Add Weight, Add Reps, or Deload? A Simple Decision Tree

The worst time to design your training is standing over a loaded bar, four sets deep, tired and slightly annoyed. That is exactly when most progression decisions get made, and it is why they come out random: a big jump after a good day, a program rewrite after a bad one, and no way to tell afterwards which of the two was the mistake.

The fix is not more discipline in the moment. It is having decided already.

Before the session: write the target

One line, before you touch a weight:

Squat: 3x8 at RPE 8 or below.

That is a prescription. It names the sets, the reps, and the ceiling on effort, which means the session can now succeed or fail against something. "Squat: heavy triples" cannot. Neither can a weight with no effort ceiling, because 3x8 ground out at RPE 10 and 3x8 finished at RPE 7 are different training weeks that look identical in a log that only records load and reps.

If effort ratings are new to you, RPE and reps in reserve are the same scale from two directions: RIR equals 10 minus RPE. Either works here. What matters is that the ceiling is written down before the set rather than reconstructed after it.

After your top sets: the decision tree

Run this once, on the working sets of one lift, within a couple of minutes of finishing. It takes longer to read than to use.

Step 1: Did you hit the prescribed reps, clean, at or under the effort ceiling?

Yes, and it was easier than the ceiling. Progress it, one increment, one way:

• Add reps if you are inside a rep range and have room at the top of it. 3x8 becomes 3x9 at the same load. When every set reaches the top of the range, then the load goes up and the reps reset to the bottom. That loop is double progression, and it is the default because it moves in smaller steps than a plate does.
• Add the smallest load jump you own if you are already at the top of the range, or if the lift is not run in a range. Microplates exist for this reason. Upper-body lifts usually want 2.5 to 5 lb, lower-body 5 to 10 lb.

Pick one. Adding load and reps in the same week means you cannot tell which one you could not recover from.

Yes, but it was a grinder. Reps came in at or above the ceiling: form got loose, bar speed died, the last set was a fight. Hold. Same load, same reps, run it again next week. You earned the reps but not the increment, and this is the single most commonly skipped branch of the tree. A lifter who holds here progresses for years; a lifter who adds anyway buys a miss next week and calls it a plateau the week after.

No, you missed reps. Go to step 2.

Step 2: Is this the first miss, or a pattern?

First miss. Hold once. One missed session is one noisy sample, and the reasons are usually outside the program: short sleep, no lunch, a rushed warm-up, a hard session two days ago. Repeat the same prescription next week and let it answer.

Second consecutive miss on the same prescription. Go to step 3. Two misses is the pattern; you no longer need a third to be sure.

Step 3: Is the fatigue systemic, or is it this one lift?

Several lifts are flat or sliding, and life feels heavier than the program. Deload. Cut volume by roughly 40 to 50% for a week and keep everything else the same: same lifts, same frequency, same food. The deload guide covers the mechanics, and the honest read is that when fatigue is systemic you cannot add-set your way out of it.

Only this lift is stuck, and the rest of the week is fine. Change one lever on that lift, and only one: a volume adjustment, a small intensity change, a rep-range shift, or, last, a variation swap. Breaking plateaus sets out the order to try them in and why the order matters. Stop at the first lever that gets the lift moving.

What not to do

• Do not add load and reps in the same week. Two changes, one week, no information.
• Do not make a big jump after one good day. A good day is a good day. The increment is the smallest one available, whatever the day felt like.
• Do not rebuild the program after a single miss. That is step 2 answered with a wrecking ball. You lose every comparison you had.
• Do not deload because one session was hard. A deload answers accumulated fatigue across lifts and weeks. Used as a reaction to a bad Tuesday it just interrupts a working block.
• Do not swap the exercise first. Variation is the last lever, not the first, because changing the lift resets the record you were using to judge the lift.
• Do not run the tree on a lift you did not log honestly. If the reps and the effort rating are approximations, the tree has nothing to read. That case has its own answer: hold, and say why.

This only works if the log is honest

Every branch above reads two things off your record: the reps you actually completed and how hard they actually were. Both are easy to get wrong in the flattering direction.

A rep count that quietly includes a set you cut short, or an effort rating that records the plan instead of the session, will send you down the wrong branch with total confidence. The logging guide covers the mechanics of getting sets down accurately while you train, and turning a log into a decision covers why the record exists at all: not to document your training, but to force one specific change to next week.

The bottom line

There are five endings, and this tree picks between them: add load, add a rep, cut a set, hold, deload. Hitting reps easily earns exactly one increment. Hitting them the hard way earns a hold. One miss earns a hold. Two misses earn a deload if the fatigue is everywhere, or one changed lever if it is not. Decide it from the log, before the session, and the next session becomes something you can be wrong about, which is the only way it can ever teach you anything.

Also read: RPE training · Estimated 1RM · Rest days guide · When to hold the plan · Our science page

Sources

The thresholds here are coaching conventions, not research findings, and they are written as conventions on purpose: double progression, the smallest-increment rule, one lever at a time, and a 40 to 50% volume cut for a deload are standard practice rather than numbers any trial has pinned down for an individual lifter. The evidence behind the underlying principles is cited on progressive overload and the deload guide, and the equations behind any figure we publish are on our science page. Your own log outranks all of it for your own lifts.