Autoregulation with VBT.

Autoregulation is any method that adjusts today's session based on today's data instead of last month's plan. Historically that meant RPE, subjective readiness questionnaires, or the coach's eye. All of those are useful. None of them are objective.

VBT gives you an objective input on every warm-up set. That is what unlocks fast, honest autoregulation.

A well-autoregulated session uses three levers, and only three:

1. Load - driven by warm-up velocity.
2. Intensity - driven by target velocity per working set.
3. Volume - driven by velocity-loss cutoff.

Everything else in the session - bar path, tempo, rest, technical focus - is fixed by the program. These three are the daily variables.

Pick a reference warm-up load - typically 60 to 70 percent of your last known 1RM - and treat the velocity at that load as your daily readiness signal. Over time you will know your baseline.

• Faster than baseline by 5% or more - add load to today's working sets.
• Within ±5% of baseline - proceed as planned.
• Slower than baseline by 5–10% - hold load, expect the cutoff to end sets earlier.
• Slower than baseline by 10% or more - reduce load or convert the session to technical work.

Instead of chasing an absolute load, chase a velocity. "Work up to a heavy triple at 0.55 m/s" lets the load self-select. On a good day it is 155 kg; on a poor day it is 135 kg. In both cases the stimulus was the same.

Pair the target velocity with a velocity-loss cutoff to bound total volume. A rested athlete will hit more reps before the cutoff; a fatigued athlete will hit fewer. Weekly volume becomes self-adjusting.

If you make a single autoregulation change this week, make it this: pick one reference warm-up load per lift, log its velocity every session, and adjust the top set by ±5 kg whenever the warm-up is more than 5 percent off baseline. That is 80 percent of the benefit of full autoregulation, at 10 percent of the cognitive cost.