I work as a personal trainer with older adults. I want to keep track
of their progress now kept manually. I want to track their progress
and chart the progress. Seeing their progress is a huge motivator for
them. I was thinking of using Excel but I seem to be "caught in an
application design loop".

I use a series of machines that provides data at the end of the
workout. One machine provides about 6 variables. One variable is
workload and I manually enter it. At the end of a 5 minute session I
record the other data. Ideally I do three sets of an exercise. The
workload variable may increase on the subsequent set and will increase
over time.

If I put the machine name on the left side of the spreadsheet (column)
and each of the 6 variable fields under that heading. I can't figure
out how to structure the top row (s)?

If I make the top row cells sets 1, 2 and 3 how do I identify the date
associated with those sets? I thought of creating a merged set of
sells above the sets called date. However with that structure can
Excel plot the variables?

Graphing is the what prompted me to use Excel. Can I plot data points
(sets 1,2 and 3) and have a date over that set (associated with)?
What if a third set was not performed?

I also thought of creating an average field for the three sets and
having a date field above the average.

This seems like a fairly simple application but I am not sure how to
structure this?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Rich