reckonerWhat it does with last week.
Double progression, lift by lift. Reps climb inside the range first, then the load moves and the reps come down to what the heavier bar allows. Every lift carries its own rule, so your bench and your squat are not forced to progress at the same pace. These are the actual rules, not a summary of them.
Most weeks it does not add weight at all. It adds a rep, holds you where you are, or takes weight off.
Six weeks of bench press, decided by the engine
Nobody in this table is real. The engine is run when this page is built, on a lifter who does not exist, so the rows below are whatever it decided when this page was last built. The verdicts and the sentences underneath are the software's own words, not ours.
Five weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue.
You earned this before the lighter week. The lighter week was for recovery, not a test, so the rise waited for it to end. Now the bar goes up to 62.5 kg. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets.
On this run, four weeks add a rep and leave the bar alone, one takes about 40 per cent of the sets away, and the weight moves once. It moves by this movement's own increment, and only after the top of the range was reached on every set asked for. Another lifter's six weeks look nothing like this, which is the point of running it rather than drawing it.
Three weeks stuck, so it took 7.5 kg off on its own
Reset to 52.5 kg. Build back through it. You have been here before, and you came through it heavier.
The engine's own words, week three of a run where the first set was finished every week and the sets behind it came up two reps short. Five weeks later, still stuck, it offers to swap the lift rather than prescribe the same thing again.
Rule by rule, and what triggers each one
The top of the rep range on every set you were asked for
Load goes up by that movement's own increment, which runs from 1 kg to 5 kg across the library. The reps come down to what the heavier bar allows, and in your first six months a main lift never lands below 8. A lift with no weight to add gains a set instead. Answer fair or rough when it asks about the form and the load holds; rough, or fair on a set rated 9 or 10, holds the set too.
Every set reached the reps asked for, with room left in the range
Load holds. Next week asks for one more rep on every set, unless you called the form rough, or fair on a set rated 9 or 10: then the reps hold too.
The first set landed inside the range but short of the target, or a later set came up short
Load holds and the same week is prescribed again, so you can finish it before anything is added. Three trained weeks with nothing moving, not even a rep on the first set, and the load comes down about 10% to build back through. Stuck again after that, and it offers a swap you can turn down.
The first set fell below the bottom of the range, or the form was rough two sessions running
The load comes down one rung from what you lifted, and the target reps stay where they were.
Five build weeks, or one lift over its effort cap two trained weeks running
A lighter week. 40% of the sets come off, the load stays, and your reps stay where you earned them. A lift over its cap also gets a minute more rest, and if it keeps happening, one rep off its target at the same weight.
More than three weeks with nothing logged
Your first week back comes in about 10% lighter, and a lift that shows room goes straight back to its old load. After more than eight weeks it starts a new block with a calibration week. Nothing you logged is lost.
A session skipped
Nothing moves on that lift. The engine will not guess a number it was not given.
Where these numbers come from. A six week block and about 40 per cent of the sets off in a lighter week sit inside published research and expert consensus on deloading. Waiting three trained weeks before a reset, two weeks over the cap before a lift gets relief or a lighter week of its own, and reading a fall of more than a quarter from the first set to the last as a rest or fatigue problem are coaching judgment: no study has tested a number for any of them. Taking 10 per cent off at a reset is a coaching convention, the gentlest of the usual ones. How the form answer is used is coaching judgment too, informed by research showing technique drifts as a set nears failure.
The words, in plain English
You never have to learn these to use Reckoner. They are here because the rules above use them, and you should be able to check the working.
How many good reps did you have left?
That count is reps in reserve, counted in reps you could have done with good form. Two left is two reps in reserve. It is the one effort question Reckoner asks, and the only other question after a lift is how the form looked.
Reps in reserve, in fullRPE
The same thing read from the other end of the scale. Two reps left is RPE 8. You never have to convert it yourself.
What RPE actually measuresRep range
The two numbers you work between, like 5 to 8. Finish every set at the top of the range and the load moves up, unless you said the form was fair or rough.
Double progressionDeload
A lighter week taken on purpose. The sets come off, the bar stays where it is, and the next block starts from the same load.
When to deloadRun it on your own numbers.
Seven questions, under two minutes, and Thursday is written with the same rules you just read. If you disagree with one of them, the board is where you take it up.