Adaptive Weight Increase
The maximum weight / personal best that each exercise aims for should be more adaptive to the person, the exercise, and their history.
For big, compound exercises that I've been doing for years if I could get a 0.5% increase in my theoretical maximum, I'd be ecstatic. Frequently, however, when it comes time to do the full hard-day deadlifts, bench presses, or squats, the Dr. Muscle application will recommend a weight/set-size for an insane 7-9% increase in my maximum. I would injure myself even attempting that first rep of those sets; it is asking for weight far outside the bounds of what I can do and what would be safe to attempt. This leaves me selecting my own weight amounts in order to find something that pushes my limits but doesn't injure me.
These big never-going-to-happen increases sometimes crop up for other single-muscle-group exercises but bother me less there. I don't feel like I should call ahead to book a room at the hospital when attempting to curl significantly more than I can; I'll just not reach the number of reps Dr. Muscle is hoping for.
In short, it would be great if the application applied reasoning or logic such as this:
"We asked for a 5% increase last time, the user completed the set, and said he could have done 5-6 more reps. Let's shoot for another 5% this time."
Or
"We asked for a 5% increase last time, the user was only able to manage a 0.3% increase and indicated it was incredibly difficult, let's shoot for another 0.4% this time."
I'm currently using the Beta version of the product.
Answer
Hi Joseph. Thanks for your feedback. Totally understand your concern. These big increases generally happen because of custom increments. If you set your increments to 0.01 lbs/kg, you'll see exactly what the app wants to recommend. You can also increase your rep range to give the app more options to play with and find that perfect increase for you. When it can, it already works along the lines you described. So, these big increases definitely look odd. I'll have someone from the team follow up with you shortly by email. Thanks!
totally understand this one, the further your advanced and the heavier you lift, the more difficult it becomes to add even 1%
1% of 100kg is not the same as 1% of 300kg for instance that is a big difference, i too sometimes feels like the app doesn't take this in account.
The application's support team got in contact with me and was able to track down the bug. The fix should be coming out soon.
Customer support service by UserEcho
Hi Joseph. Thanks for your feedback. Totally understand your concern. These big increases generally happen because of custom increments. If you set your increments to 0.01 lbs/kg, you'll see exactly what the app wants to recommend. You can also increase your rep range to give the app more options to play with and find that perfect increase for you. When it can, it already works along the lines you described. So, these big increases definitely look odd. I'll have someone from the team follow up with you shortly by email. Thanks!