Stronglifts: How Much Weight to Start With (Android)

The Stronglifts app calculates your starting weights for you the first time you use the app.

It asks for your age, weight, height, gender, and strength level. It then recommends starting weights based on that. You can easily ignore the recommendations however and start heavier by changing the weight.

Why The Starting Weights Are Light

If these starting weights seem light, it's on purpose. We want you to progress longer by avoiding plateaus, soreness, and injury. Your body must get used to Squatting 3x/week, pressing 3x/week, and pulling 3x/week. And you must focus on using proper form. By doing this you end up progressing faster. 

If you start too heavy, you'll quickly struggle to complete your reps. You can get hurt using bad form to try to get the reps at all costs. You can also get sore and have to skip workouts early on. All of this can hurt your motivation, and make you quit the program. You end up going slower instead of faster.

Best is therefore to start light. But you can start heavier by tapping the next workout on the homescreen. Just tap the weight - tap exercise weight - then change it.

You could also stick with the lighter weights but progress at a faster rate. Instead of adding 2.5kg/5lb per workout, add 5kg/10lb instead. You can do this by increasing the increments in start workout - tap the weight - tap increments - set that to 5kg/10lb instead of the default 2.5kg/5lb. After a few workouts it will get harder to complete your reps. Decrease the increments again.

For more information, read these articles on the website...

• https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/workout-program/#starting-weights
• https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/workout-program/#when-to-add-weight

How to Calculate The Starting Weights Again

Reset the app if you want it to ask for your best lifts and suggest starting weights again. You'll start from a clean state, as if installing the app for the first time. That means you will lose all your workouts. Only reset if you don't care about the workouts logged on your device.

You can reset in menu - settings - reset.

If you don't want to lose your workouts, just change the weight instead.