When will I bench 100?
Tell me what you lift now and what you're after — I'll estimate the month you get there if you keep training steadily.
| When | Slow | Fast |
|---|
This is a forecast, not a promise: illness, holidays, sleep and food move the dates both ways.
How I work it out
I start from your estimated max (e1RM): from your best set with the Epley formula — the same one the diary uses — or your 1RM as is. Sets longer than 12 reps don't count; the formulas fall apart there.
Then comes the weekly growth rate, as a share of your current max, with a fast and a slow end. Under six months of training — 0.8% to 1.5% a week, under two years — 0.3% to 0.6%, beyond that — 0.1% to 0.25%. The rate fades: after a year it's half of where it started, after two years a third, because every next kilo costs more. Frequency is a multiplier: one session a week with the lift grows slower (×0.8), three a bit faster than two (×1.1). These are our assumptions, not a law of nature: frequency matters more for strength than for size (the Pelland et al. meta-analysis), but nobody knows your exact rates.
There's a ceiling on top — how my diary actually moves weight: double progression adds at most one rep per workout, and a rep is about 1/30 of the weight. The forecast never gets near that ceiling, but it keeps me from promising you the impossible.
So the answer is a range of months, not a date. The table shows where you'll be every four weeks at the slow and at the fast rate. How to stay on the fast end is in the guide on progressive overload; what to do if you stall is in the one on plateaus.
Log your sets in the diary — I'll check your progress against the forecast and tell you when it's time to change the plan.