How much weight should I add to the bar each week?
Add weight when you complete every prescribed rep with good technique, and add a small amount — roughly 2.5% on big lower-body lifts, and less than that on upper-body lifts, where the same percentage is a much larger share of the total. In practice that is often the smallest pair of plates available.
Adding more, or adding on a week you did not complete, is how a program stops being completable — which ends progress faster than adding nothing.
Why
The instinct is to jump when a session felt easy. The problem is that a single easy session is weak evidence — it might mean you are stronger, or that you slept well. Progression rules exist so that a good day does not rewrite the program.
Upper body moves slower, and that is normal. A 5 kg jump on a squat is a small step. The same 5 kg on an overhead press can be a tenth of the lift. Expecting both to climb at the same rate is how the press stalls first.
Progress is not only load. An extra rep at the same weight, a cleaner rep, a slower lowering phase, a shorter rest — all are progress, and all matter when the bar is not ready to move.
In Train Smart the block owns the prescription: the four-week structure decides the reps, and what you logged can confirm the weight should rise or withhold it — it cannot invent a jump on its own.
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OpenA program that already answers this for you
Train Smart builds your week around your sport, your season and the days you actually train — with the weight to put on the bar on every set, and the reason each movement is there.
One month free, then A$24.99/month. Cancel any time. iPhone and iPad.