i’m finishing up my linear progression programming and will be starting the bridge 3.0 soon. arm accessories are foreign to me and the rep schemes for the “arm work” read like bodybuilding to my untrained eye. are these isolation movements actually useful in terms of “general physical preparedness”? will they help my bench and ohp? or are they mainly included to appease your largely masculine customers? don’t laugh, but my inclination is to replace them with glute accessory lifts. it seems odd to me that arm accessories are explicitly included when lower body accessories are not, unless day 3 counts.
would you recommend i do just arms accessories (program as written), arms + glutes, or just glutes if i don’t really care about the size of my arms? i do want to increase bench and ohp.
They can to some extent, but nothing major. This work would be programmed as non-GPP work if it was thought to significantly influence Bench and Press progress.
Yes, to some extent. People who lift generally want to do some sort of bicep work because of the premium that our culture has placed on biceps development, and this muscle isn’t used to a meaningful extent in most powerlifting or general strength training programs.
If you are aiming to compete in a powerlifting meet at the end of The Bridge: do not modify the program.
If you have not completed The Bridge once already: do not modify the program. Run through it once and see what effects it has as written.
If you have completed The Bridge and wish to grow your arms: do not modify the program.
If you have completed The Bridge and care greatly about growing your glutes: implement some sort of glute training, instead of arm training, that is periodized in accordance with the stress changes from week to week of The Bridge.
