How much weight should I lift? Finding your starting weights

Pick too light and you waste weeks. Pick too heavy and your form falls apart. The right weight is one you can lift for your target reps with good form and a couple of reps left in the tank, and you can find it in your first session.

The ramp-up method

1. Start with something clearly easy: the empty bar, or light dumbbells.
2. Do 5 to 8 reps. If it felt easy, add a step of weight.
3. Repeat, adding smaller steps as the reps slow down.
4. Stop when a set of your target reps feels like you had two or three reps left. That's your working weight.

Write it down. Next session, start your work sets there and let your progression take over.

Rough starting points

Everyone is different, but these give you a sense of where to start ramping. For an untrained adult:

• Squat and deadlift: the empty bar (20 kg) to half your body weight.
• Bench press: the empty bar to a third of your body weight.
• Overhead press: the empty bar or less. Use dumbbells if the bar is too heavy.
• Dumbbell rows and presses: 5 to 15 kg each hand.

If you've lifted before

Take a recent set you did (say 80 kg for 6 reps) and put it into the one-rep max calculator. Its table tells you roughly what you can lift for any number of reps. Start about 10% below that while you get back into it.

Tip: Always leave a couple of reps in reserve on the first session of a new exercise. You'll be sore enough without testing your limits.

Go heavier or lighter?

• Heavier when you hit the top of your rep range on every set with reps to spare.
• Lighter when your form breaks, you miss reps two sessions running, or a joint complains.
• Same otherwise. Consistency is what moves you forward.

Let Liftsmith pick for you

Liftsmith suggests a first weight for every exercise from your body weight, experience and any lifts you know, then adjusts from the sets you log and how hard they felt. Every target shows a short reason, so you can see why it's asking for that weight.