How much weight should a beginner start with at the gym?

Start lighter than you think. For most beginners the empty bar, 20 kg (45 lb), is a sensible first squat, bench press or overhead press, and a first deadlift is often only a little heavier. The target is a weight you can lift for 3 sets of 8 with about two reps left in each set, and you find it on the day by warming up from the empty bar in small jumps.

The rest of this post covers why light is fine, what "two reps left" means, rough starting points for each lift by bodyweight, and how to handle dumbbells and machines. There is a calculator near the end.

Why starting light costs you almost nothing

The fear is wasting time. Here is the arithmetic. Say your right squat weight for 3 sets of 8 is 40 kg (90 lb) and you start at 30 kg (65 lb). If you add 5 kg (10 lb) each time you hit the top of your rep range, you are at 40 kg (90 lb) within a few sessions, and those sessions were spent learning to squat with a weight you control. That is not wasted.

Now go the other way. Start at 50 kg (110 lb), grind out 5 ugly reps, and the next morning you cannot walk down stairs. You skip Thursday. You come back the next week unsure what to put on the bar. That costs more than two light sessions ever could.

A light start does not hold you back for long. It just means the first few jumps happen on the bar, where you can see them, instead of in your head.

The American College of Sports Medicine's position stand on progression recommends novices train with loads in the 8 to 12 repetition maximum range, two to three days a week. A set of 8 with two reps left over is roughly a 10-rep-max load, right in the middle of that range. That is where the 3 sets of 8 in this post come from.

What "two reps in reserve" means

Reps in reserve, or RIR, is how many more clean reps you could have done when you stopped the set. Two in reserve means you finished 8, and 10 was possible, but 11 was not. Coaches often use it with an RPE scale, a 1 to 10 rating of effort, where RPE 8 means about two reps left and RPE 10 means none. The reps-in-reserve version of the scale was described in a 2016 study by Zourdos and colleagues and later explained for coaches by Helms and colleagues in the Strength and Conditioning Journal.

The catch is that people are not very accurate at it, especially at first. A 2022 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine found lifters underpredicted how many reps they had left by about one rep on average, with predictions getting a bit more accurate closer to failure. In plain terms: when a lifter says "two left", there are often closer to three. Helms and colleagues recommend novices practise rating reps in reserve but not base their progression only on it.

So use it as a feel, not a measurement. For a first session, "two left" looks like this: the first six reps move at about the same speed, the seventh and eighth are noticeably slower, and your depth, back position and bar path stay the same. If rep eight looked like rep one, it was too light. If rep six already looked different from rep one, it was too heavy.

The empty-bar start and the first-session test

The fastest way to find a working weight is on the day, with a warm-up ramp. It takes about ten minutes and doubles as practice.

• Empty bar, 10 reps. Learn the setup and the depth. If the empty bar is hard, it is your working weight today.
• Small jump, 5 reps. Add 2.5 to 5 kg (5 to 10 lb) total. Rest a minute.
• Another jump, 3 reps. Same again. The bar should still move fast.
• First working set of 8. Add one more step. If the last two reps are hard but clean, that is your weight for all three sets. If they flew up, add one step for set two. If your form broke before 8, take one step off.

Write down what you used. Next session you start the working sets at that weight, and from there the job is double progression: add reps until every set reaches the top of your range, then add the smallest jump. We covered that rule in when to add weight at the gym.

Starting points for each lift

The calculator below gives you a number to aim for before you walk in. These are starting points, not standards. They tell you roughly where to stop the warm-up ramp, and the ramp tells you whether they were right.

Where the numbers come from

Strength Level publishes bodyweight-based standards for common lifts, built from more than seven million qualifying lifts logged by its users. Its weakest column, Beginner, is described as stronger than about 5 percent of lifters, with correct form and at least a month of practice. For one-rep maxes, that column is 0.75 times bodyweight on the squat for men and 0.5 for women, 0.5 and 0.3 on the bench, 1.0 and 0.75 on the deadlift, 0.35 and 0.2 on the overhead press, and 0.5 and 0.3 on the bent-over row. It is community data, not a controlled study, but it is a large, public, honest floor.

The calculator below then makes that number lighter on purpose. It takes 74 percent of the estimated max, which it treats as a set of 8 with two reps left, and then takes another 10 percent off. For someone who has never trained, the tool takes 20 percent off the max first, because the Beginner column already assumes a month of practice. It rounds down to a load you can make with plates and never goes below the empty bar. If you choose "prefer not to say", it uses the women's column, which is the lighter one.

How conservative is that? A 2024 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine estimated that people do about 14 reps on the bench press at 70 percent of their max and about 9 at 80 percent. The calculator's working weight lands at about two thirds of an estimated max, and asks for 8 reps. Even if the estimate is a little high, that leaves room.

Here is what the rule gives for two people who have never trained.

Lift	Man, 90 kg (200 lb)	Woman, 70 kg (155 lb)
Squat	35 kg (75 lb)	20 kg (45 lb)
Bench press	22.5 kg (50 lb)	20 kg (45 lb)
Deadlift	45 kg (105 lb)	25 kg (55 lb)
Overhead press	20 kg (45 lb)	20 kg (45 lb)
Barbell row	22.5 kg (50 lb)	20 kg (45 lb)

A lot of those are the empty bar. That is the honest answer for a first session, not a cop-out.

Squat and bench press

Start with the empty bar for both, whatever the table says, and ramp up from there. Set the safety pins or arms in the rack at a height that catches the bar if you get stuck: just below the bottom of your squat, just above your chest on the bench.

Deadlift

An empty bar on the floor sits much lower than a loaded one, because the plates are what lift it to mid-shin. Light plates are usually smaller too. If your working weight is under about 60 kg (135 lb), raise the bar on blocks or on stacked plates so it starts at mid-shin, or use full-size light bumper plates if your gym has them.

Overhead press and row

These are the lifts where 20 kg (45 lb) can be too heavy on day one, especially the press. If you cannot get 8 clean reps with the empty bar, do not force it. Many gyms have a 15 kg (35 lb) bar or fixed-weight barbells, or you can press and row with dumbbells for a few weeks and come back to the bar.

Dumbbells and machines

Dumbbell weights are per hand. Strength Level's Beginner column for the dumbbell bench press is 0.2 times bodyweight per dumbbell for men and 0.1 for women. Run through the same rule, that puts a 90 kg (200 lb) man who has never trained at around 8 to 10 kg (20 lb) per hand, and a 70 kg (155 lb) woman at around 3 to 4 kg (5 to 8 lb). For dumbbell exercises, use the same ramp: a light pair for 10, then step up until a set of 8 makes the last two reps hard.

Machines are different. Stacks vary between brands, the cable pulleys change how heavy a plate feels, and the number printed on a plate is not always a real kilogram. A formula would give you a number that means nothing on the machine in front of you. Use a pin test instead: set the pin near the top of the stack, do 10 easy reps, move it down one or two plates, and repeat until 8 reps leaves you about two in reserve. Write the pin number down, not just the weight.

Find your starting weight

Enter your bodyweight and the lift. The tool gives a first working weight for 3 sets of 8 and the warm-up ramp to reach it.

How Barbell Bowl sets your first weights

Barbell Bowl asks six questions when you set it up, including your experience, sex, height and weight. For the main barbell lifts it estimates a first working weight with a similar approach to the tool above, rounded down to something you can load. Machines start blank, and you enter what you used, for the reason in the section above. From the second session, your own logged sets replace the estimate and double progression takes over. It is free on Android, works offline and has no ads. You can find it on Google Play.

If the first number is wrong, that is fine. Change it on the first set. A plan that adapts to what you actually lifted is the reason we wrote progression without a spreadsheet.

This is general training information, not medical advice. If you have an injury, a heart condition or another medical condition, or if a lift causes pain, check with a qualified professional before you start.