Hey, guys. Quick recap (cause I know you get lots of questions around here), but I’m 45, have run Bridge 1.0, 2.0 and now close to finishing up HLM. I’ve been wanting to do a 4-day split, and I have the full template package. I want to split things up to make individual training sessions shorter, and to spread the stress a little more evenly throughout the week. I also feel like I am accumulating too much fatigue on 3-day/week training (specifically lower back from all the squat/dead and variations), so…
My questions is, I’m considering the 12-week template, but eliminating all 3rd movements. Without knowing more about me, any knee jerk thoughts on this?
The 12-week template is a 4-day per week program, with 3 training slots per training day. That’s 12 slots, and you are planning to eliminate 4 (i.e., 1/3) of them.
My knee jerk thought is that only doing 2/3 of a given program is unlikely to realize its potential benefit. If you are willing to experiment for the next 12 weeks and see what happens, you may in fact still get stronger, but we obviously can’t guarantee anything and generally wouldn’t recommend it. Perhaps you are inadvertently overshooting your RPE targets, or may need to slightly lower them to adjust for your fatigue issues. This is also something that tends to improve over time.
Thanks, Austin. I think overshooting RPE is a part of my issue, at least toward the end, even though I’m actively trying not to by dropping weight after the 3rd set of 5@8 for example.
My own reasoning on all this is two-fold:
First: I like the weight management scheme of the 12 week template, especially the earlier developmental lifts which are based on the initial 1@8 plus multiple drop sets based on percentage reduction. I like doing 1@8, and by my calculations the percentage reductions are less weight (at least the first few weeks of the program) than I typically do for sets of 5. I’m thinking this would provide less fatigue also maybe.
Second: On the master template overview tab it mentions “eliminating 3rd movements where applicable” for older lifters and/or new intermediates. I feel like that is me, but don’t know where it’s applicable!
Example issue: My deadlift goes from being super strong 1 week (literally) to sucking the next week where I’m forced to do much less volume than is RX’ed, or I have to drop the weight way back. The 2nd week after that might be mediocre as well before I can have another good deadlifting week. Basically I feel like I’m having little iterative 3-week patterns which are great-suck-good respectively. I’m thinking that I’m blasting my back to hard on the great week, then I need a week or two to recover before I can show progress again.
Simple (but not yet easy for me) solution: hire a BBM coach.
The 12 Week template includes a modification for adjusting it for just 3 days per week. That only drops me down to 9 slots, just like the HLM, but it would at least let me give that rep scheme a try. Would you feel better about that option?
