How long lifts take to stall
Kaizer stores, per client and per exercise, the current estimated 1RM and the best one ever reached. The gap between those two dates is a direct measurement of stagnation, and this is what it says.
Across 19,536 client-exercise pairs from 1,339 clients, measured between 30 July 2025 and 3 August 2026: 68% have their record in the most recent logged session, meaning they are still progressing. 17.1% have gone more than 30 days without beating it, and 5.5% more than 90 days, sitting almost 18% below their own mark. Stalling is neither rare nor universal: it is a persistent minority, and it is invisible without logging.
Time since the personal record
| Time since record | Pairs | % of total | Current load vs record |
|---|---|---|---|
| The record is the latest session | 13,285 | 68% | -1.7% |
| 1 to 30 days since the record | 2,901 | 14.8% | -8.2% |
| 31 to 60 days | 1,427 | 7.3% | -10.1% |
| 61 to 90 days | 845 | 4.3% | -11.2% |
| Over 90 days | 1,078 | 5.5% | -17.9% |
The last column is the one that matters: the longer it has been since the record, the further below it the current load sits. The client is not holding steady, they are sliding back.
By exercise
| Exercise | Pairs | % with a recent record | % stalled 90+ days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bench press | 456 | 70.4% | 5.9% |
| Incline dumbbell press | 517 | 70.2% | 4.8% |
| Dumbbell shoulder press | 404 | 71.5% | 5.2% |
| Machine chest fly | 499 | 72.1% | 5.4% |
| Lat pulldown | 593 | 69% | 6.4% |
| Seated cable row | 427 | 69.8% | 6.1% |
| Leg extension | 488 | 67% | 5.3% |
| Lying leg curl | 309 | 66.3% | 3.9% |
| Triceps pushdown | 617 | 68.1% | 6% |
| Overhead triceps extension | 332 | 66.9% | 5.7% |
| Hammer curl | 508 | 64.6% | 8.7% |
| Lateral raise | 532 | 64.7% | 8.5% |
The pattern repeats: dumbbell isolation work stalls most. Lateral raises and hammer curls double the stall rate of the incline press. It makes mechanical sense — the smallest jump between dumbbells is huge relative to the load, so a progression that is 2.5% on a press is 20% on a lateral raise.
At the client level
Across 1,165 clients with at least 3 tracked exercises, following 16.6 exercises on average, 13.9% have at least one lift stalled for more than 90 days. Put the other way: in a roster of 20 clients, 2 to 3 have a stalled lift nobody is looking at.
How it was measured
Source: Kaizer's `exercise_1rm_records` table, which stores per client and exercise the current estimated 1RM, the best ever, and the date of each. The estimated 1RM comes from sets the client logged themselves, using NSCA-derived tables. A pair counts as stalled when its best mark predates its most recent session by more than 90 days. The per-exercise table is limited to those with 150 or more pairs, so no percentage is carried by a handful of people. Window: 30 July 2025 to 3 August 2026.
What this data does not prove
- The population is clients of trainers who use Kaizer, not a representative sample of people who train in general.
- The estimated 1RM is calculated from logged sets, not measured with a one-rep test. It inherits the formula's error.
- An old record is not always a stall: it can be a deload block, an injury, or a deliberate change of exercise.
- There is no control group without Kaizer, so this says nothing about whether Kaizer improves progression. It measures how much there is, not what causes it.
- The client count here is not the platform's public metric: it is the slice that logged enough sets to produce a 1RM estimate.
Why it matters to a coach
A lift that stopped moving three months ago does not announce itself. The client keeps showing up, keeps lifting the same weight, and the conversation about why nothing is happening arrives late. It is exactly the kind of thing that surfaces on its own once every set is logged and something compares today's load against the best in the history.
