Dealing with pain during a template run

I am 45, 5’8", 188Lbs., 35"-ish waist. After years of Bro-splits, I wanted to focus on getting stronger. So I found BBM, ran Brige1.0, bought and ran Bridge 3.0 and now am running 12 week strength.

In the past, I have had lower left back pain when conventional deadlifting. I have tweaked my form (5 step setup) and learned to brace better. However, I still get bad pain when working up to 1@8 - mainly at the last few sets as I approach 1@ 8. So I chalk this up to load management (but I still am trying to get stronger, so I need the load.)

I have also nicked up my groin during a leg press set (10@9) during day 4, week 4, which also affected my loads on Day 1, week 5 for comp squats (only went to 1 @ 315Lbs, whereas the week prior was 380Lbs for 1@8. Hopefully, this will be a quick fix as my squats, unlike my pressing and deadlifts, have been progressing nicely lately.

I also nicked up my left shoulder on week one and have been drastically reducing loads for weeks 2-4 on pressing. My strength is starting to improve, but taking some time and the template is only 12 weeks.

I give you the back story to ask these more specific questions: My goal is to get stronger, but I keep getting these nagging injuries that affect my ability to push maximal lifts. What to do? Am I on the wrong template? Or should I consistently train at lower rpe’s? And how can these adjustments be made whilst using the templates so I can see progression of strength with these seemingly consistent regressions - i.e. do I stop running the template during the regressions and then start again once back to full strength?

Thanks for your assistance.

I wonder whether the jump from a 3-day template to a 4-day template was a bit more than you were prepared to handle.

In the short term, yes, our first recommendation would be to reduce the target intensities (e.g., by dropping RPE targets by 1 or 2, for example) and building things back up, perhaps a bit more slowly than you’d like, in order to better prepare yourself for the training ahead.

Thank you for the reply. Seems to be a reasonable course and one that makes perfect sense.

Would it be advisable to make these RPE adjustments within the 12 week strength template or move to say a 4-day hypertrophy template in order to acclimate to the increased volume while working with lower weights with more reps? Or can either work as long as the RPE is adjusted?

Either can work. I just wouldn’t be doing any heavy singles as part of this process.