My experience with the Bridge 1.0's first day and a few issues that I need help with

[GorkemSahin]

So I gave the Bridge a try today, but my main issue was figuring out what weight I was supposed to use for the given RPE on the program. First sets felt too easy and I failed the last reps of last sets of what was supposed to be an RPE 8.

Furthermore, during the SS NLP I'd know that the last rep of last set of squats was going to feel like shit, and it always did, and I'd grind and grind and grind till I complete the rep. That'd give me the feeling of accomplishing something. After completing a set at RPE 8, it felt like I didn't get anything done today.

The accessory movements like rack pulls were also challenging as I had never done them before. How do we know what would be RPE 8 at 7 reps if we never really did that exercise before?

Last question, it was a fiasco for me at the gym today since the exercises either felt too easy or were failed when they were not supposed to be failed. Should I repeat the first day or get moving to the second one?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

GS,

Thanks for the post and I hope you're well. Sorry to hear you had this experience on your first day of The Bridge.

That said, we expect the first couple of sessions using RPE to be a learning experience. We provide a significant amount of resources for how to go about doing this in the free eBook accompanying the program. I would recommend re-reading that and continuing to rate RPE. We find most people can get this down in a few weeks and being super accurate isn't a necessity really.

We do not feel that the "grinding" in LP is productive, as evidenced by the fact that it stops working shortly thereafter. Rather, there's a stress/adaptation mismatch- the stress being greater than the potential adaptation. We think you should avoid this and train smarter. I assure you the sessions will become more difficult as volume is added, but we fundamentally disagree with the idea that every session should be "very hard", as this tends to portend bad outcomes.

For unfamiliar exercises, we recommend working up to the prescribed RPE and rep range, as there is no way to predict how much weight you'll be able to use based on any other exercise. So, like the ebook describes in great detail, you would do sets of 7 up to a weight that felt like RPE 8.

Finally, no- your session today wasn't a fiasco- it was a learning experience. I would just move on with the next day of training.

[GorkemSahin]

Thanks a lot sir.

[element-zero]

I'm in the same boat as you. I simply start with the empty barbell at the prescribed reps and keep adding weight to the bar until it feels like an RPE 7. Then I increase the weight in smaller increments and rate each set. I've found that I usually add less weight than I should have, it turned out to be 7.5 instead of 8 for example, then I simply add a bit more and repeat the set. So I might do 4 sets of 5 rated at RPE 7, 7.5, 8, 9.

When you're used to weights going up every time, it was quite frustrating for me when they stopped doing so. And having to hit a specific value with no respect for how you're feeling that particular day was kinda stressful. After my first few workouts with RPE, I have to say this kind of training is really liberating.