For my first ~7 months of training I simply kept a log of what I was doing, and sort of had the exercises that I wanted to do and reps and such in my head.
In middle October I decided by Dec 15th I wanted to deadlift twice my body weight, which I did on about Dec 10th or so. I did change around my workouts some at this point, but I was still just logging them really.
Over the holidays I came up with a new goal, to become the best all around athlete I could by next August (start of club football season). I still dont have hard numbers I'd like to achieve by then. I looked at my strengths and weaknesses. I read 2 books by Tudor Bompa ("Periodization Training for Sport" and "Serious Strength Training") along with numerous articles online and a book my Nebraska and North Carolina's strength coaches about training for football.
Then with all this information I took Dave Tate's 9 week Westside primer and then spent about 4-6 hours over the course of a few days muling over all of it, adding some movements that I wanted and taking out ones that I didn't like. Changing up some of the rep schemes, thinking about what equipment I have access to, etc.
When I finished I had every exercise for 9 weeks typed out. I have almost every set and rep scheme typed out as well (on some movements like ab work I just put "open rep scheme" while on others such as Dynamic effort movements I have strict reps and sets and weight percentages). Not sure what I would call my program though, but I believe its a very good sports-oriented program that stresses the posterior chain and explosive movements.
What I *dont* have right now are concrete goals that I want to reach (long term or short term). I am still just lifting the weights I feel comfortable with, doing most of my squatting (2 different forms) good mornings (2 differnt forms) and flat benching in the 70-85% of 1RM range on ME days to stimulate the most serum somatotropin. I'm slowly breaking PRs and every now and then I will go for some heavy singles that get very close to my PRs, but I dont have it written down that on March 1st I want to be able to lift XXX and YYY in the bench and squat.
Before I go workout I write down what I plan to do in my workout log, and then as I do it I fill the log out. So now I have what I planned to do, and what I actually did. In the log I make notes as to why I changed from what I planned to do, how hard or easy something was, etc. I have also changed the order of some of the movements on each day from expirience.
Now've I've read a couple more books that I will incorperate into my next 8-9 week training program, which will start at the earliest on March 10th but I will probably take around a week off, so probably on March 17th. I have started to come up with a loose outline for that program but I haven' t put anything on paper yet. I also keep records of weight, measurements, and all my lifting records, but I still dont know what concrete goals I would like in lifting poundages for March 10th, or for the end of my next cycle.
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
