Linear progression

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For: new or returning lifters who want to get stronger and know what to aim for in the next workout.

First action: choose a program with a schedule you can follow. Use its own increment and missed-rep rules; the examples below show why they differ.

Linear progression is adding weight to the bar every time you do a lift. Same sets, same reps, more weight. It sounds too simple to be a method, and it gives a new lifter a simple way to make progress visible. It also has a built-in end, and most of the confusion around it is about recognizing the end when it comes.

Why it works

A set of heavy squats is a stress. The body responds by recovering past where it started, which is the adaptation, and a new lifter does that in about two days. Karl Schudt, writing for Starting Strength, borrows Hans Selye’s three stages to explain it: alarm, then adaptation, then, if the stress keeps coming without recovery, exhaustion. The art is staying in the second stage: “get the right amount of stimulus, increase it over time, and don’t get too much.”

For illustration, a lifter might squat 135 lb in one session and 140 in the next. Those numbers describe a progression, not a universal recovery timetable. That gap between what you can lift and what your body needs to recover from is the novice effect, and it is wide at the start. Rippetoe’s rule follows from it: “go up on every exercise every workout for as long as you can.”

What it looks like

Three programs on this site are linear, and they add weight differently.

Program	What goes up	By how much	When
Starting Strength	The work-set weight on every lift	Squat 10 lb then 5; deadlift 15 to 20 then 10 then 5; presses 5 then 2.5	Every session
GZCLP	The weight for a lift in a tier	Squat and deadlift 10 lb (5 kg); bench and press 5 lb (2.5 kg)	Every time that lift appears in that tier and you hit base volume
nSuns 5/3/1 LP	The training max; every set is a percentage of it	5 to 15 lb depending on reps on the 1+ set	Once a week per lift

Starting Strength is the purest form: one weight per lift, up every session, for as long as that works. GZCLP runs two tracks per lift and changes the rep scheme instead of the weight when you miss. nSuns is linear by the week rather than the session, which is why it sits on the edge of intermediate programming.

A worked Starting Strength month: squat 95 on day one, 145 three weeks later, 160 by the end of week four. On GZCLP the same squat moves 10 lb each time it comes up as T1, every fourth workout, with 3×10 squats as T2 in between. Both are on their guide pages with every session listed.

Why it ends

The jump is fixed and recovery is not. Each session’s weight asks a little more of the body, and recovery between sessions covers a little less of it, until one day the bar does not go up. Rippetoe’s version: you go up “until this is no longer possible.” Schudt’s: you have left the adaptation stage and reached the one where the dose is toxic.

The timeline is not fixed either. The official Starting Strength page gives Phase 1 as “usually 1-3 weeks” and Phase 2 as “several weeks to several months.” Scott Acosta, a Starting Strength coach, says his method “produces 16-weeks of NLP at a minimum” and that he has seen lifters in their forties run six months. Anyone who gives you a single number for how long linear progression lasts is guessing.

Lifts end at different times. The Starting Strength phases cut the deadlift’s frequency first, because it gets heavy fastest, and shrink the press jumps first, because it is the smallest lift. GZCLP tracks each lift in each tier on its own for the same reason.

A miss is not a stall

The most expensive mistake in linear progression is changing the program after one bad day. The programs are explicit about it.

Acosta’s rule for Starting Strength lifters: answer the three questions before any change. Are you eating enough, sleeping enough, lifting with the same form. “Do not make a program change before answering the questions. If you identify and make appropriate changes and still miss reps, move to the next phase.” Rippetoe’s version is shorter: “Most people who do this program wrong don’t eat and sleep enough. And again, by ‘most’ I mean the vast, overwhelming majority.”

Cody Lefever’s cheat sheet for GZCLP: “don’t drop bases if you’re still getting extra reps on the AMRAPs.” Use the tier’s base-volume rule: a missed base volume changes the stage at the same weight next time. There is no two-miss requirement in the rules used by our calculator.

nSuns builds the tolerance in: a bad week on the 1+ set holds the training max, it does not cut it.

There is no shared two-miss rule across these programs. Check the context, then apply the specific program’s progression or reset instructions.

What the programs do at the end

• Starting Strength shifts phase. Smaller jumps on the presses, a light squat day midweek, deadlifts and cleans alternating. When the phases run out, a reset to an earlier phase a few pounds higher than where it ended, which Acosta prefers to a new template.
• GZCLP drops the rep scheme at the same weight: 5×3+ to 6×2+ to 10×1+, then a 5RM test and a new cycle at 85% of it. The weight keeps moving while the reps buy you room.
• nSuns holds the training max for the week. The spreadsheet gives no fixed deadline for resetting or changing programs.

Microloading belongs in this list too. When 5 lb is too much to add to the press every session, 2.5 lb is not, and 1.25 kg plates exist for the same reason. The plate calculator handles fractional plates.

When it is over

Linear progression is over when the phases, drops and resets a program offers have been used and the bar still does not go up session to session. At that point the fix is not a harder linear program, it is a different rate: weight that goes up every week or every cycle instead of every session. That is intermediate programming, and the next page is about it. The learn hub places all of this on the map.