Training maxes are
not your one rep max

Here is the most common way a good programme falls over. Someone takes their best ever squat, the one they hit eighteen months ago at a meet with a full peak behind them and a crowd shouting, and they type it into a spreadsheet as their max. Week one is fine. Week two is fine. By week four the prescribed load is a grind, the last set gets cut, and the programme gets blamed.

The programme was fine. The number underneath it was a lie.

What a training max actually is

A training max is the heaviest weight you could hit today, cold, on an ordinary day, without needing anything to go right. No psych-up. No belt you only wear for maxes. No having slept nine hours. No wraps you would not train in. Just walk in and do it.

That is a behavioural definition rather than a mathematical one, and it is deliberately so. You will see it written as ninety percent of your one rep max, and ninety percent is a reasonable place to start, but the percentage is a consequence of the definition and not the other way round. If your ninety percent is a number you would need a good day to touch, it is too high, whatever the maths says.

Why your true one rep max is the wrong denominator

Four reasons, and they compound.

1. It happened once, on your best day. A one rep max is the top of a distribution, not the middle of it. Programming off the top means every prescribed load assumes your best day, and most days are not that.
2. It might be old. A number from last spring describes an athlete who no longer exists, in either direction.
3. It was probably set fresh. Week one of a block, set one, you are fresh. Week four, set four, after three weeks of accumulated fatigue, you are not. Percentages of a true max are only honest at the start of a block, which is exactly where they do least work.
4. A competition max is not a gym number. On the platform you get commands, a pause on the bench, a full peak, a taper and adrenaline. In the gym you get none of that. These are different numbers measuring different things and they should never be merged into one column. That is not pedantry, it is the difference between a programme that fits and one that does not.

Three ways to set one without maxing out

You do not need to test. Testing costs a week and tells you something you can work out from training you have already done.

1. From a recent set taken at a known RPE

This is the best method, because it uses a real set under real conditions. Take a hard set from the last fortnight where you know how close to failure it was, estimate the one rep max from it, then take ninety percent.

The commonly used approximations look like this, as a percentage of a one rep max. They are approximations, they drift by person and by lift, and they drift most on high rep sets and on deadlifts:

Worked through: you squat 140kg for three and it was an RPE 9, meaning you had one more in you. That is about 89% of a one rep max, so the estimate is 140 ÷ 0.89, call it 157kg. Ninety percent of that is roughly 141kg, and that is your training max. Round down to whatever your plates actually make. Rounding down is not modesty, it is the whole point.

If you are not confident rating a set, the RPE guide is the other half of this one. An RPE you have guessed at will give you a training max you have guessed at. The RPE calculator does the arithmetic once you have a rating you trust.

One thing worth knowing before you compare numbers. The table above is an RPE chart, and the app reads the same kind of table, so a set you rate in the app should match what you work out here. The RPE calculator is different: it uses the Epley equation, which does not use RPE at all. And where the app is given reps and a weight with no effort rating, it falls back to Brzycki, which is different again. At three reps those land at about 92, 91 and 94 per cent of a max, so on a heavy triple they are a few kilos apart.

None of them is wrong. They are three published ways of guessing a number you have not lifted. Rate the set and the app and this table agree; skip the rating and you get an estimate built from reps alone, which is the weakest of the three.

2. From a rep max you have actually hit

If you have a genuine five rep max, the same table works in reverse: a true five rep max is an RPE 10 set of five, so about 86%. Divide by 0.86 and take ninety percent of the result.

The warning here matters. These formulas get less reliable the further you go from a single, and by the time you are estimating off a set of ten they are close to useless for a strength athlete. Ten reps tells you about your work capacity, not about your maximum.

3. From the last block, which is the one coaches actually use

If you finished a block hitting the prescribed loads comfortably, add to the training max and run it again. If you were grinding by the end, take it down. You do not need an estimate at all when you have twelve weeks of evidence about what you can and cannot do.

When to move it, and by how much

At the end of a block, based on what happened in the block. Not on the calendar, and never in the middle.

• Everything hit, last sets still moving well. Up. Two and a half to five kilos on a squat or deadlift, two and a half on a press. Small, because the number compounds every block.
• Hit it but it was ugly by the end. Leave it. Run the same number with better execution and it will feel different.
• Missed prescribed work more than once. Down five to ten percent. This is the one people refuse to do, and it is the one that fixes the most.

Four ways it goes wrong

• Setting it off a number you have never actually hit. A goal is not a max. If you want a 200kg squat and you have squatted 180, your training max comes off 180. Aspirations belong in a target, and a target has no business driving prescribed load.
• Never moving it. The opposite failure. A training max that has not changed in a year is either wrong or a sign the training is not working, and both are worth knowing.
• One training max across every variation. Your paused squat and your competition squat are different lifts and want different numbers. So do a deficit deadlift and a deadlift.
• Carrying it through a bodyweight change. Drop a weight class and your training max very likely came with you on paper and not in the gym. Recheck it rather than assume.

The short version

Your one rep max is a result. Your training max is a tool. Results go in the record, tools get used, and a programme written off a result will be too heavy on the days that decide whether the block works.

If you would rather not do this maths every twelve weeks, that is most of what you are paying a coach for. Mine is set from what actually happened in your training, adjusted when the evidence says so, and kept separate from the numbers you have put on a platform.