How much weight should you add each week to keep progressing?

Add the smallest step your equipment allows, and add it only after a session where every working set hit its target reps at the effort you planned. In the app that step is 2.5 kg on a barbell lift, 2 kg on a dumbbell lift and 1 kg on a machine. For a trained lifter, the honest answer to how much weight you should add each week is often nothing: the step arrives every few weeks, and the weeks between are spent adding reps. A fixed 2.5 kg every week on a bench press asks for far more strength than trained lifters gain in two months.

Every figure below is compute.mjs output, the script that runs the app's own formulas, or it carries a citation. You can check the estimates against the one-rep max calculator.

What 2.5 kg a week does to a bench press

Take a 75 kg lifter whose best bench set is five reps at 80 kg, rated RPE 8. RPE is the effort rating where 10 means no rep left, so RPE 8 means about two reps in reserve [1]. The app's model says that set is worth an estimated 98.6 kg for one. Now add 2.5 kg every week and keep the same five reps at the same RPE.

Each weekly step adds to the estimated max, not just the bar. Over eight steps the plan quietly assumes the lifter's bench goes from 98.6 kg to 123.3 kg.

Compare that with what trained men actually gain. A meta-analysis of low-dose programmes in resistance-trained men, run for 8 to 12 weeks, found an average bench press gain of 8.25 kg on the 1RM [2]. Those were minimal programmes, so more training can do better, but the gap to the table above is wide. Longer records tell the same story. Across 1,897 powerlifters followed for up to 15 years, men gained about 0.15 kg a day on their competition total, and that is squat, bench and deadlift added together [3]. The strongest men improved more slowly than the weakest, 0.102 kg a day against 0.211 [3].

So a weekly 2.5 kg bench jump runs into arithmetic: the plan grows faster than a trained lifter's strength can. Long before week nine, the RPE starts creeping up, the fifth rep slows down, and either the plan breaks or the form does.

How the app picks the step and when it adds it

The step depends on the equipment, never on the calendar. A barbell lift moves in 2.5 kg steps, which is one 1.25 kg plate on each side. Loading 82.5 kg on a 20 kg bar takes a 25, a 5 and a 1.25 per side, and the plate calculator does that sum for any bar and plate set. Dumbbell lifts move in 2 kg steps and machines in 1 kg steps.

When the step gets added depends on the progression scheme you pick for the lift. On Load, the app adds one step after a session where every set reached the rep target. Fall short and it repeats the weight. Miss the target two sessions running at the same load and it drops a step and says the jumps look too aggressive, with a suggestion to try smaller steps or double progression.

On Double, you work inside a rep range and the step arrives only when the sets reach the top of it. That is where the app checks the size of the jump. If the next step is worth more than 10 per cent of the working weight, it calls it a chunky jump and banks reps first instead of loading up. A lateral raise with 8 kg dumbbells is the usual case: the next pair is 2 kg heavier, far past that line. Double progression covers the scheme in full.

Two more rules keep the step honest. A deload week never adds weight, and a lift with no progress for three sessions gets flagged as a stall. What to do then is in when a lift stalls.

When should reps carry the progress instead?

Most weeks, for most trained lifters, reps carry it. Loading the bar is not the only way to overload a muscle. In an 8-week trial with trained lifters, one group added load at a fixed rep range and the other added reps at a fixed load. Strength slightly favoured the load group and quadriceps growth modestly favoured the reps group, and the authors judged both differences of questionable practical significance [4].

Zourdos makes the practical point plainly: a lifter may not be able to add load every week and should not force it [5]. His alternative is to add a set or a rep first and take the load step the following week [5]. That is the same logic as a rep range. For a lifter chasing maximal strength, load has to go up eventually, but it can go up on a schedule the lifter has earned [5].

Rating each set keeps this from becoming guesswork. An RIR-based rating lets the load move to match what the lifter can do that day, set to set [1]. If 82.5 kg for five was RPE 8 last week and RPE 9.5 this week, the next weight is not 85 kg, whatever the plan says.

Questions

Should I add weight every session or every week?

Neither on a fixed timetable. Add the step after a session where every working set hit its target reps at the planned effort, whenever that happens. Early on that can be most sessions. For a trained lifter it comes less often, with reps climbing in between. The app's Load scheme follows this rule: it adds one step after a fully successful session and repeats the weight otherwise.

What if the next dumbbell is too big a jump?

Stay at the current weight and add reps past your range, add a set, or slow the tempo before moving up. The app flags any step worth more than 10 per cent of the working weight and banks extra reps first. When the heavier pair finally arrives, the reps drop back to the bottom of the range and climb again from there.

Does adding reps build as much muscle as adding weight?

Over eight weeks in trained lifters, it did about as well. Adding reps at a fixed load and adding load at fixed reps produced similar muscle and strength outcomes, with only small differences either way [4]. Both count as progressive overload. A lift that has to get stronger for a test still needs load added at some point.

How do I know weekly jumps have stopped working?

Watch the estimated 1RM and the RPE together. If the bar keeps getting heavier but the RPE climbs every session and the estimate stops rising, the jumps are ahead of your strength. Missing reps at the same load twice is the next sign. Drop back a step, or move the lift to a rep range so the step arrives when you have earned it.