Stronglifts Plate Calculator + Setting Your Plates

The Stronglifts Plate Calculator uses the available plates you have to determine which plates to put on the bar to get to your work weight.

Example: say today's weight is 240lb. You have a 45lb Olympic Bar with 4x45lb plates, 2x5lb plates, and 2x2.5lb plates. The plate calculator will suggest you add 2x97.5lb/side. The Stronglifts app will show you an image of one side of the bar so you can see which plates to add.

How to Access The Plate Calculator on Your Phone

You can access the Plate Calculator like this:

1. Open Stronglifts
2. Tap Start Workout
3. Tap the weight

The Plate Calculator shows at the top (Pro feature).

,You can also access the plate calculator like this:

1. Open Stronglifts
2. Tap Start Workout
3. Tap/hold the weight

How to Access The Plate Calculator on Apple Watch

You can also access the plate calculator on Apple Watch like this:

1. Start your workout
2. When you see the set, scroll down
3. The Plate Calculator shows

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I add my own plates?

You can set your available plates in Stronglifts like this...

1. Open Stronglifts
2. Tap Start workout
3. Tap the weight of the exercise
4. Scroll down to Plates
5. Tap "Add Plates"
6. Enter the weight of the plate and how many you have

The plates you set will be used for any exercise you do.

Should I enter every plate I have in the gym?

No. You should only enter the plates that you want to use.

For example, your gym may have 25 and 15kg plates available. However you may prefer to only use the 20 and 10kg plates. If so, don't enter the 25 and 15kg plates. Only enter the 20kg and 10kg plates.

What amount of plates should I set?

Set the number of each type of plate that you actually have.

If you enter a higher number of plates than you own, Stronglifts could suggest plate combinations you can't use. You should enter the real number of plates you have available so that you get recommended setups that you can do with your equipment.

How do I do microloading with Stronglifts?

Say you purchased small plates weighing 1lb each. You want to progress in small increments of 2lb per workout. First add the small plates like this...

1. Open Stronglifts
2. Tap Start workout
3. Tap the weight of the exercise
4. Scroll down to Plates
5. Tap "Add Plates"
6. Enter the weight of the plate (example: 1lb)
7. Enter how many you have (usually 2)

After this, set the increments to 2lb. For more info see this: Progression Settings

How do I minimize the amount of plate switching?

Stronglifts will always suggest using the biggest plates available when adding weight to the bar. For example, if you need to lift 225 lbs, it will tell you to put 2x45lb on each side, and not a mix of smaller plates like 1x45, 1x25, 1x10, and 2x5lb. Stronglifts does not consider what plates were on the bar on your previous set. It always picks the largest ones needed for your next set.

We do this for several reasons:

• Gyms typically have fewer smaller plates available. If someone uses a lot of small plates, it makes fewer available for others. This is bad gym etiquette. So we won't suggest putting five 5lb plates on each side of the bar to save time/effort when one plate of 25lb could be used instead.
• Putting fewer plates on the bar decreases the risk of injury. Dropping weights is one of the most common causes of gym injuries (source). Say you have 25+5lb on each side of the bar. You need to put 55lb on each side for your next set. Stronglifts will tell you to remove the 25+5lb and add 45+10lb on the bar. Say you decide to keep the 25+5lb and add a 25lb plate to save effort. You do your sets. 15min later you're done, tired, and not thinking clearly. You forgot the 5lb plate sandwiched between the two 25lb plates. It's small and hard to see. You quickly clear the bar by grabbing the 2x25lb at the same time and sliding them off the bar. The 5lb you're not holding could drop on your foot. I made this mistake once. A 10lb plate felt vertically on my midfoot. It hurt for weeks. Luckily it didn't drop on my toe or it might have broken. All of this could have been avoided if I hadn't been lazy, removed the small plates, and added the big ones as Stronglifts recommends. When you put the big plate on first, and the smaller plates in descending order, it's easier to see what's on the bar.
• This method follows how the bar is loaded in the sport of powerlifting. In competitions, the biggest plates are always used when loading the bar (source). The weights used by the previous lifter are not taken into account. This makes it easier to see what plates are on the bar. It also makes accidents less likely when clearing the bar for the next lifter using different weights.

To minimize the amount of plate switching, you should only set the plates that you want to use in the app settings. We recommend leaving the default setup of 45lb, 25lb, 10lb, 5lb, 2.5lb, and whatever fractional plates you have. Your gym may have 55lb and 35lb plates too. However if you set these up, you will get more plate switching than if you disable them. Example: you warmup with 135lb using 1x45lb on each side of the bar. You need 225lb for your workset. Stronglifts will tell you to remove the 45lb and put 55lb + 35lb on the bar instead of keeping the 45lb and adding another 45lb. Again, this is how it's done in competition. If you prefer the app to give you 2x45lb, then do not set the 55lb plate.

Troubleshooting Plate Calculator Issues

The Plate Calculator shows exclamation marks for some plates

This error means that the weight you want to lift can't be done with your current plate setup.

Example...

The weight is 240lb with a bar weight of 45lb. That means you need to add 97.5lb per side or 2x45, 1x5 and 2.5lb plates. However, when looking at the plate settings we find...

The 2.5lb plates are missing. The plate calculator is therefore giving a warning that you need to add 2.5lb plates to do your weight of 240lb. You have two ways to fix this:

• Add the missing 2.5lb plates to your equipment settings. Scroll up to see how to add plates. This is the recommended solution because you'll be able to progress using smaller increments of 5lb. This is more sustainable.
• Change the exercise weight to a multiple of the smallest increment possible with your plate setup. Here the smallest plates are 5lb so the smallest increment possible is 2x5lb or 10lb. You would then need to change the exercise weight from 240 to 245lb. That weight can be done using 2x45lb and 1x10lb plates. The issue is that 10lb increments are not sustainable.

If we keep the weight of 240lb and add 2x2.5lb plates in the plate settings, then the Plate Calculator will give the correct breakdown...

The Plate Calculator says to set the bar weight lower than the exercise weight

This error looks like this...

Here the exercise weight is 15kg. However your bar weighs 20kg. The exercise weight always includes the weight of the bar because you lift it. Therefore, you can't lift the exercise weight of 15kg with your existing bar of 20kg. If you want to lift this amount of weight, you need to set a lighter bar and then the plate calculator will show. You can set a lighter bar by tapping "bar weight" at the bottom.

Alternatively, if you only have a 20kg bar, then please set the exercise weight to 20kg or higher.

I've added 2x1lb plates but the app still progresses by 5lb increments

Stronglifts increases the weight according to your increment settings. If your increments are set to 5lb, then the weight will increase by 5lb regardless of your plate setup.

The reason for this is that just because you have 2x1lb plates doesn't mean that you'd want to increase the weight by 2lb. You may decide to increase the weight by 2lb on the Overhead Press because that works smaller muscles and is easier to maintain. Meanwhile, you may decide to progress by 5lb on the Squat because this exercise works bigger muscles that can handle bigger increments.

If your increments are set to 5lb, the weight will progress by 5lb. If you've set 2x1lb plates and want the weight to increase by 2lb, you need to change the increments to 2lb as well. Stronglifts will not assume that just because you've set 2x1lb plates, you also want to progress by 2lb. You need to make this clear to Stronglifts by setting the exercise increment to 2lb.

Please see this guide on how to set your increments.