,400 kcal. A pie chart makes the calorie split legible at a glance.

pie Daily Macros — % of Calories

Protein  40
Carbs    38
Fat      22

In grams that’s roughly 240g protein, 228g carbs, 59g fat — but the pie is what you screenshot and stick on the fridge.

How the lifts should progress

Prep isn’t a straight line — it’s phases. Base to build work capacity, Build to add load, Peak to express strength, then a short Taper into departure week. A multi-series line chart tracks the key lift from each day — bench (push), barbell row (pull), and squat (legs) — with era bands marking the phases, so you can see all three estimated 1RMs climb together.

line Est. 1RM by Lift (lbs)
series
  Bench blue
  Row green
  Squat orange
x-label Week
y-label lbs

era Week 1 -> Week 4 Base green
era Week 4 -> Week 8 Build blue
era Week 8 -> Week 11 Peak orange
era Week 11 -> Week 12 Taper red

Week 1  205  185  315
Week 2  210  190  325
Week 3  212  195  330
Week 4  218  200  340
Week 5  225  205  350
Week 6  228  212  355
Week 7  235  218  365
Week 8  240  222  375
Week 9  248  228  385
Week 10 250  232  390
Week 11 255  235  395
Week 12 245  228  385

Note the dip in the taper — that’s intentional across all three lifts. You pull volume back so you show up recovered, not fried.

Balancing the volume

Progressive overload is easy to overdo on your favorite lifts and neglect elsewhere. A bar chart of weekly hard sets per muscle group is a quick audit — is anything getting starved?

bar Weekly Hard Sets

Chest      blue    14
Back       green   16
Shoulders  orange  12
Legs       purple  18
Arms       red     10
Core       yellow   8

Legs and back lead — appropriate when you want a balanced, proportional look on the beach rather than just a big chest. Nothing’s under-trained.

Peak week at a glance

The final seven days have their own schedule — training tapers, then carbs, water, and sodium get dialed in so Jordan looks their best when the swimsuit comes out.

Why do it this way?

Every diagram in this post is plain text — versionable, diff-able, and editable in seconds. Change one number and the chart redraws. That’s the pitch for diagrams-as-code: your training plan, your client’s macros, your peak-week protocol all live in the same format as the rest of your docs, and they render the same everywhere — this blog, a Notion page, an Obsidian vault, a coaching PDF.

Grab any fence above, drop it in the online editor, and make it your own prep.