I am a 23 year old male and I have been training since high school, however most of it was very unstructured until the last year or two. I have been running the 12 week strength template for the last few months. Before that I ran 7 week, 3 day GPP/hypertrophy template. Over the last 11 weeks I saw 40 lb increase on my squat, 25 lb on my bench, and a 30 lb increase on my deadlift. Today was day 1 of week 12, and I had planned to complete it as normal, but I saw a significant decrease in my single@9, from 405 to 365 for squat. My bench was also down a bit but not as much as squat. Week 11, day 2, I pushed my deadlift quite a bit and probably surpassed 1@9 and was more like a 1@10. On day 3 of week 11 I also saw a significant decrease in performance but completed all my sets as prescribed. Other than week 11 being fatiguing, probably more so than ever in the past, from a training standpoint, I didn’t see any other variables that would cause my performance to be down so much.
At this point, I decided to not finish the 12 week strength and to run a pivot week before getting into another developmental block. This is my last week of winter break before my final semester college (Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering), so I felt a pivot my be a good psychological break before school and I felt a pivot would be more useful than finishing out the 12th week with significantly lower numbers at the prescribed reps, sets, and RPE.
My question is, is this a reasonable approach? Am I missing out on much by not completing this last week? Obviously the psychological break before school is a factor, but other than that, when does one know when it’s time for a pivot or wash out? I would love to have a discussion about distinguishing signals that an individual may have acquired all that they can from a training block and when pushing through may result in additional benefits.
All this being said, of course one week doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things, but I am at the beginning stages of a coaching career and writing training for others, so these minor things interest me and would be useful to me as I develop my skills as a coah. Let me know if anything is unclear or if additional information is required.
Thanks to all of the BBM team and anyone else for input.