Grinding Out LP

TLDR: At what point is grinding out reps on the Starting Strength Linear Progression not worth the potential risks (e.g. injury, making better / more sustained progress on intermediate programming)? Furthermore, is there any value – mental or physical – of grinding out maximal or near-maximal sets of 5 on SSLP (RPE 9.5-10)?

I posted in this forum approximately 2 weeks ago for an opinion regarding the transition phase from novice to intermediate programming. I was advised to follow the Bridge program just on the “intermediate-level” lifts, while running the SSLP on the other “novice-level” lifts.

I am “feeling” like my squat is about to stall anytime now, but I have doubts on my ability to accurately rate RPE for this particular movement. Here’s the last set of squats for my most recent workout. They definitely felt like an RPE 9 or higher, and I definitely think that the set was a max effort, but I can’t say my eyeballs were about to pop out (e.g. Dr. Baraki’s profile photo). I’m already resting 5-6 minutes between sets (First of First 3 Questions)

Background:
As mentioned in the previous post, I am a sixteen-year-old male with approximately 1.5 years of resistance training experience, a portion of which was not the most productive. I was pretty sure that my bench, press, and deadlift were at the “intermediate” level prior to starting SSLP. This was not based on arbitrary strength standards, but based on the fact that I had obviously already attempted to progress linearly with very similar volumes as found in SSLP. Furthermore, these lifts had been trained consistently throughout my 1.5 years of training experience. However, my low-bar squat was not, and therefore I knew that I would benefit at least to some degree from SSLP (which also explains why I have trouble rating RPE on the squat, but not the upper body lifts).

Starting SSLP January 1/9 with conservative weights (Second of the First 3 Questions)
Height: 5’9" Weight: 138lb

Squat: 155 (previous high bar squat was 195x5x5)
Bench: 125x3x5 (previous PR was 140x3x5)
OHP: 77.5x3x5 (previous PR was 89x5x5)
Deadlift: 225x5 (could do 275x5 fresh at RPE of around 6)

As of 2/7:
Height: 5’9" Weight: 140lb
I’m confident that the 2lb increase is not just “noise” from weight fluctuation. I’m definitely in a net hypercaloric state, so Question 3 is taken care of (eating enough).
Squat: 220x3x5 (definitely made progress here)
Note that after 215x3x5, I started progressing up 2.5lb 3 times per week, as per the instruction of an SSC

Bench: Did 140x2x5 on 2/5 → no significant improvement, but cannot say any regression (meaning 3 sets of bench press every 4-5 days is my “Maintenance Volume”)
Knew I would not get third set, so dropped load to 133 for 3x5 (first workout moving from 3x5 to 5x5)

OHP: Was up to 87.5x3x5, just reseted weight to fix my form*
Deadlift: 280x5 (after 275x5 SSC told me to switch to 5lb increases)

*I saw an SSC in person twice (Kelly) – all my lifts were correct for the most part, except my OHP definitely had to be fixed

Long story short, what’s the “cost” of leaving some gains – say 5-10lbs – on the SSLP? Does that even matter, if all other lifts would benefit from intermediate-level programming?
Furthermore, have I just not handled any near-maximal loads on the squat, and therefore am reporting RPE 9 on something that should be more like a 7?

I apologize for the long-winded response, and I greatly appreciate your help (and nuance)!

Hi there,

To directly answer your question: IF the trainee is indeed imminently going to fail weights within the next 5-10 lb increment on LP, then the difference in long-term outcomes between moving to intermediate style programming vs. actually pushing to that failure point is negligible.

However, the caveat here is that novices in the early stages of their training are not particularly good at knowing how close to failure they actually are, and often over-estimate the difficulty of their sets. Your squats looked challenging (though there are a few technical issues - descending a bit slowly, squatting too deep and muffling your bounce, lifting the chest during the ascent), but were not 10/10 grinders, either. This is part of the “mental” argument for pushing further, so you can actually learn what that @10 effort feels like (though the risk / benefit balance of that is itself a separate discussion).

Finally – and I’m sure you know this – but if you want to get strong at your height, you really, really need to gain some weight.

Thanks for the response.

I have also noticed technical issues in my work sets, which makes me think that even if I rated the set at an RPE 10, the set doesn’t truly represent a maximal effort. Furthermore, I’ve observed that the errors in my squat form differ from set to set, and from session to session. Ironically, in my last session, my hips actually shot back on the concentric portion of the lift, and I had to almost “good-morning” the weight up on multiple reps. The week before that, Coach Kelly noted that my depth was borderline acceptable on some reps.

If I’m still completing the prescribed sets and reps with this degree of form “fluctuation,” I probably am – as you mentioned – overestimating the difficulty of my sets. That said, I would (almost contradictorily) think that novice lifters would exhibit some degree of form breakdown in true max effort attempts. Perhaps this is related to experience, as circa-maximal singles appear quite “easy” for top powerlifters, at least based on the bar velocity.

As for the risk/benefit analysis for true RPE 10 sets, I wonder if I am even “strong enough” to injure myself on the squat. If not anything else, a form deviation with 495 should be more costly than one with 225. However, not all injuries occur during working sets, so that argument seems to fall apart.

Just my thoughts. Thanks again for your help!

Yeah, that 2 lbs may not have been noise, but even if that’s true, it’s still only 2 lbs. You’re not going to immediately get to 200 lbs and jacked next month, but you need a bit more than 2 lbs per month from where you’re currently at.