The Arnold Split in DropSet: double progression, screen by screen

Starting the program

The finder asks three questions — goal, experience, days per week — and returns a shortlist. Six days a week and a hypertrophy goal puts the Arnold Split at the top of it.

There are no training maxes to work out. Double progression runs off a working weight per lift, so the app asks what you can currently do and starts there — 145 kg on the squat for this lifter, with every accessory from the Arnold press to the wrist curls getting its own starting weight on the same screen.

The squat appears twice a week on the Legs day, which is why it is the lift this article follows and why the arc below counts appearances — six of them across three weeks.

Double progression — reps first, then weight

Every lift on the Arnold Split is prescribed as a rep range: the squat at 6-10, most accessories at 8-12 or 10-15, the calves and forearms up at 15-20. The rule is the same everywhere — the weight stays put while you add reps inside the range, and only once every set reaches the top does the weight go up and the reps drop back to the bottom.

The app does all of that reading for you. Log your sets, and it decides whether next session is the same weight with more reps to chase, or a heavier bar. Big lower-body lifts move in 5 kg steps; the smaller lifts move in 2.5 kg steps, because a 2.5 kg jump on a lateral raise is a different beast to one on a squat.

The chip beside each exercise shows the range and the rule while you train, and the PREV column shows exactly what you did last time — which, on double progression, is the number you are trying to beat.

The stall — the weight holds until you clear it

The squat opens at 145 kg and tops its range on every set, so the app moves it: 150 next time out, then 155. On the third appearance the reps fall short — and the app does the one thing that matters here: it holds. The weight stays at 155 kg for the next Legs day rather than climbing, because you didn't complete what was asked.

The next appearance clears 155 kg across all four sets, and the climb resumes — 160, then 165. One missed session never became the two-in-a-row that triggers the automatic 10% deload, so none was applied. You repeated the weight until you beat it, and the app tracked exactly where you were the whole time.

That deload rule sits behind every lift on the program, not just the squat: miss the same weight twice in a row on any of them — squat or seated calf raise — and the app takes 10% off and lets you build back through the range.

What it looks like afterwards

Six sessions a week fills the History calendar quickly, and the squat's own Estimated 1RM chart draws the shape of the block: a climb, a flat step where the weight held at 155 kg, then the climb resuming past it. That short plateau is what double progression looks like from the outside — the honest picture, not a line that only goes up.

The strength view tells the wider story: it wasn't only the squat moving. Across the same three weeks the bench pressed on from 105 to 110, the row from 92.5 to 97.5, and the Arnold press itself from 30 to 32.5 — every one of them nudged along by the same rule, reading the same logged sets.

The payoff — where the squat started and finished

Two screenshots of the same squat, the same four sets, the same screen — the block's first Legs day and its last. It opened at 145 kg and finished at 165 kg, grinding through a stall at 155 kg on the way. Nothing in between was typed in — every weight was decided by the engine from the sets that were logged. That is the case for the app in one screen.

Session 1

145 kg → 165 kg

+20 kg

Same squat, start to finish — 145 kg opener to 165 kg on the block's last Legs day, with a stall at 155 kg ground through in between. Every weight decided by the app.

Session 6