When & How To Test Your Strength At The Gym
If you’ve been hitting the gym with regular sessions for some time and noticing your sets and reps going up, you may well have been wondering how much weight you could lift for just one rep.
In this article I’ll walk you through how I decide when to timetable such a strength test and how to do it so that it is both fun, motivating and a safe to do.
Disclaimer* I would recommend that you test your limits under the guidance of a professional.
When Should You Test Your Strength Limits?
I usually suggest testing the limit for a heavy single rep at the end of your Novice Linear Progression (NLP) and before or just as you transition into an early intermediate lifter.
This will be the first of many occasions on your lifting journey and it’s great way to conclude and celebrate the end of you NLP.
The NLP is a phase of around 3-6 months that involves regular gym sessions of 3 visits per week. In this phase you will typically be doing sets of 3’s and 5’s, so a day of heavy singles is an enjoyable challenge to look forward to and a brief break away from the structure of normal programming.
As an intermediate lifter you can timetable in heavy single days as and when they are practical to do so. It may even be time to consider going in for your first local powerlifting meet.
Clarifying What “Novice” Means
In strength training Novice does not mean “has never lifted weights”.
I went to the gym for 10 years (without knowing how to train productively) and in the first months of proper strength training I was a novice!
Novice means that you can recover from training within 24 – 48hrs and be able to train again with an increase in weight on the barbell. A novice can literally progress 3 times a week on their lifts.
When you can no longer do this and the weights you are capable of lifting for 3’s and 5’s are much heavier, sometimes twice as much or more than you were lifting on your first week (this is normal progress on a proper NLP) then you are moving towards your intermediate phase.
Progress may now be measured once a week or perhaps even once every 2 or more weeks.
practice the Form On Your Lifts & get guidance from a strength coach
The purpose of waiting 3 – 6 months and completing the NLP means that you have also had enough time to practice the lifts and know enough about the form of the lift to be able to execute it correctly.
If you have been self-guiding throughout your NLP I would highly recommend having a coach form check some of your lifts to tidy up your form and get you ready ahead of going in to set some heavy singles and test your strength.
A mechanical breakdown in your form can limit your potential in an exercise by allowing a leverage to creep in (in the set up or the movement pattern) that will work against you.
An experienced coach will spot this immediately, cue you the correction you need (verbal, visual or tactile) and get you on track for hitting some good numbers, with a psychological spin-off of a real sense of confidence in your strength training.
This is a great way to feel and prepare in order to go into testing your strength at the gym.
Taken after Emma (competitive runner) deadlifted more than 2 x her bodyweight December 2020.
how to test your strength at the gym
Begin by picking the lifts you want to test your strength. If the list is longer than 3 lifts you may want to do this over more than one session at the gym.
I actually prefer to just pick 1 or 2 lifts maximum when I test for strength on a heavy single rep and then think out a goal weight that you would like to aim for?
A good plan is to sandwich your goal weight in between attempts at two other weights, a lighter and a heavier one.
When you go into the gym, have a plan ahead of time for what these weights will be for each lift.
Warmup for your first lift just like you should on a set of 5 for a training day, targeting your working weight of your first attempt: After the warm up take a rest, this could be anything from 3 to 5 minutes for the first single rep.
If you are not sure of a weight target to aim for then you can plan a first attempt around 5% heavier than your last (training day) sets of 3-5 reps on the selected lift, you can then go after two more attempts adding around 5% more each time.
Example: Your last set of 5 in training was 125kg.
Attempt 1: 130kg
Attempt 2: 137.5kg
Attempt 3: 142.5 – 145kg
As you perform these lifts I recommend you film each rep. Watch the clip back, observe the speed of the lift. When pulling heavy single reps the body has a way of slowing down time, does it feel like you’re moving in slow motion?
Now watch your video back, you may well notice the bar is actually moving a lot quicker than your body’s senses are reporting.
Keep the progress going on your attempts. It’s fine to increase you rest time in between and at times I have waited more than 7 – 8 minutes.
Finishing on a High
In coaching I have found it best to finish on a high during a session like this, with that in mind if you have a rep which is a new PR weight for you but moves very slowly and you truly have to grind to get it, then celebrate that number as your new limit and wrap up that lift there.
If all goes well you have made 3 successful attempts, and locked out all 3 weights for a new personal best (PB/PR) on each of your lifts and congratulations to you on those new numbers!