12-week forecast.

Without logged history, the App cannot measure your pace. The starter forecast uses an assumed weekly strength gain selected from your experience answer. Declared lifts provide working-load baselines.

The reveal shows estimated strength gain and projected loaded lifts over the training block. These are starter assumptions, not measured performance. Your saved sets establish the actual history.

After the quiz: a training plan, nutrition targets, and an estimated strength outcome over 12 weeks. Available equipment informs the plan. Review the result against the experience and lift inputs you supplied.

There is no single percentage that applies to everyone. SET’s starter forecast uses a stated assumption based on your experience answer to give your training block an initial direction. It cannot observe your future attendance, exercise execution, recovery, or response to training. The result should be read as a scenario: what the chosen growth rate would imply if it applied throughout the block.

The forecast becomes useful when you pair it with a baseline you recognize. If you entered current lifting performances during onboarding, the reveal can show projected working loads for those exercises. You can then compare future sessions with the original load and repetition context. A target is easier to evaluate when you know exactly what performance it refers to.

Do not read the estimate as a contract or a population average. The rates in the table are app assumptions, not research-derived predictions for a particular person. Two people who choose the same experience answer can have very different histories and outcomes. Recording your own sessions is how you discover which direction your performance is actually moving.

The starter model compounds the selected weekly rate across the training block: projected gain equals (1 + weekly rate) raised to the number of weeks, minus 1. A weekly assumption of 1% over 12 weeks therefore implies roughly 12.7% growth. This is a mathematical consequence of the assumption, not proof that a beginner will gain that amount.

Projected loaded lifts use the resulting growth factor and round to a 2.5 kg or 5 lb load step. In pounds, a 100 lb declared working load under the 1% weekly scenario becomes approximately 113 lb before rounding, which displays as a 115 lb target. The result also has a minimum increase of 5 lb above the rounded starting load. For a low starting load, that minimum can imply a much larger percentage than the selected growth rate: a 10 lb input has a target of at least 15 lb. Both rounding and this minimum are display assumptions, not evidence that the larger increase is achievable.

The starter lift projection includes loaded entries and selects the strongest recorded instance for each exercise name. A bodyweight movement with no positive added load does not have a positive external number to scale in this view. That omission does not mean bodyweight exercise cannot improve; it reflects what this particular working-load projection displays.

The experience answer selects the growth rate used by the starter model. New, beginner, intermediate, and advanced answers have progressively smaller assumptions. These categories simplify a much more detailed training history. They do not test your technique, verify your previous program, or measure your current response to a new routine.

Choose the answer that best reflects your actual lifting experience, then enter performances you can recognize. Inflating either input creates a less useful target. A forecast built on an old personal best after a long break is describing a different starting point from the loads you are currently using. Current, honest inputs make the eventual comparison clearer.

If you are experienced in one lift and new to another, one global experience category cannot express that difference perfectly. Treat the per-lift examples as directional. The training log preserves the more detailed exercise history that a short onboarding quiz cannot capture.

Keep the original baseline exercise and load convention consistent. If the first entry is a flat barbell bench press and the later entry is an incline machine press, a larger number does not establish that you met the same target. Likewise, switching from one-dumbbell weight to combined dumbbell weight can create an apparent jump with no corresponding performance change.

Record repetitions as well as load. Lifting a higher weight for fewer repetitions is different from lifting that higher weight for the original repetition count. The level calculator can translate a working set into an estimated one-rep maximum, but keep the actual set available so you can inspect what changed.

Check a sequence of sessions rather than one unusually strong or weak workout. A training block gives you time to observe a pattern. If your performance is moving in the intended direction but more slowly than the onboarding scenario, the log is still useful evidence. The forecast should help you ask questions about the plan rather than make a productive block look like a failure.

First check the record: were the workouts saved, are the dates correct, and are the exercises comparable? Then review what you actually completed against what you intended to do. A block with several missed sessions is a different situation from a consistent block with stalled working sets, and neither can be understood from the forecast percentage alone.

Look at whether your exercise selection, available equipment, and schedule stayed stable. Changing gyms or training at home may require different movements, so the most useful new baseline may be the first consistent sessions on that equipment. Keep that context in mind before treating every deviation from the old target as a training problem.

Avoid forcing a load increase simply because a projected date arrived. The current set is the evidence you have. Update your expectations around repeatable performance and use the forecast as planning context. SET’s readiness and strength-standard guides explain the other model outputs so you can keep timing, scoring, and prediction separate.

This page describes strength and working-load projections. A percentage increase in a modeled lifting outcome is not the same percentage increase in muscle size, lean mass, or bodyweight. Those measurements answer different questions and are not interchangeable. A stronger set cannot be converted directly into pounds of new muscle through this formula.

Physique scanning is also a separate track. A photo score does not validate the forecast, and a forecast does not guarantee a visual result. Use performance records for performance comparisons and consistent visual records for appearance comparisons. Keeping the meaning of each input clear prevents a neat number from promising more than it can support.

For the broader training evidence, ACSM’s resistance-training guidance emphasizes consistent progressive training and individual program needs. SET’s exact weekly percentages and plate rounding are product choices, not ACSM recommendations. That distinction is why the reveal labels the output as an estimate and why real saved sessions remain the record of what you achieved.

ACSM’s 2026 resistance-training guidance summarizes the evidence for training programs. The starter forecast’s exact rates are SET assumptions, not rates prescribed by that guidance.