How the weight moves
Every set gives the engine three numbers: how many reps came out, what went on the bar, and how hard it felt on a 1-10 dial. After the session it reads those against the rep range and decides one thing per movement — add load, add reps, hold, cut, or stop. The rules below are the whole decision, in the order they are checked. The first one that matches wins.
Try it
This is not a description of the engine — it is the engine. Change a rep count or an effort rating and the decision underneath changes with it.
- — All 3 working sets reached 8 reps at an average effort of 8.33/10.
- — That is the double-progression trigger: hold the load until every set tops the range, then add the smallest honest increment.
- — Rep target resets to 5.
- — Effort discounted to 7.33/10 by the 1 rep calibration bias.
The rules, in order
Red means sharp pain, swelling, instability, grip loss, above 5/10, or still worse the next day. Nothing about performance outranks it.
Yellow is a warning that the tissue is carrying something. You get to keep training; you do not get to add to the pile.
Week 8 is for retesting and rotating accessories, not for finding out what you can still grind out.
Two drops running is almost always a life problem, not a program problem. Swapping the exercise here just hides the signal.
This is the double-progression trigger. Reps first, load second — and only once every set tops out, not just the good one.
When the range is comfortably beaten, the smallest jump wastes a week.
Adding load on top of a maximal session buys a missed session the following week.
Below the floor on more than one set means the load is wrong, not the day.
Fatigue is the likelier culprit. The load only moves once the same thing happens on a rested day.
In range at that effort means the load, not the rep count, is the limiter. No point chasing reps for another cycle.
The default. Reps accumulate until the whole range is beaten.
When load runs out, the ladder takes over: pauses, then slower eccentrics, then unilateral, then the barbell or machine version.
Time first, load second — the same double progression, counted in seconds.
The effort dial
Lifters stop about a rep early, so the dial is optimistic by default. Once a month one safe machine lift goes to true failure with a rep prediction called first; the gap between predicted and actual becomes a bias that discounts every future rating.
Plate math
A load is a number until you have to build it. The logger takes the target, subtracts the 45 lb bar, halves what is left, and fills it heaviest-first from the plates on the rack — then tells you if the target is not loadable and by how much it misses.
Every plate goes on twice, so the per-side stack is what the card shows. The smallest honest jump on a barbell is two of the smallest plates — that is the number the engine adds when the range is beaten.
What the engine will not do
- — Swap an exercise because a session went badly. Two bad exposures point at sleep, food and climbing load first.
- — Add load through a yellow or red symptom gate, whatever the reps say.
- — Add load on top of a 10/10 session, even when every set topped the range.
- — Move the five anchors. High-bar squat, low-incline barbell press, RDL, Bulgarian split squat and strapped pull-up stay put for all eight weeks.
- — Add chest volume until the shoulder logs three consecutive green weeks, and then only on the machine press or cable fly.