The Bridge Week 4 Day 1 took me 3 hours to complete. Week 4 Day 2 took 2.5 hours. I’d like to shorten the duration of my training sessions while maximizing strength gains.
I’ve found that, for example, I can Squat a given weight (245lbs) for an RPE 8 in the first set. If I wait about a minute, a set of 245lbs becomes RPE 9.5, if I wait about 5 minutes it becomes RPE 9, and after something closer to 10 minutes it’s back to RPE 8.
Based on these observations, I can collapse training duration by maintaining RPE 8 by taking a shorter time between sets and using a reduced weight (like 225 after 3 minutes’ rest). Or I can wait the amount of time necessary to keep the weight constant (like 245 after 10 minutes).
My questions: 1. In context of the mesocycle, which approach gets me stronger? 2. If I need to keep training duration constant, like 1.5 hours, how should I go about it?
Background: I’m 65. Lifting 5 years. I eat roughly 2,800 calories per day and get 9 hours of sleep per night.
Yes, you should cap your rest periods in order to shorten the duration of the session.
This may require you to adjust working weights during the session, which is OK. You will still get the benefit of the training volume, while also increasing your work capacity, conditioning, and ability to tolerate more stress!
Take a listen to our most recent podcast series on programming to get a better understanding for why this is important.
Great question - I’ve been wondering the same and have had the same concerns. I’m about to enter into a time constrained period of life with my first child being due in 10 weeks…
That being said, and in general, I prefer 4 days a week in the gym vs. 3. Maybe I’ve missed it, but what is a good way to split up the lifts over 4 sessions in a week while still getting the requisite volume and exposure frequency for each of the main lifts? From everything I’ve seen here and in your podcasts the consensus seems to be that two exposures is really not enough to drive adaptation unless one is doing lots of sets per session and that three exposures is better. Do I have that right?
Unfortunately we can’t say what’s “adequate” or “inadequate” for a given person without knowing more about their training history and trying to get an idea of their training sensitivity.
So I ended my LP in January then switched over to the Bridge 2.0. I only ended up staying on the bridge for 5 weeks because I was finding that I was completely gassed each session, they were taking too long, and I wasn’t enjoying going to the gym anymore. Not to sound like a p****y but I was either way overshooting RPE or I’m just way more comfortable in the 70-75% range. From there I started doing the Kizen infinte off-season but I’m not really seeing much improvement there. After watching the podcast part 3 I’m understanding why. So, what I want to do is go back to more of a Bridge type program where I can get in more exposure to the lifts with more volume to drive further adaptation but over 4 days. I’m just not sure how best to split that up.