Why your fitness app limits your starting weight

A new lifter opens the app for the first time feeling strong and ready to load up. Instead, the coach proposes a first session capped well under what they think they can handle. No history, no proof yet, just a conservative number. It can feel like the app doesn't trust you.

What the cap actually is

A brand-new account, with zero logged sessions, gets its first working weight capped to a fraction of bodyweight: about 0.75x for men, 0.5x for women or an unspecified sex. Those numbers come from published strength standards for untrained lifters, discounted further to be conservative. It's not a personalized estimate of your actual strength. It's a rough ceiling meant to keep a first session from opening too heavy for someone the app has never seen train.

The cap only limits the ceiling. Yield's warm-up ramp still finds your real working weight underneath it, the same way it would for any new exercise.

When it stops applying

The moment you finish your first real session, the cap steps aside. It applies only to a lifter with zero completed workouts. After that, the coach works from your actual training history, not a generic standard. If you already train and feel capped for more than one session, that's worth telling us about directly.

Part of starting your first month with Yield.

Yield Strength is in beta on TestFlight. Read more about what makes it different, or join the waitlist to try it yourself.