Help with Wife's Programming

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Thank you guys for the great content you put out. A little background: My wife is 12 weeks postpartum and has been exercising consistently for the past 6 weeks. She’s been doing HIIT 3x per week as part of a 12-week exercise program she bought last year before we found out she was pregnant. I’ve had a basement gym since late August and she’s wanted to get into barbell training since seeing me train at home, so I set her up on novice LP. She’s been doing LP for about 5 weeks. Now that she’s going back to work, she feels like she’s getting burned out from HIIT 3x per week and also lifting 3x per week, which I totally understand. Based on the BBM material I’ve seen, she would probably be best off sticking with LP and reducing the HIIT. But finishing this 12-week HIIT program is really important to her mentally, so she’s going to cut back on strength training. She agreed to still do 2 days per week of strength training as long as the sessions don’t take too long, so here’s what I’ve come up with:

Day 1
Squat - 3x5
Press - 1x1, 6x4
Optional: Close-grip bench - 4x8

Day 2
Deadlift - 3x5
Bench Press - 1, 5x5
Optional: Press - 4x8

Goal is to add 5lb each session, per NLP while trying to keep most of the upper body work at RPE 8 per the BBM NLP plugin. I started her doing the plugin a couple weeks ago when she was stalling out on her press.

I’ve made the third exercise “optional” so that she can skip it if she’s feeling too fatigued without feeling like the whole session was a failure. I want her to be able to enjoy lifting and still make progress until she finishes this HIIT program. After that, I think she will be open to doing 3x per week again, in which case I’ll have her either continue NLP or move on to the Bridge.

Any glaring flaws in this plan? Anything you would change if you were programming a novice for only 2 sessions per week? Thanks!

P.S. If you put out a 2-day version of the fabled “women’s” template, I’ll buy it right now. :stuck_out_tongue:

2

I think this is unlikely to work for very long and would rather have her implement some subjective feedback to help determine bar loading. The idea would be to improve as often as possible, but 5lbs is a big jump for someone who is not lifting, say, >150lbs.

I would encourage her not to skip movements, but rather just do them at a lighter weight. However, removing training volume or intensity can be used to lower session RPE.

It really depends what she wants to do and what she’s willing to commit to. That said, the plan isn’t necessarily bad, but having her give some feedback would likely help tailor what is best for her you know?

3

Thanks for the response. Re-reading what I wrote I see I wasn’t clear. I meant to say add 5lb per week to squat and deadlift and keep bench press and press at RPE 8. I’m assuming that feedback would be in the form of RPE. Do you think RPE 8 is a good target for all the lifts to drive improvement for a novice?

4

Yea as a general rule, RPE 8 sets tend to be very manageable and keep total session RPE (sRPE) in check. RPE 9 can be used too, but I find that routinely recommending that sometimes results in a whole bunch of RPE 10 sets comparatively.

1 Like
5

Thanks! That helps me out a lot!