Id like to take advantage of the 3 day sale going on right now and get a template for myself. Its a little early, as I’m in the middle of the bridge v1 (just finished week 4) and was hoping to get a little bit further into it before I made the call. So help me out guys which program is right for me?
Goals (descending importance):
Maximal chest hypertrophy. Upper/Lower/Mid all included. I went through some ghastly shit as a pre-teen and have a kind of fucked up chest. It looks deflated and I think putting muscle mass on it will fix it. The bridge so far has been too light on chest work and my titties are thirsty.
Hypertrophy focus on upper back, lats, shoulders. Same reason, this should also fill out the area but chest takes precedence.
The same or less leg work as the Bridge1. If possible I’d also like to build muscle on my lower body.
Overall hypertrophy focus. I tentatively intend to do a strength program in the future, but for now I need muscle mass.
Challenging. I have the time, motivation and uhh, supplements, to really lay it down and am up for a challenging program, but temper this with the knowledge that Bridge1 has been pretty hard for me in the legs. I can barely keep up lower body.
Working on a cut would be a bonus If the program also works on a cut that would be a bonus. I could see 4-6 more weeks of bulking and then wanting to cut, but its possible I will want to continue bulking when I see where I am at that point.
Comments about The Bridge V1:
Mostly I love it and suspect that when I do a strength assessment at the end I will have gained a lot. I’m sold on RPE, specificity and volume training.
Not enough chest or chest variation for me, particularly incline. I added some work in here and there.
Very hard to keep up with legs. Right on the line for what I can handle. I like to longboard with friends and had to turn them down a few times because my legs were so wrecked. I started doing ice baths. They suck.
I miss having high rep sets in my program.
My Stats
37, Male, 6’1", on TRT, 217lb. Spent 5 years on hard consistent training and got no where after the first 6 months before getting some blood work and seeing I had low T. A year of TRT didn’t do much, new doctors adjusted me and now I’m feeling great. So I am a weird mix of experienced and weak. I ran a lot of different programs and tried a lot of things.
e1rms a week before starting Bridge v1:
Weight 212 Squat 227 Dead 285 Bench 230 OHP 150
I think no matter which BBM template you chose you’re likely going to have to make some modifications based on your goals–mostly in that your bench is already quite a bit stronger than your other lifts and you want to focus on chest more (i.e. the given volume on a template is likely to drive gains in your squat/DL/OHP but likely to be insufficient for your chest).
So you probably want to try either hypertrophy 1 or the body building template and then add sets for chest. I don’t have personal experience with the hypertrophy template so I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending one over the other.
Yeah, I’m in a funny spot with imbalance. I normally would be shooting for leg development to catch up, but I have to stay this course for a while longer. I still hope to develop legs on whichever program I pick, they just aren’t top priority.
It sounds like you have personal experience with the body building program. Does it have much in the way of barbell exercises? Or is it all isolation work? It sounds very flexible which is appealing to me.
I asked my question on the reddit BBM forum and a user there made a great case for a powerbuilding template. Any thoughts on that?
I’d say it’s half and half. There is a lot of customization on the template.
Powerbuilding is another option. The GPP peaks a little higher and there is less isolation than BB template–generally PBing is higher rep ranges on the main lifts.
The reason I didn’t mention PBing is it’s kind of a hybrid with strength and you didn’t really mention strength as a goal so I figured a program that was more on the hypertrophy side would be better.
I’ve run the bridge and PBing. I’d say PBing is roughly the same level of fatigue as the bridge on the 3 main lift days and a little more tiring on the GPP days (these peak at 10 minute AMRAPs, with 11 interveral HIIT sessions–I take the “go all out” to heart on the HIIT and I’m really spent after that).
I do agree that the 1st block of the BBing template is less fatiguing compared to either of those, even with a 4th non-GPP day (6 days a week overall).
Thanks for the help Smokes. I ended up just buying both the powerbuilding and bodybuilding programs and over the next 4 weeks ill decide on which. I’m actually leaning powerbuilding after a first look but I want to take a closer look and also see how I feel at the end of the bridge. I think you are right that BB will need some supplemental chest work from me. It looks like a great program following PB for a cut that I’m sure to need and maybe with less energy on a cut it will be perfect as is.