What a 1RM is for

Coaches use a 1RM to anchor training percentages and to track strength over time, and the test earns that job because it repeats: when the thirty-two reliability studies retested people days apart, scores typically landed within a few per cent of each other regardless of experience, sex, age, or whether the lift was upper or lower body. You see a number, but your coach is mostly watching the trend and the technical quality of the lift.

What the protocol looks like

• Progressive warm-up sets first. The professional rugby protocol used three sub-maximal sets of three to five reps at half, sixty and seventy per cent of perceived max.
• Then single attempts climbing in load until the max is found, most study protocols allowing between three and six attempts.
• Full rest between attempts. Study protocols ranged from about one to five minutes, and the rugby testing rested around three.
• A spotter or safety bars on every heavy attempt, and a coach who ends the protocol early if form breaks down.

What professional players actually lift

These averages come from thirty-nine professional players in a New Zealand Super Rugby squad, tested at the end of pre-season and rounded to the nearest kilogram. Players squatted front or back to parallel and benched to the chest, and the chin-up figure is body weight plus the added load on a dip belt.

Reading changes in your number

Small movements on a retest can be the test rather than the training. In the retest studies where scores did shift, they shifted upward as people learned the test, by around five kilograms at the median for lower-body lifts and around two for upper-body lifts. So treat a change inside that range cautiously and trust the changes that are bigger and hold across sessions. Between true max tests, coaches can also estimate a max from bar speed at lighter loads, but the accuracy of those estimates depends heavily on the method, so treat an estimate as a steering number rather than a record.