A true one-rep-max test spends a whole training day on a single number. It asks a lifter who is already three hard weeks into a block to grind a rep long after the bar stops moving cleanly — the exact conditions where form frays and the number stops meaning much. The data point is real. It is also expensive in fatigue and risk, and on the Get Stronger goal Sterka does not buy it. Week 3 of a strength block is still one heavy rep, but it is a calibration touchpoint inside a planned wave, not a maxing session.
The four-week wave
Every strength block runs as a four-week wave: three weeks that build, then a deload — a deliberately lighter week that sheds fatigue without giving back progress. The length is fixed at four weeks, and the weeks climb in intensity toward the third.
On an intensity block, that third week is the peak, and the peak is a single
set: a 1+ AMRAP (as many reps as possible) single at 95% of your Training Max.
You take one prescribed rep as the minimum, add whatever clean reps you have, and
stop with one rep in reserve — RIR 1, one rep short of failure. Underneath the
single sit the back-offs: two sets of five at 70% of the same Training Max, kept
well clear of failure at three reps in reserve (RIR 3). This is the First Set
Last pattern — repeat a lighter opening weight for extra volume after the heavy
work. It is volume banked under the single, not a second heavy effort.
Ninety-five percent of a number that is already low
The percentage matters less than what it multiplies. Ninety-five percent is not off your true max — it is off your Training Max, a working number Sterka keeps below what you can actually lift. The engine seeds it at 90% of your estimated one-rep max (e1RM) and floor-rounds down to the nearest loadable plate, so it never rounds up past that intent.
The estimate it starts from is conservative on its own. Sterka reads your e1RM off submaximal sets left two reps short of failure, which under-reads a true max by roughly 3 to 7 percent. Stack the two discounts and the 95% single lands around 80 to 83 percent of your true one-rep max — heavy enough to drive strength, well short of a genuine max attempt. The single tests the Training Max, not your ceiling.
The arithmetic
Take a lift the engine estimates at a 100 kg one-rep max. The Training Max seeds
at 90% of that — 90 kg — and floor-rounds to the nearest 2.5 kg plate, which
leaves it at 90 kg. Week 3 asks for 95% of 90 kg. That is 85.5 kg on paper, and
no bar loads 85.5, so the engine rounds to the nearest loadable plate: 85 kg,
taken as a 1+ AMRAP at RIR 1. The First Set Last back-offs come off the same
Training Max at 70% — 63 kg, rounded to 62.5 — for two sets of five at RIR 3.
Every weight is a number you can put on the bar; the app does the rounding so you
never chase a plate that does not exist.
The single is also the progression
Here is why one rep does the work of a test day: the same rep sets the next wave’s Training Max. Clear the prescribed single by two clean reps or more and it counts as a real gain — the Training Max climbs 5 kg on a lower-body lift, 2.5 kg on an upper-body one, and never past what that single actually demonstrated. Hit the prescribed rep without the surplus and the Training Max holds; you showed you still own the load. Miss the rep at 95% and the Training Max steps down to 90 percent of itself, so the next wave resumes at a weight you can move rather than a number you cannot. Calibration and progression are the same event — there is nothing separate to schedule.
Conservative on purpose
An understated Training Max is not timidity; it is where the self-correction lives. A number set slightly low gets tested every wave and nudged up when you earn it. A number set slightly high becomes a missed lift under a loaded bar — a failure the design is built to catch early and cheaply, not let compound. The single is the release valve: it either confirms the load and moves it up, or surfaces the overshoot at one rep instead of deep in a grind.
Not every block runs the 95% single. The engine also alternates the block’s
character wave to wave. On a volume block, week 3 is a lighter 3+ AMRAP at 88%
of Training Max — a feedback check that nudges the number gently, not the heavy
re-test. The 95% single is the real calibration; the 88% set is a lighter
reading. They are not the same week, and the engine does not treat them as
interchangeable.
What it means for your week 3
Show up to week 3 knowing that, on a lift you have trained through the block, the single is the point of the session. There is no separate max-out day to plan around, dread, or recover from — the test is folded into the wave, at a weight the program already knows is honest. The one rep in reserve is the rule, not a suggestion: you stop with a rep left, and Sterka reads what you delivered. That reading sets the next four weeks.