80kg on the squat
doesn't exist.
Why a weight on its own tells you nothing. And what a coach prescribes instead.
The argument
Monday morning. A program calls for today's session: 3×8 squats at 80kg.
But those 80kg — what are they, exactly?
Today, after five hours of sleep, that might be failure. You crack at rep 4. Tomorrow, rested, you'd hit 8 clean. Next week, after your adaptation block, that same 80kg is your warmup.
80kg has no meaning by itself. It only has meaning relative to you — that day, in that gym, with what your body has to give. And no number decided in advance can know that, because it was never watching you lift.
What a coach actually does
Watch a real coach train an athlete. You'll never see them pull out a spreadsheet and say “today is 80kg, full stop.”
You'll see them watch the athlete. Read the bar. Ask “how was that?” between sets. Adjust on the fly. They prescribe effort, not the number. Because effort is universal. The number is arbitrary.
That's why they're called a coach.
Effort is the honest unit
An absolute number is arbitrary: 80kg can be a warmup for one person and a near-max for another — and it shifts for you from one week to the next.
Effort is universal. “Stop with about two reps left” means the same thing for everyone, on every lift, on every day. You find the weight that lands there — and it's always the right weight for you, right now.
So the coach prescribes the effort, and lets the number follow.
At Trainsphere: we prescribe effort
Your Trainsphere coach will never say “do 80kg.”
Your coach will say: “push to RPE 8.”
RPE 8 means: an effort where you could still do 2 more reps if you went all the way. You find the weight that lands there — the one that brings you to exactly that effort, that day.
And week after week, your coach learns. They know when you under-rate, when you over-rate. They know Tuesday you're wrecked from work and Saturday you're locked in. They know your left knee starts complaining past a certain volume. The effort targets shift with all of that.
That's what a coach does at the bar with their athlete. Just here, by message, every week.
Program or coach
A program tells you what to do. A coach knows why.
A program gives you a number. A coach gives you a target — and learns where to set it for you.
A program is something you buy. A coach is something you build.
We didn't build a program. We built a coach.