Feature

Progressive Overload Tracking

Progressive overload is the foundation of strength training: gradually increasing the demand on your muscles over time. Plates tracks this automatically and tells you exactly when to add weight, how much, and why.

How it decides you're ready

The suggestion engine looks at your recent sessions per exercise, not a simple "hit 3x8, add weight" rule. It reads the full picture:

Nine suggestion types

Progressive overload is just one signal. The engine generates nine distinct recommendation types based on your data:

Suggestion	What it means	When it triggers
Weight increase	Ready to add load	Hitting your rep target at a stable, controlled effort
Rep increase	Add reps before weight	Below rep target but effort is low
Deload	Time to recover	Estimated 1RM slipping against your personal threshold
Fatigue warning	Back off slightly	RPE rising without load change
Plateau detection	Stuck at the same weight and reps	No progress across several sessions at stable effort
Hidden progress	e1RM climbing quietly	Gaining strength you can't see in raw numbers
Too light	RPE consistently low	Effort sitting below your target zone
Volume hold	Stay steady	Recent increase, need to consolidate
E1RM gain	Estimated max improved	Significant jump in calculated strength

Real scenarios

Equipment-aware weight jumps

Plates rounds every suggestion to a jump you can actually load. It uses sensible increments for the equipment type, smaller steps for dumbbells and isolation work, larger steps for barbells and machines, so the next weight is always realistic rather than a number you can't build on the bar.

It also respects your gym's configured plate inventory, so it never suggests a weight you can't actually build.

Context-aware intelligence

Every suggestion adjusts based on your current state:

• Diet phase: more conservative during a cut, more aggressive during a bulk
• Program phase: suppresses progression during deload/test weeks
• Session readiness: suppresses all progression on a rough day
• Training history depth: waits until it has seen enough of an exercise before suggesting anything

On-device, always private

All analysis runs locally on your phone. Your training data never leaves your device for suggestion computation. No cloud machine learning, no data harvesting, no internet connection required for suggestions to work.

What's free and what's Pro

The full suggestion engine, all nine types, weight-increase and deload prescriptions included, is free. Every lifter gets the same coaching out of the box, using science-based default thresholds.

Pro adds the personalization layer on top:

• Adaptive Learning: on-device machine learning learns your personal grind RPE, progression rate, and fatigue tolerance, then tunes every suggestion to you. The Progress hub's Adaptive tab shows the learned values and a "see the math" breakdown.
• Per-exercise progression schemes: pin how each lift progresses (reps then weight, add weight each session, match a target effort with RPE autoregulation, or hold). Free users get the automatic default; the training-goal rep-range pin stays free.