Training max calculator

Percentages of the training max

Why not just use your real max

Because a true max is the best you have ever done, not what you can repeat. Build a month of work on it and the percentages land slightly too heavy from the first session, which is how a programme stalls in week three with no obvious cause. Taking 90% first leaves room for the days when you slept badly, and the programme still progresses because the training max goes up, not because you keep testing.

The 90% is a convention from percentage-based methods, not a measured constant — some programmes use 85, some adjust it per lift. Change it and the whole table moves with it. Every row rounds down to something the plates can build, so a percentage will rarely land on its exact arithmetic value.

Questions this raises

When should the training max go up?

When the work at the top percentages still moves well, not when the calendar says so. A small, boring increase that you can repeat next month beats a jump that forces you to reset two months later — and if the last heavy set grinds, leaving the number alone for another block is a decision, not a failure.

Should every lift use the same percentage?

Not necessarily. A deadlift max is usually the least repeatable of the three — it is the easiest to grind out once and the hardest to hit on a bad day — so plenty of people set it lower, around 85, and leave the bench higher. The point is not the exact number but that it is honest: if you cannot do the top set twice in a month, the training max is still a record in disguise.