The short answer
Start with the empty bar, or the lightest dumbbell on the rack, and do a set of eight to twelve. Add a small step each set until eight to twelve reps feel like you have about three left. That weight is your working weight. Write it down. For most beginners this takes three or four sets and about ten minutes, and the number is right for the first week only.
This is for your first weeks in a gym, and for the first time on any exercise you have not done before.
Why start so light?
Because the first sessions are for learning the movement. In the opening weeks of a strength program, strength arrives faster than muscle can be built, and a large share of the gain is the nervous system getting better at the lift. A 2017 review of short-term training studies found that these early gains come with measurable changes in how the brain and spinal cord drive the muscle, including reduced corticospinal inhibition (Kidgell et al., 2017, Sports Medicine). You will get stronger quickly over the first month whatever you start with, because you are learning to use what you already have. So the first number is cheap. Spend it on technique.
The rep range is eight to twelve. The American College of Sports Medicine’s position stand recommends that novices train with loads they can lift for eight to twelve reps, two or three days a week (Ratamess et al., 2009, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise). It is heavy enough to build strength and light enough that a technique mistake costs nothing.
How do you find your starting weight? The method in four steps
1. Start with the bar or the lightest dumbbell. On a barbell lift that is the empty bar, 20 kg (44 lb) in most gyms, 15 kg on a women’s bar. On a dumbbell lift, a pair you could carry across the room without thinking. Do eight to twelve reps with it, slowly, and pay attention to the path of the bar and where you feel the work.
2. Add in small steps. Rest a minute, add a step, and do another set of eight to twelve. On a barbell a step is 2.5 kg a side, so 5 kg in total; on the overhead press use the 1.25 kg plates and make it 2.5 kg. The 1.25s are usually not on the tree. Look in the box with the collars, or ask; every gym has them and almost nobody uses them. On dumbbells, the next pair on the rack. Keep going.
3. Stop when a set of eight to twelve feels like three reps in reserve. You finish the set and know you could have done about three more with the same form, and not many more than that. The bar slowed slightly on the last two reps but never stalled. That is the working weight.
4. Write it down. The exercise, the weight and the reps, before you move to the next lift. The number is the point of the session; the sets were how you found it.
Where should you start on each lift?
These are first-session starting points, not targets. They come from coaching practice; I cannot point you to a trial that tested them, because nobody has run one. They are deliberately on the light side, and you adjust them in the first set using the method above. The deadlift starts higher than the rest because the bar needs full-size plates on it to sit at the right height; use 10 kg bumper plates, or raise the bar on blocks if your gym only has small ones.
| Exercise | Under 60 kg body weight | 60 to 80 kg | Over 80 kg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goblet squat (one dumbbell) | 8 kg | 12 kg | 16 kg |
| Back squat | 20 kg (the bar) | 20 to 30 kg | 30 to 40 kg |
| Deadlift | 30 to 40 kg | 40 kg | 50 to 60 kg |
| Bench press | 15 to 20 kg (the bar) | 20 to 30 kg | 30 to 40 kg |
| Overhead press | 10 to 15 kg | 15 to 20 kg | 20 to 25 kg |
| Dumbbell row (per hand) | 8 kg | 10 to 12 kg | 14 to 16 kg |
| Lat pulldown | 20 kg | 25 to 30 kg | 35 to 40 kg |
If a number in the table is too heavy for a clean set of eight, it is wrong for you and the table loses. Drop a step and carry on. Body weight is a rough guide to limb length and muscle, and people who weigh the same start in very different places.
A worked example
You weigh 70 kg and it is your first bench press.
- Set 1: the empty bar, 20 kg, ten reps. Easy. You notice the bar wants to drift toward your face, and you fix it.
- Set 2: 30 kg, ten reps. Still easy. The last rep looks like the first.
- Set 3: 40 kg, ten reps. Real work from rep seven. You could have done two or three more, not six.
- Stop. Working weight: 40 kg for eight to twelve. You write “Bench 40 × 10”.
That took three sets and about eight minutes, and the third set counts as your first working set. Next session you start with the bar and 30 kg to warm up, then do your sets at 40.
Notice what you did not do. You did not test what you could lift once, and you did not add 10 kg because 40 sounded low next to the person on the neighbouring bench.
The two mistakes
Starting from a friend’s weight. Your friend’s 60 kg bench has their arm length, their months of practice and their shoulders behind it. None of that transfers. Starting from their number usually means a first session with the range cut short, reps that grind, and a week of soreness that teaches you nothing except that the gym hurts. Start from the bar and you reach a sensible weight in ten minutes with your technique intact.
Starting from a 1RM calculator. A one-rep-max calculator estimates your heaviest single from a weight and a rep count you have already done. On day one you have done nothing, so the number you type in is a guess, and the percentages a program hangs on it are percentages of a guess. Programs written in percentages are for people with a log. For the first weeks, find the working weight by the method above and let the percentages wait.
What if the first set was too easy, or too hard?
Adjust the next set, not the whole session. If a set of ten with 40 kg felt like you had eight reps left, add one step, 5 kg on a barbell or one pair of dumbbells, and do the next set. If a set of ten with 40 kg stalled at seven, take one step off and do the next set at 35. Do not throw the plan out and start over, and do not jump 10 kg in either direction. One plate at a time keeps you close to the right answer, which is only ever one or two steps from where you are. If I had to choose, I would have you finish day one a step light rather than a step heavy. Light costs you one session. Heavy can cost you the week.
The same rule works between sessions. Too easy in session one becomes one step up in session two. Once you have a working weight, the warm-up sets calculator gives you the ramp up to it.
How does the weight move after the first week?
By what you did, not by what you planned. For the first few months most beginners can add a small step most sessions, 2.5 kg on squat and deadlift and half that on bench and press, for as long as every rep still looks like the first. When the steps start to fail, the step becomes a percentage of the load, around 2.5% at most in a week, and reps at the same weight count as progress too. How much weight to add each week covers that in detail, and the 12-week program for beginners runs it from the empty bar through week 12.
What does BurnX do with the first set?
The first set you log on an exercise becomes the base the app progresses from. There is no 1RM test and no guess from your body weight. From there, each week’s working weight is set from what you actually lifted the week before: up when you did the work, a hold when you did not, with reps as the work. No step passes the hard ceiling. How BurnX decides next week’s weights has the rest.