HLM vs. New General S&C

Training Q&A [Moderated]
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Hey BBM Crew,

First off, have to say I appreciate all of the great content and materials you put out (both free and paid); what you’re doing from the general lifting and health community is really awesome. I do my best every day to refer my friends, co-workers and family to your “platform”. Love the podcasts, articles, etc. After doing some sort of weird combo of SL/SS for about a year or two, I got a proper strength training coach to address my form, of which he referred me to The Bridge and here we are. He and your team have had an overall positive impact on my life the past couple years, and not just in my numbers, but other areas of life as well. I see a lot of sentiments from others, so just a general thanks here. Moving on to my question(s)…

This is more of a financial trade-off question: back in around Jan/Feb I purchased your old templates in the bundle form (~$200 I believe) shortly after I finished The Bridge. What I have done so far:

  1. GPP Endurance on a calorie deficit just to shed a few pounds that I had picked up from lots of travel + work stress
  2. GPP Hypertrophy (I believe which is now similar to Powerbuilding I per this chart) on a maintenance and then surplus for the second half
  3. On week 6 of 8 in The Bridge 3.0 with a press focus (which I guess is now similar to the Strength I program) and seeing great results → e1RM has gone up for all 4 lifts on almost every single week My plan was to move onto the Hypertrophy I program and then moving onto the 13 Week Strength/Strength II, but my diet has been a bit less clean than I would have liked due to life things (i.e. eating out + travel), and I’ve gotten a bit flabbier in the mid-section than I would like for summertime. I’m 181, 5’11", 37 inch waist so this is more aesthetic than anything. I know the Endurance program will work just fine, but to be honest due to the novelty I would just like to try a new program. So questions are, without giving away the details for paid programs:
  4. For my needs here, how much more of a value would I get by “upgrading” to purchase the new G S&C program vs. just sticking with the HLM program I’ve already purchased but never used? Is the difference negligible High-level, what are the differences and modifications to the programming that you made and why? All the program mentions is “all new” programming and exercise selection; so curious to see what limitations you saw with the old program.
  5. In addition, is my general approach here for my needs fine or is there another program you might better recommend (e.g. Hypertrophy or Endurance)?
  6. Lastly, perhaps I’ve missed it, but if there’s another post/article/update that speaks to the differences of these new programs vs. their old counterparts, would love if you could point me in the right direction. I’ll have similar questions with the 13 Week strength program and others, so just trying to get a feel on how significant these updates are when weighing it against the cost. Especially since I’ve seen great results with every program so far :slight_smile: Thanks!
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Dylan,

Thanks for the message and for spreading the word! It really means a lot :slight_smile:

For your situation here, I think you’re unlikely to notice any difference in the HLM template vs the General S/C template. Either would be fine. The General S/C template has more conditioning and a bit more variety, but I think the HLM template will work just fine.

Here’s a little something I put together on the new programs (attached). [ATTACH=JSON]{“alt”:“Click image for larger version Name:\t60335906_10101527243638662_8733574675088539648_o.jpg Views:\t0 Size:\t191.6 KB ID:\t41538”,“data-align”:“none”,“data-attachmentid”:“41538”,“data-size”:“full”}[/ATTACH]

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Thanks for the response! Yep I was using this chart, very helpful. With that I’ll start the HLM, and perhaps up my conditioning a bit from what’s in the template (rather than dropping in the amount there from what I’m currently doing in Bridge 3.0). Perhaps as you said I’ll play around with “adding more conditioning” being I’m already in pretty good shape there so might not hurt to increase calorie expenditure for my goals. My biggest struggle with conditioning is that it’s just boring :slight_smile:

We’ll go HLM → Hypertrophy I → 13 Week Strength; excited to see where I land after that!

Thanks again.

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Hey Jordan (and Team),

Wanted to re-visit this thread as I have a related question. I’m 3 weeks into the HLM program, and after week 4 I will actually be heading out on a 3-week vacation in Europe. I know you guys usually recommend finding a gym to lift at, but I’m fairly confident that won’t be possible in at least half of the places I’ll be (i.e. small islands), etc. Overall this is my first real vacation in almost 2 years, so I’m definitely carrying around some chronic work-related stress that I’m looking to shed :slight_smile:

So 2 questions here (keeping in mind my goals right now continue to be weight loss at 1lb/week while maintaining or gaining strength): 1. Being that I’ll be coming back to training with 3 weeks off, what is the recommendation here for programming? Do I just pick up where I left off in Week 5? Run prior weeks again? Look at starting a new program? Note: one thing that may help here (?) is that Weeks 4 and 5 seem to be a clear split; more volume (reps and sets), whereas in 5 the programming begin focuses on singles @8 and then lower rep ranges.
2. For nutrition during my vacation, any guidance? By not training, do I eat more (calories, protein?) to mitigate any strength loss? Typically, I always return from vacations weighing less than I did before despite eating a decent amount, and it’s because I walk, A LOT. Or is this something I shouldn’t stress about too much being that I’m on vacation and it’s only 3 weeks? Get my protein but also enjoy the pizza and pasta in Italy? Thanks

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Saw this still pending, just curious if it slipped through the cracks?