Building Your First Training Block From One Number

You can build a complete first training block from a single input: a rough estimate of your one-rep max on each main lift. Everything else — working weights, rep targets, warm-up jumps, what to add each week — follows from it.

Here is the whole chain, using a 140kg squat as the worked example.

Step one: get a number without testing a max

Do not attempt a maximal single to start a programme. Take a set you can complete with good technique for three to six reps, close to but not at failure, and put it into the One-Rep Max Calculator.

Say you manage 120kg for five. Epley projects 140kg, Brzycki 135kg, average 137.5kg. Use the average, or round to 140kg — precision here is false comfort, and you will re-estimate in six weeks anyway.

Step two: turn it into working weights

The Rep-Max Percentage Calculator converts a max into the weight for any rep target. For a 140kg max:

• Sets of 3 → 90.91% → 127.27kg
• Sets of 5 → 85.71% → 119.99kg
• Sets of 8 → 78.95% → 110.53kg
• Sets of 10 → 75% → 105kg

Those are ceilings — the weight you could manage for that many reps if the set were maximal. Working sets should sit below them, typically 5–10% lower, so you finish a set with a rep or two in reserve rather than grinding every time.

Step three: find out what the bar can actually make

Three of those four weights are not loadable. The Rep-Max Plate Chart resolves each to the nearest weight a bar can be loaded to, with the plates for each side. Sets of five at 119.99kg becomes 120kg — two 25s a side, nothing else. Sets of three at 127.27kg becomes 127.5kg.

Write the loadable numbers on your programme, not the theoretical ones. You will never think about it again.

Step four: warm up in percentages

Warm-ups are where beginners waste most of their energy, usually by doing too many reps too close to the working weight. A workable ladder to a 120kg working set:

• Empty bar × 8–10
• 60kg (50%) × 5
• 85kg (60%) × 3
• 105kg (75%) × 2
• Working sets at 120kg

Rising weight, falling reps. The purpose is to prepare the movement, not to accumulate work — every warm-up rep is fatigue spent before the sets that matter.

Step five: decide what goes up

For a first block, add weight and hold everything else still. 2.5kg a session on squats and deadlifts, 1.25kg on presses, as long as the reps stay clean. That is the fastest progression you will ever have; take it while it works.

When it stops — and it will — switch to adding reps before adding weight. Going from 3 × 5 to 3 × 6 at the same weight is a real increase in demand and a much finer step than the smallest plate allows.

Step six: log three numbers

Weight, sets, reps. That is enough to feed the Training Volume Calculator at the end of the week and see whether the trend is up. It is also enough to re-estimate your max in six weeks from your best set, which restarts the whole chain with better inputs.

The shape of the block

Three weeks up, one week down. Add weight for three weeks, then run a deload week at roughly 60% of the volume with the bar still reasonably heavy. Re-estimate at the end and build the next block from the new number.

That is a complete programme, derived from one honest set. Everything above is arithmetic on that single input — which is worth knowing, because it means the quality of the whole block depends mostly on how honestly you counted the reps in step one.

Choosing the lifts

The chain above works from any lift, but a first block does not need many. Four movements cover almost everything:

• A squat — back squat if the mobility is there, front or goblet squat if not.
• A hinge — conventional deadlift, Romanian deadlift, or trap bar if the conventional setup is uncomfortable.
• A horizontal press — bench press or a dumbbell equivalent.
• A vertical press — overhead press, standing or seated.

Add a row and a pull-down or pull-up variation and you have a complete programme. Resist the urge to include ten exercises: more movements means fewer sets each, slower skill acquisition on all of them, and a log too noisy to learn anything from.

Technique before load, and how to tell them apart

Everything in this article assumes the lift is being performed consistently. If your squat depth varies from set to set, the percentages are describing different exercises and the arithmetic is meaningless.

A workable test: if the last rep of a set looks materially different from the first — depth cut, back rounding, bar drifting forward — the weight is ahead of the technique. That is not a reason to stop progressing, it is a reason to progress from a lower starting weight and let the pattern consolidate.

Film a set occasionally from the side. It is the cheapest coaching available, and it routinely contradicts what the set felt like.

When you miss a session

You will. A first block that assumes perfect attendance is a first block that gets abandoned in week three when reality intervenes.

The rule that works: do not try to catch up. Missing Wednesday does not mean Thursday becomes Wednesday and everything shifts. Pick up the schedule where you are and continue. One missed session in a six-week block is statistically irrelevant; the compensatory double session that leaves you too sore to train for four days is not.

If you miss more than a week, drop the working weights by about five percent and rebuild for a session or two before resuming the progression. It feels unnecessary and it prevents the classic post-holiday injury.

What to do at the end of the block

After three weeks up and one week down, run the chain again from the start. Take your best set of the block, put it through the 1RM calculator, get a new estimate, generate new working weights with the percentage calculator, resolve them to loadable weights on the plate chart, and go again.

Two things to check before you do. Did the weekly tonnage actually rise outside the deload? And did the rep counts hold as the weight went up? If the answer to the second is no, the honest read is that the block progressed the bar and not the lifter, and the next block should start closer to where this one did.

That loop — estimate, program, load, progress, re-estimate — is the whole of structured training. Everything more sophisticated is a refinement of it, and nothing replaces having run it honestly a few times.