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Your whole ladder.

Estimating a max you have not tested

Most lifters do not have a recent tested single. Testing one costs a session and carries some risk, and on exercises like Romanian deadlifts or rows nobody sensible attempts a true max anyway. So you work backwards from a set you have actually done.

Both are curves fitted to data, and they cross at ten reps. Below ten, Epley gives the higher number, by about 4% at three reps. Above ten, Brzycki pulls ahead. Either way, once you get past five reps you are measuring rep endurance more than maximal strength, and past twelve the number stops meaning much.

Garbage in applies here. A set of five with two reps left in the tank produces an estimate for a max you do not have. Take the set close to failure, or accept that the answer runs low.

Which formula to pick

Brzycki for a heavy double or triple, Epley for five reps or more. That is roughly where each was fitted, and it happens to hand you the more conservative number at both ends. They disagree by around 4% at three reps. Your bodyweight swings more than that between Monday and Friday.

The Olympic lifts behave differently

Rep-max formulas came out of the powerlifts, where the limit is muscular. Snatches and cleans fail somewhere else first. The bar path degrades, positions slip, and the set ends for reasons that have little to do with what you could hit for a single. A set of five on the classic lifts mostly tells you how well you hold position when tired.

That is why percentage work sits lower there. A squat program might live at 80–90% for weeks. Weightlifters spend most of their volume between 70% and 85%, and treat anything above 90% as a test of technique.

Rounding

Percentages produce numbers like 113.44 kg. Your gym does not stock a 0.44 kg plate.

What matters is the increment the bar moves in, and that is twice your smallest plate, because they load in pairs. With 1.25 kg plates the bar steps in 2.5 kg. Getting down to 1 kg steps takes 0.5 kg change plates.

This tool rounds down. Coming in slightly under a target costs you almost nothing. Going slightly over at 90% can cost you the lift, and then the rest of the session.

Percentages are a starting frame

The bands in the table are conventions. They move around by lift and by athlete: a well-drilled lifter holds higher percentages in the squat than in the snatch, and someone with a big engine can live at 80% through a block that would flatten their training partner.

Treat week one as a test of the max you started from. If the weights feel wrong, the estimate was wrong, so change it. Grinding through eight weeks built on a bad number helps nobody.

One athlete's ladder is a calculator. Ten athletes, recalculated every time someone tests, is the job that quietly eats a coach's Sunday. That is the part Cleanpull handles: draw the progression once, and every athlete's weights come off their own maxes.