12 Week Strength Program Volume

I’ve recently finished SSNLP and am currently entering week 4 of the Bridge 1.0. Here are some stats if it provides you with some background:

Age: 42
Started SSNLP in December 2017, ended earlier this June (my run was lengthened due to illness and surgery)
Height: 5’11”
Weight: started at 168, currently at 188
Squat: started at 125, currently at an e1RM of 285 or 290 (obviously not a great responder, but I’ve still seen steady but slow progress)

Here’s my question. The four day volume of the 12 week strength program seems markedly higher than the Bridge (so far the Bridge volume is challenging but recoverable for me so far). I’d love to start competing at some point, and I’d love to get as strong as possible over the long run. Based on my age and mediocre training sensitivity, should I make modifications proactively to the program such as shifting to the 3 day version? If not, what are my leading indicators that would lead me to making modifications during the course of the program? Feel free to tell me to suck it up and train harder to get stronger.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for putting out such a thoughtful product.

First: 42 is not “old”.

With that said, based on your situation, you may simply require a bit more than 8 weeks to adapt to handling those 4-day volumes of training. (And in fact, you may not actually need it yet). You could consider using one (or more) of our other 3-day templates (or some folks repeat the Bridge if they respond well to it) so you can build this work capacity up. Then at some point down the line when you deem 4 days of training to be necessary, you tackle it.

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