How LIFT decides your weekly volume
LIFT Hypertrophy sets how many sets each muscle gets per week. It changes that number once a week, from what you logged and how the week felt, and it tells you why.
What LIFT reads
- The sets you log. Weight and reps, including any reps or sets you missed.
- How many you had left. One optional tap after an exercise's last set: 0, 1, 2 or 3+.
- Soreness. Asked before you start, for the muscles you trained last time.
- Pump, workload and joints. Asked after the session. Pump per muscle, workload and joints once for the whole session.
Deload weeks ask nothing. That week is for recovering.
When it changes
Only when a week is done, meaning every session in it is logged or skipped. Until then every muscle holds. Nothing moves while a week is still running.
The range every muscle lives in
Too few sets and a muscle holds steady. Too many and fatigue eats your recovery. In between is the range where it grows, and it's different for your chest than your calves, and different this month than last.
LIFT shows each muscle on a bar with three marks:
- MIN: the least that still grows you.
- GOOD: the productive middle.
- MAX: the most you can recover from.
Research on training volume supports the shape of this: more weekly sets tend to build more muscle, up to a point that differs from person to person.
The rules it follows
- A muscle that finished fresh and recovered well gets more sets.
- A muscle that's working hard and still recovering holds.
- A muscle that's beat up, still sore going in, or buried by the workload loses sets.
- Sharp joint pain takes a set off that muscle, and the explanation suggests swapping the exercise.
- No answers is never read as easy. Without them a muscle can't gain sets, though it can still lose one if the log shows missed reps or skipped sets.
- Every block ends with a deload week: half the sets and a little less weight, so fatigue clears before the next block.
An example week
| Muscle | What you told it | Next week | What LIFT says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chest | Finished fresh, recovered well | 1 more set | Your chest work finished with reps in the tank and soreness cleared right on time. That's headroom. Adding a set. |
| Shoulders | Sharp joint pain | 1 set fewer | You flagged sharp joint pain training shoulders. That's the movement, not the muscle. Easing off a set and holding there, and swap in a variation that loads the shoulders without the pain before I add anything. |
| Quads | Still sore going in, workload too much | 2 sets fewer | You flagged the quads workload as too much and you were still sore days later. Backing off 2 sets so you can catch up, then I raise it again. |
| Back | No answers, every rep logged | Held | I didn't get your feedback for back, so I'm holding it where it is. |
Example only. Your numbers come from your own log.
Weight and reps
Inside each exercise LIFT uses double progression. Reps climb inside your rep range. When your best set hits the top of the range, the weight goes up by that exercise's smallest step. If one plate would be too big a jump, reps keep climbing first.
Why it shows its work
Most apps that adapt hand you a new number. LIFT hands you the number and the reason, taken from your own log. If you disagree, you can see enough to argue.
Sources
- Schoenfeld BJ, Ogborn D, Krieger JW. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass. Journal of Sports Sciences, 2017;35(11):1073–1082.
- Baz-Valle E, Balsalobre-Fernández C, Alix-Fages C, Santos-Concejero J. A systematic review of the effects of different resistance training volumes on muscle hypertrophy. Journal of Human Kinetics, 2022;81:199–210.
- Zourdos MC et al. Novel resistance training-specific rating of perceived exertion scale measuring repetitions in reserve. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2016;30(1):267–275.
