Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may transmit, to a base station, control signaling indicating a capability of the UE to apply an amplitude control procedure to one or more antenna elements for beamforming and indicating that the UE is applying the amplitude control procedure. The UE may receive a control message scheduling transmission of an uplink message. The UE may generate a signal including the uplink message using the amplitude control procedure, which may adjust one or more amplitudes of the signal. The UE may transmit the signal via the one or more antenna elements. In some cases, UE may indicate an amount of power loss in the signal based on the amplitude control procedure, and the base station may transmit downlink transmissions using a lower order modulation and coding scheme or an applied power boost to compensate for the power loss.