Importance of Continuity Between Phases of a Training Template

The BBM program I have the most familiarity with the is PBII template, one that is designed with 2 phases and a transition to and Rx with slightly heavier and lower rep sets in the second phase. I presume this reflects a preference that people prepare for the second phase by completing the first phase, but how do you view the importance of continuity between the 2? If your training went to pot in the early phase of a transition (as sometimes happens with work and life) at what point would you consider the continuity has been broken sufficiently to make going back to week 1 the right options once you’re ready to resume training properly, rather than just picking up where you left off?

I ask as this is exactly what happened to me. In week 7 with no signs or warning, and while not even on working sets, I picked up an unexpected back tweak. I had to scale WAY back in squats and deadlifts but after 4 more weeks of building back up I am now at the point where Im ready to get back on Rx. The question Im trying to answer is should I just go back to week 6 and run the program from there, or is this long enough without productive training that it justifies going back to week 1?

If it matters, I made a LOT of progress on the first phase and chose to keep extending that out until I felt progress was slowing down. I turned that 5 weeks of Rx into 12 weeks and that is making me inclined to think Im fine to go back to week 6.​

Limie,

Thanks for the post. To your point, yes, block I is in preparation for block II in this (and most other) templates. If I understand your question correctly, you’re asking when someone should abandon the second block and go all the way back to block I, yes?

Two main situations here:

  1. 2 weeks off of training

  2. An injury that requires programming modifications including, but not limited to, exercise substitutions, load reduction, tempo alteration, ROM changes, etc. Would plan on running a rehab block into block I of the original program I think if you’ve been doing other stuff for 4 weeks, I’d plan on going back to block I for a 3 to 4-week bridge, then you can go on to block II if you desire.

-Jordan

Yeah, that’s exact what I was getting at. Based on this is it looks like a few weeks back in block 1 is the best bet.

The first rehab session was just ramping sets of 5s with relatively small jumps with a limit of stopping a the first sign of discomfort or reaching a pain free RPE of 7, and then doing a few back off sets with some paused variations. I hit that target as early as the second week and so then increased intensity to 3s and by the 4th week got that up to an e1RM in the range of my previous training e1RMs. While I was really encouraged how quickly I got those top sets back up to normal the back offs were unpleasant on a couple of occasions, like I could stay pain free when fresh but the fatigue became a problem even on a much reduced weight.

Given that, do you think it would be valuable to stay with the paused variations for the back offs as I work through a few weeks of a bridge program?

I don’t think it matters if you stick with paused variations on back offs or not. Dealer’s choice :slight_smile: