Enter one exercise — sets, reps and the load on the bar — for the tonnage it came to.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
Total volume is the kilograms you moved: sets × reps × load, added up for one exercise. Four sets of ten at 60 kg is 2,400 kg. That is external work, and it is all the figure claims to be.
Pointed at one lift over time, it earns its place. Hold the exercise, the rep range and roughly how close to failure you finish, and a rising tonnage is progressive overload with a number attached. Four sets of eight at 80 kg is 2,560 kg. Six weeks later, the same sets and reps at 87.5 kg is 2,800 kg — just over nine percent more work in the same shape of session.
It is not hypertrophy volume, and the two get confused constantly because they share a word. Five sets of ten at 100 kg and ten sets of five at 100 kg are both 5,000 kg. They are not the same session: different set counts, different rest, different fatigue, different amounts of work done near failure. How much a muscle should get in a week is a count of hard sets, and that has its own calculator.
The rep total sitting next to the tonnage is a check, not decoration. Two sessions can land on the same kilogram figure with completely different rep counts, and when they do, the tonnage has stopped saying anything useful on its own.
Total volume (kg) = sets × reps × weight Total reps = sets × reps Both are reported, because the first can sit still while the second moves.
Five sets of eight back squats at 100 kg.
Both read 4,000 kg. One is forty heavy squats, the other is eighty at half the load, and the only field separating them is the rep count beside the total. The tonnage alone cannot tell you which of the two you did.
Two different things, which is where the confusion starts. On the gym floor it usually means volume load — sets × reps × weight, the tonnage this page calculates. In the hypertrophy literature it usually means the number of hard sets a muscle receives per week. One word, two quantities, and they do not convert into each other.
No. It rises whenever any of the three terms rises, and adding reps at a lighter load raises it faster than adding weight does. Three sets of twelve at 80 kg is 2,880 kg; five sets of three at 150 kg is 2,250 kg. The lighter session wins on tonnage, and nobody would call it the heavier one.
There is no published tonnage target, and a page that hands you one has invented it. The figure depends on the lift, your bodyweight, your training age and what else the week contains. It exists to be compared with your own last block, not with a benchmark.
Either rule works provided it never changes. Most lifters count working sets only, which keeps the figure closer to the work that was genuinely hard. Whichever you choose, write it down — a trend is worthless if the counting rule moved inside it.
Not reliably. The dose-response evidence for growth is built on weekly hard sets per muscle rather than on kilograms lifted, and a high-rep session at a light load can out-tonnage a heavy one while doing less of what drives the adaptation. Read tonnage as a record of external work; count sets when the question is growth.
This tool cannot, because there is no external load to enter. Either track reps for those lifts and leave kilograms out of it, or enter only the weight added at a belt and accept that the number describes the belt rather than the set.
Not usefully. Their leverages, bodyweight and exercise selection all sit inside their number, and none of them sit inside yours. This measure compares a lifter with their own past self, and that is the only comparison it was built for.
A coach watching the set can tell you whether last week's extra 400 kg was progress or three rushed reps at the end of it. Book a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal.