Notes on measured training.
Short, practical writing on velocity, the eccentric, recovery, and what it takes to analyze training honestly.
How to Tell When Your 5/3/1 Training Max Is Too High
On 5/3/1 you almost never miss a prescribed rep, which is exactly why a stall is hard to see. Wendler wrote an actual test for this. Here is the test, and how to read your own logged cycles so the decision comes from your record instead of a forum rule.
Sharing your training with a coach
Coaching data belongs to the athlete, not to the coach's spreadsheet. Here's how access works in Eccentric — you keep the account, you invite them in, and you grant one kind of access at a time. Letting a coach write your programme does not let them see your sleep.
Coming Back After Time Off: What to Lift in Session One
Every article gives you a percentage to take off the bar. None of them tell you why — or how to know when you're actually back. Your training history answers both, and the second answer isn't the one you'd expect.
The getting-started guide for your Voltra: graduating from the notebook
Week one with a smart cable trainer usually means a notes app — cable length, load, curve, reps, sets, RPE, all typed in by hand. Here's how Eccentric helps you graduate quickly from manual entry to automated performance.
How to Use AI to Run StrongLifts 5×5
Use Eccentric and your AI assistant to build, schedule, log, and review a StrongLifts-style 5×5 program without handing over the decisions.
Your Vitruvian, back in a training plan
Eccentric now knows the Vitruvian Trainer — every two-cable movement, all six modes, load counted per cable the way the machine counts it, and a live connection that puts a set on the cables and reads every rep back. Program your sessions, log them, and read them next to everything else you lift.
How to use Beyond Cortex with your Voltra: a plain-English guide
Beyond Power shipped Cortex — a command-line tool that lets you (and your AI assistant) drive a Voltra directly. It's genuinely powerful and genuinely technical. Here's what it is, what every command actually does, and how to get from zero to a controlled set without a computer-science degree.
How to use Eccentric with your Voltra, end to end
Write the program in Eccentric, lift it on your Voltra, bring the measurements back, and read what actually happened. Two ways in — a plain CSV export that needs no setup, or the Beyond+ Cortex API that does it for you — and both end up in the same place. The whole loop, with real screens and real numbers.
Planning, tracking, and optimizing workouts with AI
AI won't replace knowing how to program. It's a sounding board without an ego — and once it can read what you actually lifted, it stops guessing. Here's the plan → feedback → refine loop I use, end to end.
Why we built something that reads your training instead of another tracker
Most workout apps assume a set is three numbers you type in. The moment your equipment starts measuring the work for you, that assumption quietly falls apart — so we started somewhere else.
What bar speed actually tells you
Velocity-based training sounds like a gadget feature. It's really just a way to let each day's readiness set the load — and to know when a set is done before your form does.