The Two Speediance Settings Nobody Tells You About (But Should Be Default)

The Question That Started This

Someone posted on the Speediance Reddit asking why the machine was turning off the weight after they'd hit their rep target — even when they could do more. The first response told them to just use Free Lift mode. I think that's completely wrong advice. So I made a video.

Here's the actual answer, and the deeper lesson behind it.

Unlimited Sets: Turn It On Right Now

When you buy a Speediance, out of the box, there's a setting called **Unlimited Sets** that is turned off by default.

Here's what that means in practice: you set a workout for 12 reps, you do your 12 reps, and the machine turns the weight off. You're done. Even if you feel great and could easily do 4 more reps, the machine stops you.

That person on Reddit was doing 12 reps, stopping, skipping to the next set, and only managing 6 on that one because they were at the wrong working weight. The machine was set wrong — not them.

Here's where to fix it: **Settings → Training Preferences → Unlimited Sets → On.**

That's it. One toggle.

With Unlimited Sets on, when you hit rep 12 and keep going to 13, 14, 15 — the machine tracks those reps, updates your 1RM estimate, and adjusts your working weights upward the next session. That's how progressive overload is supposed to work on this machine. Without that setting, you're stuck at whatever weight you started with until you manually change it.

Tonal had this right from day one. It was always on by default. Speediance added it and then set it to off, which is inexplicable. Turn it on. Never look back.

One caveat: with Unlimited Sets, you can't pause for long between reps near the end of the set. The machine expects you to keep moving. That's the same behavior as Tonal. It's not a bug — it's just how the rep counting works when the machine is waiting to see if you're done.

Eccentric Mode: The Deeper Difference

Now here's the one that changes how you actually lift.

Eccentric mode adds resistance on the return phase — the lowdown, the way back, the part of the lift where you're fighting gravity. On a traditional weight, gravity is doing most of that work. Eccentric mode turns the machine into an active opponent on the way back.

But Speediance implements it differently than Tonal, and the difference matters.

**On Tonal:** eccentric kicks in when you reach the top lockout position. You go up, you lock out, and then — pop — extra resistance appears for the way down.

**On Speediance:** eccentric kicks in when you start the return. You lift up, you start to lower, and then it activates — giving you a beat to prepare before the full load hits.

I prefer the Speediance approach. If I'm at the end of a hard set and I need to hold the lockout position for a moment to catch my breath, I'm not immediately fighting eccentric resistance. I get a second. In the context of jiu-jitsu training — where I'm trying to build joint resilience at end-range positions — that flexibility matters.

Why I Run Eccentric at Near-Max

I turn eccentric mode all the way up on virtually every exercise. My reasoning: eccentric strength — the ability to resist force on the way down — is what you actually need for contact sports.

On the mat, it's not the explosive push that gets you hurt. It's the position where your arm is extended and someone's controlling it. That's an eccentric load. Your shoulder, your elbow, your hip — they're taking force in the lengthened position. If you never train that, you're not actually training for the thing that matters.

With eccentric at max, my working weights drop. At 78 pounds concentric, I'm adding 39 pounds of eccentric resistance. That means the total load on the way down is 117 pounds, but my 1RM estimation is based on the 78-pound lift. The machine doesn't account for the eccentric add-on in the 1RM calculation — it's a known quirk and I accept it. My weights read lower than they "should," but the actual effort is higher.

The important thing is that the weights go up over time. I don't care what the number says. I care that it's increasing.

The Warm-Up Setup That Actually Works

Here's the specific setup I use to get true warm-up sets calculated from my 1RM:

**Warm-up sets:** Stamina mode, 20 reps in the rep range, 13 reps as the target. What this means mathematically: the machine is setting weight at "20 rep max" while you're doing 13 — giving you 7 reps in reserve. That's warm-up territory. The rest interval I set to 30 seconds minimum (and usually skip it).

**Working sets:** I use my custom workout with Gain Muscle at 15 reps, 13 as the target. At 15-13, I'm near failure but not there — and if I hit 16 reps, I've set a new 1RM.

I run these in sequence in my workout playlist. The machine knows the difference between the warm-up blocks and the working blocks. When I come back the next session, the weights adjust accordingly.

This took me a while to figure out because the settings feel counterintuitive at first. "Stamina" sounds wrong for a warm-up — but it's the mode that gives you the widest rep range and the most distance from your 1RM ceiling, which is exactly what a warm-up needs.

The Free Lift Response

Back to that original Reddit comment: the person who said just use Free Lift mode.

If you're only using Free Lift on this machine, in my opinion, you bought the wrong device. What you wanted was a Vultra — a small add-on module that bolts to a squat rack cable and provides eccentric and chain modes without the full Speediance form factor.

The reason I didn't buy the Vultra is because I didn't want to maintain spreadsheets. That's the whole point of this machine — the progressive overload tracking, the 1RM calculations, the workout history, all of it. When I turned off my Tonal membership, I had to go back to spreadsheets to track my own progression. That was miserable. The Speediance eliminated that.

If you're going into Free Lift every session and hand-entering weights, you're maintaining spreadsheets. Just in a different app.

Learn the settings. Unlock the machine's actual intelligence. That's where the value is.

The One RM Setting Nobody Mentions

While I'm in settings, there's one more: **Training Preferences → 1RM Setting for unilateral exercises.**

The option you want is: *both sides jointly use the latest 1RM.*

What this does: when you're doing a single-arm row or a unilateral cable curl, it uses the same 1RM for both sides rather than tracking left and right separately. In practice, this means the machine uses the lower of your recent performances to set both weights — which is safer and more consistent.

If you have this set the other way, you can get into situations where your left arm is loaded heavier than your right because the machine is tracking them as completely independent athletes. For most people, that's not what you want.

Turn it on. Both sides, joint 1RM. Done.

The Bottom Line

Three settings, all buried in Training Preferences, none of them set correctly by default:

1. **Unlimited Sets → On.** Non-negotiable. This is how progressive overload works on this device.

2. **Eccentric Mode → Max (if you train for functional strength).** Your joints will thank you in five years.

3. **1RM Setting → Both sides jointly.** Keeps left/right loading consistent and safe.

The machine's intelligence lives in these settings. Without them, you're doing glorified Free Lift with extra steps.