How much weight to add each week, by equipment

The smallest jump depends on the equipment:

• Barbell. Plates go on in pairs, so the smallest jump is twice the smallest plate. With 1.25 kg plates that is 2.5 kg. With 2.5 lb plates it is 5 lb.
• Dumbbells. The jump is the next pair on the rack. In kilogram gyms that is often 2 kg or 2.5 kg. In pound gyms it is usually 5 lb, and sometimes 2.5 lb on the light end.
• Machines and cables. The jump is one plate of the stack. Stacks differ: a small stack may be built from 10 lb plates and a larger one from 15 lb plates. The tables use 5 kg and 10 lb plates as examples.

Here is each jump as a share of a typical working load. The loads are examples, not targets.

In kilograms

In pounds

The American College of Sports Medicine's 2009 position stand gave a rule for the size of a jump. It said to add 2 to 10% to the load once you could do one or two reps more than your target on two sessions in a row, with the smaller jumps on small-muscle lifts. A barbell squat fits that rule easily. A dumbbell under 20 kg does not: the next pair up is already 10% or more. In 2026 the ACSM replaced that stand, and the new one does not repeat the 2 to 10% figure.

A bigger jump costs more reps. You can estimate how many with the Epley formula, which turns a set into an estimated one-rep max (1RM): weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30). Then work it backwards for the heavier weight.

On the squat, one step costs about one rep. On a 12 kg dumbbell, it costs about half the set. Rep formulas are less accurate above about 10 reps, so treat the last rows as rough. The pattern is still clear.

So on small lifts the reps carry the progress. Use a wide rep range, such as 8 to 12 or 10 to 15, and add reps at one weight until every set reaches the top. Then take the jump and start again near the bottom. This is double progression, and our guide to double progression works through it. Adding reps is real progress. In an eight-week trial in trained adults, a group that added reps at a fixed weight gained about as much strength and muscle as a group that added weight.

Strength gains slow down as you train longer. A 2004 review summed up studies that ran from 4 weeks to 2 years. Strength rose by about:

• 40% in untrained people
• 20% in moderately trained people
• 16% in trained people
• 10% in advanced lifters
• 2% in elite lifters

These are not weekly rates, and the studies used different programs and tests, so treat them as rough. They do show the shape: an untrained lifter gains about two and a half times as much as a trained one over similar periods.

In practice, a new lifter can often add one barbell step every session for the first weeks on lifts like the squat. A lifter several years in may hold one weight for weeks while the reps climb. Both of those are coaching conventions, not study results. The research says something simpler. The ACSM's 2026 stand found that you can benefit from training without progression, but that continued long-term progress probably needs a stimulus that keeps rising. It also notes that rating your effort is one way to raise the load as you get stronger.

Here is a newer lifter who squats twice a week, 3 sets of 5. The rule is simple: add one step after a session unless the hardest set hit RPE 10, which means no rep was left. Our guide to RPE and RIR explains the scale.

Over four weeks the squat went from 80 kg to 95 kg (175 lb to 205 lb), 15 kg in all: 5 kg in every week but the one with the hold. One hard session caused one hold, and the lifter got the reps back at the same weight. That is normal.

This pace does not last. The effort creeps up: RPE 7 in week 1, RPE 9 to 9.5 by week 4. When the hardest set reaches RPE 10 most sessions, the weekly jump stops working. At that point most lifters slow down: they add reps first, or take a smaller jump. If the reps start to fall at the same weight across two or three sessions, read our guide to why a lift stalls.

When a program moves you to fewer reps, you can lift more. Near 5 to 12 reps, each rep you drop adds about 2.5 to 3% to the load, by the Epley formula. Start from your last set, then round down to a weight you can load.

The formula is an estimate, and it is least accurate from sets above 10 reps. Rounding down leaves room for that error. Your first session at the new reps tells you the rest.

• Use smaller plates. Change plates and fractional plates are sold in pairs. A pair of 0.5 kg plates turns a 2.5 kg barbell jump into 1 kg, and a pair of 0.25 kg plates makes it 0.5 kg. In pounds, fractional plates go down to 0.25 lb each. This helps most on the bench press and overhead press, where 2.5 kg is a large share of the load.
• Add a small weight to the stack. Add-on weights for selector stacks exist, such as a 5 lb plate that sits on top of a stack built from 10 lb plates. Check that it fits your machine first.
• Add reps first. Climb a rep range at one weight, as above. This is the only option on fixed dumbbells.
• Wait for a buffer: the 2-for-2 rule. A common coaching rule, usually credited to the National Strength and Conditioning Association's textbook, says to add weight when you can do two more reps than your target on the last set, in two workouts in a row. The two-rep buffer is what pays for the jump. On a barbell, two spare reps easily cover a step that costs one. On a 12 kg dumbbell, the jump costs about six, so a two-rep buffer is not enough: use the top of a wide rep range instead.
• Compare machines by their own numbers. Some cable machines use a 2:1 pulley, where the handle carries about half the stack, and others use 1:1. The same pin on two machines can be a different load, so track each machine as its own lift.

Shojin suggests the next load for each lift from your own logged sets. Here is what the code does.

• The step depends on the equipment. A barbell moves in twice the smallest plate in your rack. With the standard rack that is 2.5 kg (5 lb). Dumbbells move in 2 kg. Machines, cables and other equipment move in 2.5 kg. In pounds, everything that is not a barbell moves in 5 lb.
• You can change the step. Profile → Plate & rounding offers Auto, or 1, 2.5 or 5 kg (1, 5 or 10 lb). Auto uses each equipment's own step. A barbell can never go finer than your rack allows. To get 1 kg barbell jumps, add 0.5 kg plates under Rack & plates.
• Effort decides first. Shojin reads the hardest set at last session's top weight. If it was RPE 9 or 10 and you did fewer reps than the session before at the same weight, it suggests about 5% less. Otherwise, RPE 10 holds the weight and anything easier adds one step.
• Without RPE, your reps decide, and the default is to hold. Reps that climb at the same weight are left to climb. Once they reach the top of the range (12 reps on a barbell lift, 15 on others), or stay flat for two sessions, Shojin adds a step.
• The plan's reps come first. If a template or program asks for more reps than every set gave last time, the weight holds while you climb the reps.
• Every number is one you can load. A weight that is off the grid moves to the next weight on it. For example, a 9 kg dumbbell steps up to 10 kg, not 11.
• Machines snap to your own stack. In a Shojin Coach program, a machine or cable weight that your machine may not have is shown as the nearest weight you have logged on it at least twice in the last six months, when that weight is less than half a step away.

To see how the log turns into these numbers over weeks, read our guide to tracking progressive overload.

We found no trial that tested how big each jump should be. The 2 to 10% rule came from a position stand, and the 2-for-2 rule comes from coaching practice. The rep costs in this guide come from one formula, which is an estimate and is rougher above 10 reps. The strength-gain figures are a narrative summary of studies with different programs. Shojin's thresholds, such as RPE 10 to hold and about 5% to back off, are working conventions, not values a trial has tested.

Shojin is one subscription with no cap on sets. Shojin Coach is part of it: it writes your program from your own lifts and adjusts it after every session you log.

New subscribers get one month free, then A$4.99 a month or A$34.99 a year, billed by the App Store in your local currency. The subscription renews until you cancel. Cancel any time in Settings. You subscribe in the iPhone app. If you stop, your history stays, and Coach stops adjusting your program.

Every number in this article traces to one of these. Where the evidence is contested or thin, the article says so rather than picking a side.