Smolov Jr Calculator

Smolov Jr is a compact specialization block that concentrates a lot of practice on one lift over three weeks. In day-to-day use, people most often apply it to bench press, squat, or overhead press rather than trying to run it for everything at once.^[1]

The appeal is simple: the template gives you a fixed weekly structure, clear percentages, and a known rhythm of work. That makes it easy to plan, log, and repeat without rebuilding the block from scratch each time.

Start with the number you want the cycle built from. If you enter a tested max, the calculator lets you reduce it first so your working base is more conservative. Then choose a progression preset, rounding increment, and optional start date.

The output table shows each session, its percentage of your base, the weekly increment applied, the rounded load to use, and the total tonnage for that day. This makes it easier to plan plates ahead of time and keep your log consistent from week to week.

One of the biggest practical issues with Smolov Jr is that people often know the headline percentages but still disagree on how much load to add each week. That is why this calculator offers conservative, standard, and custom progressions instead of pretending there is only one correct jump for every lift and every gym.^[2]

Rounding matters too. If your gym only has 2.5 kg jumps, the best usable plan is the one that matches your real setup. In practice, a clean rounded schedule is easier to follow and easier to journal than an exact percentage table you cannot load as written.

Research on resistance-training frequency suggests that frequency alone is not automatically better when total work is accounted for; what usually matters most is how the whole block is structured and how consistently it is followed.^[4]

For that reason, this page treats Smolov Jr as a structured planning template. Use it to map the block, understand the loading pattern, and log the sessions in a repeatable way.