Wave Loading Planner

Wave loading names a shape rather than a single method: the weight climbs while the reps fall, then the pattern repeats. Two schemes share the name, and they run on different clocks.

The in-session wave happens inside one workout: two or three ascending sets — a triple, a double, a single — then a reset and the same ladder climbed a little heavier. This is the version most descriptions of the term mean. It is an advanced method and a demanding one, built on repeated near-maximal sets. Sterka does not prescribe it, and this planner does not compute it.

The across-weeks wave runs that ladder on a four-week clock instead. In the intensity block: triples in week one, doubles in week two, a 1+ rep-out at 95% of the training max in week three, then a planned deload. That is what this planner computes and what Sterka's engine prescribes — the same 3-2-1 shape stretched across three weeks rather than compressed into one session, so every rung has a week of recovery under it instead of a rest period. The volume block runs the same clock in fives and closes week three with a 3+ rep-out at 88% instead. Where near-max work is available to you, both week threes are rep-outs and only the floor and the load differ. Where it is held back — no safety bars on a barbell lift, a squat or deadlift inside your first twelve weeks, or anything on your health screen or injury notes that makes a near-max set the wrong call — week three arrives as a fixed heavy single instead, and the app says so rather than claiming a test it didn't run.

Most calculators tell you one number: an estimated max, a percentage, a working weight for today. None of them tell you what next Tuesday looks like. Progress doesn't happen in a single session, though — it happens across a block, where load rises for three weeks, peaks into a test, then eases off so the adaptation catches up. That shape is the thing a program is for, and it's what this planner draws from your one set.

The four weeks aren't arbitrary. Weeks one and two accumulate work at rising loads and falling reps in reserve. Week three is the peak — a heavy top set that doubles as a probe: what you deliver there rewrites the training max for the next block, so the wave calibrates off the bar rather than a survey. Week four is a planned deload, lighter on purpose, so week five of the next block lands fresh instead of dug-in.

The two schemes are the same wave run at different rep ranges. The volume block does its work in fives and closes with an AMRAP for feedback; the intensity block does it in triples and doubles, peaking with a rep-out at 95%. The engine runs the volume block first, then rotates to intensity — two blocks make a mesocycle, and the pair covers both sides of getting stronger: the work that builds the tissue and the practice that expresses it.

This is the whole calculation Sterka runs, on one input, for one lift. In the app it runs on every main lift at once, adjusts as your recovery and history move, and re-anchors each block off what you actually hit. Here, it's the shape — mapped out in advance, from a single set.