Hi Barbell Medicine Team,
Tomorrow is my last day of the bridge 1.0. I feel like I made a lot of progress on my DL but I had a worse response to the program on my other lifts. I am a little lost on where I should go from here. Could you please give me a recommendation on which template to run next if my goals are to continue to lean out and gain strength while making more progress on my upper body lifts?
My E1RMs from week 1 to now are below:
DL 265.43-> 315.217
Squat 203.7 → 228.26
bench 129.63 → 130.43
press 80.24 → 92.39
I am 26M, 6’2.5", 187 lb, with a 38.5 inch waist.
Self reflecting on how I feel like I did on the program I would say that I consistently underrated RPE on upper body lifts (I missed reps pretty regularly and would have to adjust weights down) and I overrated RPE on squats due to having some anxiety about failing sets.
My training experience includes 9 months of non-productive training (lots of ISO, low weight, high reps and corrective exercises :() and 2.5 months of running the SSNLP before starting the bridge 8 weeks ago. I had to insert the press plugin about 1 month into SSNLP. I also play 2v2 or 3v3 basketball once a week for about 1.5 hours.
I am currently attempting to eat a calorie deficit but my diet is all over the place due to the holidays and life stressors. When I am able to track calories and plan my meals I shoot for 2148 Cal 235g protein, 188g, and 51g fat (taken from the To Be a Beast chart for fat loss). I have been able to lose 2 lb while on the Bridge. I think it is important to mention that I have lost 90 lbs since 2016 using CICO. I was extremely undertrained at 277 lb with a 50+ inch waist. I have been able to reduce my waist size to 38.5 inches but I still have a lot of fat around the midsection that I am trying to git rid of.