For personal trainers and strength coaches
Education for coaches
Develop your program design through one-to-one mentorship or an in-person course.
Explore coach education →Work directly with Dale Hansford
Strength coaching.
Coach education.
Train with Dale in Carrum Downs or through online coaching. If you’re a personal trainer or strength coach, explore mentorship and in-person education.
Carrum Downs, Victoria
In-person coaching
Train with Dale in person. Get technique feedback, individual programming and nutrition guidance.
Explore in-person coaching →Train wherever you are
Online coaching
Follow an individual training and nutrition plan, with check-ins and direct support from Dale.
Explore online coaching →Education for coaches.
Learn to connect training theory to the decisions you make in a program. Bring your coaching background, learning goals and a current program to one-to-one mentorship, or study the complete programming process at an in-person course.
Prepare the context. Outline the trainee’s experience, availability and constraints.
Work through the decisions. Discuss exercise order, repetitions, loading, sets, tempo and rest.
Apply and review. Take the discussion back to your coaching, then return with questions and observations.
Decision → application → observation → adjustment
Use what you observe to inform the next programming decision.
A program review
Working brief
Goal
What outcome are you programming for?
Trainee
Experience, availability and constraints.
Session
Exercise order, sets, repetitions, load, tempo and rest.
Progression
What changes, and what triggers that change?
The questions we use to examine the reasoning behind a program.
Dale Hansford / program design education
Dale is a strength and conditioning coach, manual therapist and coach educator with more than 15 years of applied experience.
He holds a Bachelor of Exercise Science from the University of Ballarat. His education work includes head-coach and educator roles, consulting for registered training organisations, and seminars in Australia and internationally.
Program Design Mentorship
One-to-one program design mentorship.
Eight 90-minute live video sessions across eight weeks.
Use your own coaching questions and client programs to examine the reasoning behind exercise selection, loading, volume distribution and periodization. Ask questions in real time and receive personalised feedback.
Recordings and resources support the work between sessions, with direct email support during the program and scheduling across time zones.
What we work through.
Session prescription
Understand how repetition ranges, sets, tempo, rest and exercise selection work together. Examine the variables in a current program rather than considering them in isolation.
Loading & volume
Work through loading methods and volume distribution in relation to the training goal. Make the reasoning behind each programming choice explicit.
Periodisation
Connect individual sessions to progression across a training plan. Discuss how programming decisions relate to strength, hypertrophy, power and endurance goals.
Explore the education options.
Mentorship
Choose one-to-one discussion when you want feedback on the programs you write and the clients you coach. Eight weeks of live sessions, recordings, resources and email support.
Explore the mentorship →Courses
Essentials of Advanced Program Design
Melbourne · 5–6 December 2026 · Hotel Grand Chancellor
Two days of in-person teaching with Dale, connecting the details of a session to the training week, individual phases and the complete macrocycle.
Saturday: training theory and adaptation, repetition and set systems, volume, tempo, rest and loading methods.
Sunday: exercise periodisation, structural balance, microcycle-to-macrocycle design, fatigue, accommodation, retention and transfer.
Course manual and programming resources included.
Articles
Use the technical library to examine one decision at a time: exercise selection, repetitions, tempo, loading and periodization. Read independently, then bring the questions that remain into mentorship.
Read the library →Technical articles.
Undulating periodisation
Examine how accumulation and intensification are organised across a mesocycle, rather than treating each session as an isolated workout.
Read article →Exercise selection
Explore a systematic approach to choosing exercises within a program, with the training goal and coaching context in view.
Read article →Periodization Lab
A program-design and periodization tool for coaches, currently in active development. Explore the product direction alongside the education resources; the public page explains its current status.
Explore Periodization Lab →