I’m curious mostly being at the level of strength and adaptation you are at, but how do you guys feel after a heavy stress lifting session that involves multiple sets of squat @8, multiple sets of benching @8, and a few sets of something like rack pulls? For me at almost 46 years old, I feel tired immediately after, but a few hours later I’m very stiff if not borderline useless the rest of the day. I work a desk job though so sitting down for a couple of hours after lifting might contribute to that. The next day I’m mostly okay minus some latent fatigue.
Mostly hungry. I’ve gotten a few hamstring cramps post workout whilst doing adult gymnastics.
You get less stiff, sore, etc. the longer you’ve been doing this sort of thing.
Respectfully on this, but I can’t help but feel that is a young man’s response. When I was in my early 30’s, I trained like Arnold or Dorian. Murdered myself with high volume stuff such that I couldn’t lift my arms to wash my hair in the shower when I got home. I tended to feel fine a few hours later though, even if I was still heavily fatigued. The feeling I’m talking about now is more of a feeling of being wrecked. It’s not DOMS, or joint related, or anything like that. It’s more of lack of flexibility in the trained muscles, especially the lower back, glutes and ham strings. They’re very tight, and protest when asked to do much. It feels more like inflammation. It reminds of how I’ve heard professional athletes (NBA, NFL, etc) describe the way they feel as they get into their 40’s. I’ve noticed this in myself more and more over the years as I have aged. Heck, yard work throws me for a loop…something as simple as raking leaves or whatever.
So I suppose the next question would be, do you hear this kind of thing about training stress from your other middle-aged clients? It’s not my intent to whine/complain, but rather find effective ways to deal with it, or offset it if possible. I wonder if I’m overdoing it somewhere, even though I feel like my RPE’s are pretty solid.
Euby,
I understand your last post, however, you did specifically ask how the doctors feel after training. So that’s the answer you got. I’m 42 and I can have some days when I feel pretty wrecked after a training session, but I don’t always feel like that, and I know that I have multiple recovery factors likely contributing to this, namely I don’t often get enough sleep. That’s a really, really big thing for me. I also know that while there are SOME days I feel wrecked after training, I don’t always, so I’m just fine. I just keep going. Also my ability work capacity has increased markedly by sticking with it.
Hey, Leah. Yeah, my response was definitely NOT intended to be incendiary toward anyone. I envy Jordan/Austin since they figured this out while they are still young. I wish I would have done the same. Honestly, I am on the fence as I hear what you guys all teach about training (volume at the right intensity) and such, but sometimes the way it makes me feel I just wonder if I’m overdoing it somehow.
It’s mostly the day of training that is hard to deal with. I train mid-morning, and then spend 4-5 hours sitting in a chair as I work at a computer all day. By end of the day I can barely move sometimes. So basically that’s 3 days out of the week that I am worthless. On both versions of the bridge, it was only like this towards the last few high-stress weeks. I’m doing HLM week 2 now, and it is already at that level, so I feel like I have a lot of weeks left of feeling like crap on training days. I wonder if there’s some auto-regulation that I could apply maybe, or maybe I need to “drop a 3rd movement” as is suggested in the templates overview section. Just hard to know. I know having a coach would likely help with this (I’m the one you’ve been emailing with over this), but for now just wonder if I’m screwing up somewhere simple.
Honestly, it doesn’t help matters when there’s another school of thought out there about guys like me supposedly being “volume sensitive”, all while my body is screaming “that’s you, dummy.” Just feel caught in the middle of it all.
I appreciate you guys and what you do though! Big time, and don’t want it to come across any other way. Sorry if it does. That’s just my own frustration with the unknowns I guess.
I’m in the same boat as you Euby. I’m 41 years old. Although, the only time I feel beat up like that is when my fatigue levels are too high. That is my first sign of needing a deload. Otherwise, training feels fine. However, I will sometimes feel pretty fatigued, but without the soreness. It’s when the soreness shows up that it is a sign that I’m starting to over-reach. Sets of @8 for about 3-4 weeks are more than enough to do this for me.
I’m not sure about the intent of the bridge though. I know that sometimes, some level of over-reaching is intended.
So, the thing is if you EXPECT to feel wrecked, beat up, sore, etc. after a training session it is much more likely you’re going to feel that way. I think there has been some unintentional nocebo’ing going on in relation to that so we’re trying to change this up. You may feel fine, you may feel tired, you may feel something completely different but how you feel is more related to your expectation on how you should feel vs. anything that would cause concern or change training management.
Additionally, the main take away should be that as you become more trained you’ll respond less to familiar training, e.g. you’ll be less stressed and fatigued WHILE recovering even faster.
Euby, here is a cautionary anecdotal example of an “old man” volume limited intermediate program.
I am 59. I started my novice linear progression in Jan 2017 training 2 days a week. I was and still am not particularly strong, nor do I appear to gain strength easily. LP was hard, fatiguing, and a grind toward the end as everyone experiences. I could not imagine training 3 days/wk and being recovered for the next training session.
I started a 2 day/wk intermediate program specifically for the older, hypothesized volume sensitive individual that had volume, recovery and intensity days. That too was hard, fatiguing and a grind. I would mentally look forward to the 3 day rest period after the stupid tough volume day and desperately hope I would be recovered well enough to hit my intensity day weight targets the following week. It was the same grind week after week with a 12 week period of rep cycling until a new 5 RM was hopefully achieved. I too work mostly in front of a computer or sitting in meetings and traveling. For me it was the day after training that were the hardest with overall high sense of fatigue and sore, tired muscles. Basically I never felt strong, just beat up.
I was ready for a change when my SSC suggested I start the Bridge at the end of October. I was hesitant because of the 3x/wk sessions and the general increase in work over the week. Yes, the extra work required adaptation which did occur and by week 5 I finally was feeling stronger as a whole person and not a crabby, lump of soreness. I used the RPEs conservatively, but my SSC kept me honest, i.e. an RPE 8 was always at a level where I could ‘definitely’ do two more reps. Most importantly I was increasing weight on the bar and feeling confident doing so. I started lifting to live better - not to feel like lifting owned me, and the BBM type of programming is really working to make me feel stronger and better as a person.
I personally am convinced of the basic validity of the BBM hypothesis that intelligently programed volume is the key to increasing strength, work capacity and maybe universal peace and happiness. Well, maybe not the last part…
How do you tell whether this is a nocebo effect vs actual fatigue? I agree that you will get accustomed to the volume and intensity over time. But that level will be different for different people based on their current recovery capabilities. Is that right? How do you determine where the individual is at currently, so that you can intelligently work their volume/intensity tolerance up over time given the possibility of it being a nocebo effect?
44 year old male checking in. I have the mindset that I’m still 24. I weight train 3 days full body per week, play centerfield a in mens baseball (hardball) league 25 games per summer, and play pickup basketball every weekend. There are defenatly times that I feel more fatigued and beat up than I would have in my youth as you describe. I’ve only seriously trained 2 years or so( mostly wasted 20 years doing exersise), running LP, Texas Method:hushed:, 531 , and several HLM templates with decent progress and have not died. The HLM structure seems most friendly to run while playing my baseball season for fatigue management. I’ve programmed my own based on PPST and used Andy Baker’s GGW HLM. I’ve approached the volume of “The Bridge” in some weeks in my programing, but haven’t run The Bridge my self. I’ve never felt quite as destroyed as you describe. I do get good sleep 7-9 hrs most nights and am pretty fanatical about diet.
You can’t really tell, as they both produce the same effect. Fatigue isn’t necessarily bad…of course.
And yes, recovery ability is different at baseline and people respond to it differently over time too.
You determine the appropriateness of the programming based on the objective outcomes it produces in the demographic being evaluated.
I appreciate everyone’s response. My thoughts:
Jordan-I initially thought there is no possible way a nocebo effect could be this strong, but perhaps I’m wrong. I’ve tried thinking more positively about how I should feel go into my training to see if it helps. I also think that I was a bit detrained before starting the HLM template almost 3 weeks ago now due to a a bad cold followed immediately by a stomach bug that wiped me out. Regardless of the reason, I’ve felt better after the last couple of training sessions…still a good bit of stiffness a few hours after training, but I’m trying to get up and move around more at my desk job following a training session to help prevent all that. Basically, I’m manipulating too many variables to know what is helping at this point, which I’m fine with as long as it’s working.
GregorySBrown - thanks for sharing. My first run through the Bridge 1.0 was eye-opening for me. 2nd run at v2.0 is where I capitalized further on what I learned on v1.0 in terms of strength gainz. Then the sickness combined with the holiday schedule/travel may be more to blame than anything for my lackluster progress lately. Your story reminded me of my own, so thanks for that.
ChrisZ - I’m similar in a lot of ways. I’ve always been active, and I did some of Andy’s routines before the Bridge also with some success. The one thing that has fallen off for me is that I’m not quite as attentive to my diet as I was during my first two runs through the Bridge. I probably need to brush up there and see how that helps.