Weight Jumps - How to Adjust the Weight on the Bar Correctly
Introduction
The weight on the bar needs to be right. That sounds like an obvious statement, but how many times have you failed a rep when it was supposed to be an RPE 8? or submitted film to coach and they said the weight looked too light?
In this post I’m going to:
Show you how to make quick and accurate changes to the weight on the bar
Explain the logic and math behind these changes
Give you a rule of thumb to use so you don’t have to remember the logic and math
Give you a free pdf that you can use during max events to make your attempt selections
Let’s dive in.
Why Are You Changing the Weight?
There are a few situations that I want you to have in your mind as you read this post, because they are where this advice here will be relevant. The first is while your in the gym training.
One of my goals as a coach is to write the program such that you wind up putting the right weight on the bar. A weight that is heavy enough to stress the body and achieve the adaptation we want, but light enough that we’re not expending more fatigue than intended. I use things like RPE’s, RIR’s and percentages of your 1RM to try and guide you to the appropriate weight, but ultimately you have to load the bar. If I communicate poorly, or you guess your weights poorly, the knowledge in this post will help you to make an appropriate adjustment.
The second situation is in a competition where you’re needing to pick your attempts for a max. Whether it is in Strongman or Powerlifting, attempt selection is a big part of any max event and I see athletes making mistakes all the time, usually making jumps that are unreasonably large. The information in this post will help you to make better attempts and help you to move on to the next event without any missed lifts.
NSCA Loading Chart
It all starts with the NSCA Loading Chart. There are a lot of different loading charts out there that you can use that have subtly different percentages for the different maxes, but I find that the NSCA chart works well enough, enough of the time.
I’ve included a link to the NSCA website’s PDF version of the loading chart through the button below. You can go there and download that PDF for your personal use.
The only part of the chart that I want you to look at is the top two rows. The top one where you have the max reps, and the second one where you see what % of your 1RM you should be able to hit for that number of reps. I took a screenshot of those two rows and included it in the post below.
At the risk of being redundant, I really want to make sure that you understand how to read this chart, so I’ve included some questions and answers here in this section to demonstrate. If you feel like you have the chart nailed down already, then feel free to move on to the next section.
Example: “I’m a 500-pound deadlifter, and I want to know what my 3RM should be.”
Answer: I would take 93% of 500 by multiplying 500 times 0.93 to get a 3RM of 465.
Example: “I just hit 315 for 5 reps. What is my projected 1RM?”
Answer: I would find the max by dividing 315 by the 5RM percentage, or 315/0.87 and get ~362.
Example: “I just hit 225 for 8, and I want to hit sets of 5 next week. What weight should I shoot for?”
Answer: I would find the difference in percentage between an 8RM and a 5RM and apply it to the 225. The math would look like:
(0.87/0.80) = 1.0875
1.0875 x 225 = ~245
RIR and RPE
RIR is an acronym that stands for reps in reserve. It is a numerical value that represents the number of reps you had that you could’ve completed before failure when you ended the set. For example, you completed a set of 5 reps but ended the set while you could’ve done two more (or 7 total) and so you would consider that set to be one done at 2 RIR.
RPE is an acronym that stands for Rating of Perceived Exertion. It is a numberical value between 1 and 10 that represents how difficult you feel a set was. The typical rating system looks like this:
RPE 10: Maximum effort
RPE 9: There is strain at the end of the set
RPE 8: Bar speed is slowing down at the end of the set
PRE 7: The weight moves fast with maximum effort
RPE 6: The weight moves fast without maximum Effort
RPE 1-5: Typically not used. Warm-up weights.
RPE can be difficult to judge, so a lot of times coaches will use RIR as a proxy for RPE. That means that in some situations RPE and RIR can be used interchangeably:
RPE 10 = 0 RIR
RPE 9 = 1 RIR
RPE 8 = 2 RIR
RPE 7 = 3 RIR
RPE 6 = 4+ RIR
This typically works best when we’re working with lower-rep, higher-intensity sets. Once the rep count starts to increase this relationship between RPE and RIR becomes less and less legitimate.
Putting it together
Now we have three tools at our disposal: NSCA Loading Chart, RPE, and RIR. Don’t worry, by the end of the post you’ll have a quick and easy rule of thumb that you can use to change your weights. In this section I’m going to show you the logic behind that rule of thumb using the three tools we’ve covered thus far.
If you look at the NSCA chart, the difference in Rep-Max from one rep count to the next is about 2.5%. The big break in this patter is between a 2RM and a 1Rm being a 5% difference. What that tells us is that if you want to jump from a weight that you can do for 3 reps, to a weight that you can only do for 2 reps, the difference is about 2.5%.
Now let’s combine the power of the NSCA Loading Chart with RIR and see what we find. An athlete is prescribed a set of 3 with an RIR of 2. If you think about it, the weight that should go on the bar is basically just the athlete’s 5RM (The 3 reps of work + 2 Reps left in Reserve). Combine that with the power of RPE and you can say that an RPE 8 set of 3 should be about the same as your 5RM as well. The three means of prescribing intensity can work interchangeably this way.
Fatigue has to be considered in this discussion, because it is largely the reason that RIR and RPE are used in lieu of %-based prescriptions. Those %-based prescriptions are applied to a 1RM in the loading chart, but that 1RM can change from day to day as the stressors of life accumulate and dissipate. This is already built into RPE and RIR because they’re based on feel, the perception of the athlete training. In using the NSCA Loading Chart as a tool, you have to understand that the 1RM at 100% has to be whatever single your capable of hitting when the set starts. Not an actual calculation based on a max you set weeks ago.
Scenarios
Let’s use some examples to flush out the ideology here:
You were prescribed 3 sets of 5 reps at an RPE 8. You hit some warm up sets and decided that your first working set was going to be at 335. After hitting the set, you felt that the RPE was actually a 9 because there was a lot of straining in the reps 4 and 5. You need to drop the weight to stay on program, and you’re trying to decide by how much.
An RPE of 9 means an RIR of 1. Therefore, you hit 5 reps and had 1 in the tank. That would indicate that your 6RM is 335lbs. You need to get to an RPE of 8, which would also be an RIR of 2. That would mean hitting 5 reps with 2 in the tank, or your 7RM. The difference between a 6RM and a 7RM is ~2%. Include an additional 2-3% for the fatigue you’ve accumulated in the 1st set, and you have a ~5% weight decrease. You lower the weight from 335 to (335 x 0.95) 315-320 lbs and hit your next set of 5 at your RPE 8.You’re at the competition and you’ve just hit your opener at 235. The weight felt pretty light and you’re calling it an RPE 7. If an RPE 7 is an RIR of 3, then you just hit your opener at your 4RM. That means that your opener is likely to be about 90% of your max single for the day. you’re trying to decide what to do for your second attempt.
You’re going to want your third attempt to be the highest you can achieve, so you’re splitting the difference for your second attempt. If I’m there coaching you, I’m going to recommend making a roughly 5% jump in weight. This will take you to roughly (90% x 1.05) 94.5% of your 1RM, or your 2RM per the NSCA loading chart. That will leave you with 1 RIR, so the set is an RPE 9. Your next jump would be 2.5-5% for your third attempt.
Rule of Thumb
All of this math and logic can be drilled down to a pretty simple rule of thumb.
When you’re changing weights, make a 2.5-5% jump for every RIR/RPE you need to cover.
If the last was particularly fatiguing and you’re:
Going up in weight, use the low end of the % range.
Going down in weight, use the high end of the % range.
IF the last set was pretty easy and you’re:
Going up in weight, use the high end of the % range.
Going down in weight, use the low end of the % range.
Mistakes in Training
I use TrainHeroic to publish my programs to my athletes, and on their end of the app it lets them record the weights that they used for the sets in their workouts. Every once in a while I’ll jumps between working sets that are just consistent with easy changes in plate weight. Here is an example of an athlete that made a 50lb jump from 225 to 275. I took a screenshot of my end of the TrainHeroic app.
That jump represents a 22% (275/225 - 1) jump in weight. If we go back to the NSCA loading chart, thats bigger than the difference between the 8RM and the 1RM. Either the first two sets were way too light to achieve the prescribed load, or the last set was way too heavy.
One of the biggest reasons that I think athletes are making this mistake as often as they are is because of how systematic we get about changing weights. In this case, the weight went from 225 to 275 so the athlete just added a 25 onto each side of the bar. I think athletes are too rigid in thinking that a plate or a quarter are the main logical jumps to make between weights.
I encourage my athletes to ask themselves the following question before their work set begins: “If I were to add weight to this, would I go up an RPE?” If the answer is yes, then they have the correct weight on the bar. If the answer is no, and they could probably add 5 or 10lbs, then they should. Don’t fall into the trap of being biased towards round weight-plate numbers.
Conclusion and Free Gift
I tell all my athletes to use the 2.5-5% rule of thumb when making weight changes. I also tell them that once they have their weight picked out, they should consider if they can go heavier before bumping themselves into the next RPE. These two concepts really help them to get the right weight on the bar, and make their training that much more effective.
If you struggle with picking your weights in training or in competition, please use this rule as a guide. It will shrink the amount of time it takes for you to reach your goals in your program.
I want to say thank you for reading my post, and so I put together a quick guide on how to determine your attempts for a max event in Strongman or Powerlifting. It uses the same math and logic I outlined in this post, but I’ve packed it together into an easy to follow PDF so you can have a cheat sheet on comp day.