Move on from LP or make adjustments?

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Hey everyone, very excited to join this forum today! This is my first post but I have been reading a lot of threads on here lately and hold this board and BBM in general in very high regard.

I find myself in a gray area and humbly request some advice. I am near the end of my 2nd NLP currently. I know I know, that’s sort of frowned upon around here but I have my reasons which I can share if it is helpful.

This latest LP has gone better regarding my squat than my previous LP but I have made some programming errors that I think have caused some issues for me on that movement. Bench went much slower this time, partly because I was being super conservative due to shoulder aches and pains…last LP I hit 245x5x3 and could’ve still kept going. Press is pretty close to last time. Deadlift was also down this time, from around 320x5.

Male
Age 33
height 5’9”
weight 195#s (started lp in September at maybe 190#s)

Prior injury’s: surgery on right shoulder (non-dominant) about 3 years ago to repair a torn labrum and 80% tear of supraspinatus; stress fracture l4/l5 vertebrae (adverse process) like 14 years ago; back tweaks on last LP about 1 year ago.

Starting weights
squat 125
deadlift 175
press 70
bench 115

I had to drop weight off the bar from 275x5x3 a couple weeks ago due to a back tweak. I am just now getting back to 255# for sets across @rpe 8.5. Deadlift is back to where it was before the tweak, 285x5 @rpe 8.5. Press is at rpe 9-9.5 on last set @136#…bench is still going (rpe 8-8.5 @200#s). Decided to not do power cleans this time around because it doesn’t translate well to strength and strength is pretty much the whole point of the LP right?

My body is telling me two things, strength wise, I can keep going on my lp…but thing 2 is my body hasn’t handled the intensity very well lately because of mismanagement of accessory work. As I eluded to earlier, I didn’t plug in chins or rows early enough in LP and I attribute the back tweak to too much too fast for too long on squats and deads. I say thing 2 because of how I generally feel pretty smoked/achey/tweaky in between training days and on the 3rd work set of squats.

So my question is this, do I

A. immediately drop a deadlift session (or two) per week and get my chins and rows in to alleviate the systemic stress to try to squeak out some more progress on the LP?

or

B. do I move to like the 3day GPP hyper template before going back on a strength template?

If B, should I do something like the bench/press plugin since my bench is still going strong or do the template as prescribed?

C. Is there an better option not listed above?

Thanks so much!

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You didn’t really mention exactly what your LP program looks like so it is hard to comment on changes for that. Coming from someone that did Starting Strength LP a year longer than I should have, the hindsight I learned was that I probably should have switched programs as soon as my lifts felt like an RPE 9 for a week. Given you are on your second LP and your lifts are at an 8.5 or higher, my choice would be to go with Bridge 1.0 (or 3.0 if you want to purchase it). Your systematic stress should come down just by switching to an RPE based program that doesn’t constantly have you at such high intensity. Don’t be like me and do LP far longer than necessary. It was a big relief and training was much more enjoyable once I finally made the switch. Doing the GPP hypertrophy template would be perfectly fine. However, if it were me, I would do hypertrophy after Bridge 1.0. The Bridge 1.0 was made as the transition template from an LP.

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Thank you for the reply!

My LP was based on the starting strength iteration except I didn’t do power cleans this time and neglected plugging in chins for probably too long. Basically did nothing but LP on squats, press/bench, and deadlift for most of it. Weight jumps were 5# on squat and bench, press slowed to 2-3# jumps, and deadlift is at 10# jumps.

My first SSLP I ran for too long as well, like 10 months due to multiple resets for various reasons (this was prior to my finding BBM content on programming).

Its hard checking the ego, knowing I have more LP strength in the tank, but I just know how the last few weeks go on LP…it’s a freakin meat grinder.

Again thank you for the reply! I have the bridge 1.0 printed to a binder and ready to go so maybe I’ll just do that. I’ve been recording RPE for the last few weeks of LP and think I have a decent handle on it so it should be a smooth transition.

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Hi Strongdad,

welcome to the forum :wink:

  1. Move to the bridge 1 immediately. Not progressing on lifts is the main indicator that you are done with LP. It’s totally fine to move on and you will not have problems in the future because you “didn’t milk” you LP. On the contrary, with your injuries/problems/obstacles you describe, you would do way better with a properly programmed RPE template. To me it sounds like that you are working with RPE and load management already anyway, so the transition to a proper program won’t be to difficult ;).

  2. Don’t worry too much on one or two lifts not progressing atm. Start considering your lifting career as a “fourty, fifty,… year long career”. You lift because you want to be the strong grand dad so you can lift the heavy beer keg on your grand sons 21th bday - right? So who cares whether one of your lifts doesn’t progress in the next 6 weeks?

tl;dr: Move to the bridge - you’ll be fine :wink:

p.s: I didnt read any comments before i wrote what i wrote. So obv the two comments you have gotten so far in line with each other :wink:

  1. Read up on Austins pain science stuff and watch a few videos from Lorimer Moseley. The stuff might help you with you back and/or future injuries :wink:
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Thanks so much for the reply!!

I did week 1 day 1 of the bridge 1.0 yesterday. It was really fun doing some different stuff and I learned a few things. It’s really tough gauging below rpe 8 but I’ll get better. Also I discovered that I’ve been sandbagging my bench press big time. I thought my close grip bench would be much less than my regular but after 3 warmup sets and 4 “work sets” I was just barely knocking on the door of a legit rpe 8, and the weight was the same as my regular bench on my LP…I did a bunch of volume so I decided to move on and learn from the experience rather than make myself really sore.

I’ll look up Lorimer Moseley, thanks for the reference! I’ve checked out most of the BBM content on pain and have found it extremely helpful on a day to day basis!

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Hi Strongdad,

  1. RPE <8 is a “problem” for me as well. When i started the bridge i just worked up until i had my RPE 8 weight. Substract 5% and you have your RPE 7 weight, substract 5% from that and you have your RPE 6 weight ← For this day/week/workout. The second week you have a good start, do your RPE 6/7/8 from last week. Make a note whether the weights were fine or too heavy etc. Make adjustments the following week :wink:

  2. My CG-Bench with 4 reps @ RPE 9 is better than my bench with 5 reps @ 8 - i dont worry about that :wink:

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/forums/unmoderated-forums/miscellaneous/27691-weights-of-comp-lifts-vs-acc-lifts-–-bridge-1

You wrote: “but after 3 warmup sets and 4 “work sets” I was just barely knocking on the door of a legit rpe 8, and the weight was the same as my regular bench on my LP…”
<— I do something between 5 and 8 warm up sets with the empty barbell and then progress in 20kg steps, so 40 / 60 / 80 + working sets. So your 3 warmup sets are “nothing” compared to my 8 - 11 warm up sets. Just figure the weights out for your lifts in your next sessions and youll be fine :wink:

  1. Cool book:
    Explain Pain: Dr. David Butler, G. Lorimer Moseley: 9780987342669: Amazon.com: Books

Dont spent 90$ though, maybe you can find it used or on the internet somewhere!?

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Thanks for the encouragement. It will only get better from here. This whole rpe thing really isn’t that complicated, just takes some practice.

Thats funny, I had the same experience with my first time doing block pulls the other day. The weight I could for 7’s being significantly lower than my pulls from the floor but I just attributed it to doing sets of 7 with no belt vs sets of 5 with a belt. As usual the answer is, “nuanced”.

8
  1. Different rep range
  2. Different RPE
  3. Maybe you like one excecise over the other and thus trying harder to get better
  4. Maybe you did more deadlifts then block pulls so far so the block pulls are more of a novice exercise

Funny though: Block pulls are getting almost as strong as my comp lift. More slowly but similar, the gap between my cg-bench and comp bench is closing as well :wink:

Conclusion: Way to early in my lifting carreer to judge anything on the sample size i have, so i guess i just lift for 1 or 2 years and then adjust from there :wink:

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