I had completed the bridge 1.0 w/ a er1m of S 395/ B 276/ D 395 then decided to switch it up with the 7 Week GPP hypertrophy template.
Would it be normal to not have any strength response at all the hypertrophy template in the competition lifts given proper recovery/sleep/etc ? After completing week 7 of the 1 @ 8’s and 3x6 @ 8 my e1rm didn’t trend upward at all from the beginning of the program (didn’t noticeably go down either) and I actaully feel a bit fatigued( the 6@8’s seem a little tougher than usual). I understand that the purpose of the program isn’t to put any huge gains vs HLM or the 12 week programs but I figured that it would bump up my e1rm at least a little. I do feel like conditioning has improved substantially and I feel subjectively more jacked. I plan on running the 12 week cycle for the first time in a couple weeks so looking forward to using the base i’ve built up from the gpp hypertrophy.
Displaying strength (meet attempts) is different than developing strength (driving up your comp lifts e1rm), which is different than developing the qualities that help to develop strength (hypertrophy in a GPP phase).
it’s just gonna be too individualized to generalize. for some they may go way up, and for others down. I don’t know man. there’s not a peak, so it’s gonna be hard to tell other than e1rms. and it could be that at the end you’re just fatigued, i.e. a peak and you’d realize that display.
The question with how effective is a GPP program is not whether or not your competitive performance improves at the end of GPP, it is whether your next competitive prep results in improved performance because your level of GPP is greater.
Is getting more jacked likely to improve your strength in a subsequent strength program? generally yes.
Yes I suppose you’re right. This is all still just so new to me. Prior to this my general assumptions would be that someone coming off of an LP would still be able to make gains in strength on a weekly or at least biweekly basis. But on these types of bbm programs you almost don’t know until the 7,8 or 12 weeks the program lasts are over. And even then a lot of times from what I’m reading the gains in size or strength aren’t nearly what I’d be used to hearing from many intermediate programs. Instead what I generally read is that people’s work capacity goes up more than anything else and their lifts also go up between 5-30lbs (which is great don’t get me wrong!). Sometimes I also read trainees e1rms go down after a program even if their work capacity goes up. This is much more nuanced than my previous (and a lot of other guys coming from SS world) conceptions. I guess the crux of many of these programs are to build ones work capacity so in the long run they’re better suited for strength gains
Something like that. And you do have reliable trackers for week to week - they talk about this a bunch in the programming podcast - it’s just not the same thing as “add 5 pounds each week”. and you should be putting more weight on the bar at regular intervals because you can not because the program dictates it. That I think is the mindset people need here - you do what you can when you’re ready to do so, as indicated by evaluating your performance. Remember, RPE works the other way too - when you are performing better than expected you need to put more weight on the bar. It’s not unusual on any BBM program to set absolute PRs with the 1@8, at any point in the template.
You don’t have to wait X weeks, you just have to learn how to be objective enough with your performance to understand when you’re sandbagging or trying too hard or need to take weight off the bar or need to put more on. But the more you practice that, the better you get at it.
Plus, with variations, you might get 2-3-4 weeks of a certain variation. If you improve your performance on a close variation of a lift like a pause squat or Pin press, A - you’re still setting weekly PRs and B - you’re developing the likelihood of PRs in the comp lifts.