How To Choose The Right Weight

Which came first; the chicken or the egg?

Which came first; the weight you want to use or how many reps you want to do?

^^That sounded way better in my head^^

The serious- and timeless- question awaits...how do I know what weight to use when I work out?

I approach weight selection like this, assuming you are going to be doing multiple sets of the movement.

If you're doing 2-sets of an exercise, it would look like this

Set 1) Exploratory...choose a weight you know is going to be crazy easy...this is probably something under 20 pounds.

Set 2) Trainable...based on how hard you thought your exploratory set was...increase the weight and use that as your training weight for this workout.

But Casey, what if my training weight was still too easy?

Chill. Chill. I'll get to that in a minute.

If you're doing 3-sets of an exercise, it would look like this

Set 1) Exploratory...choose a weight you know is going to be crazy easy...this is probably something under 20 pounds.

Set 2) Warm up weight...choose a weight that is more than your explore set, but is going to allow you to practice the movement safely.

Set 3) Trainable...based on how hard you thought your warm up set was...increase the weight and use that as your training weight for this workout.

If you were doing 4+ sets of an exercise, all you would do is continue to adjust your weight from the set before (set 3...) so that you are working close(er) to a more intense weight.

Remember your follow up question, what if the training weight is still too easy?

This is the secret sauce to working out, so listen closely.

If the weight is too easy, you need to write a little note to yourself on whatever you track your workout with. That note should look something like this...

"Did {exercise name} with 20 pounds. It was easy and probably could have done 5 more reps with this weight. Next time start with 25 pounds"

The secret sauce is that you can't dial in your training weight from 1-3 sets in 1 standalone workout.

When I work with online personal training clients, they receive their program on 4-week blocks. This allows them to train like this...

Week 1: New program, do it, make sure you like it, the workouts fit your desired length, and you experiment with starting weights. This week has lots of little notes like the one you see above.

Week 2: Based on the feedback and weights used in week 1, dial in the weights 1 step further.

Week 3: Training week! After two weeks you have the weights dialed in and you are confident in both the movement and weights to be used.

Week 4: Reach week! After the previous week of training, this is the week where you are ready to go and can maximize each set to be most effective.

Then it's back to week 1 - but the workout doesn't completely change- rather, we can continue to take the weights used, preferred movements that you like, and continue to build progress towards your strength goals.

But it all starts with that little note to yourself way back on the first week of your workouts.

Those little notes are reminders to your future self on what to do- they help maximize your workouts so that your future self can kick ass in the gym.

Pretty cool.

Too long, didn't ready summary:

When you're picking a weight, take a multi-set approach. Set 1 should be silly easy. Set 2 should be a little harder. Set 3 takes that input from set 2 and looks to more closely optimize it. Then write yourself a note about how set 3 felt and what you would recommend your future self start with next time you work out.

^^Do that over, and over, and over again.

If you struggle with knowing what weight to use, or how to track your workouts week to week and month to month, I want to invite you to try my online personal training program. In my online personal training I work with you - fully remote - to help eliminate the mental fatigue that comes from 'wondering what to do'.