Need some help with fatigue management

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi BBM team,

I’m running The Bridge 1.0 and currently in the middle of week 4. Previously I was running a modified SSLP (probably for too long). I’m a 5’11 20-year-old male weighing in at 180. Unfortunately, my squat, bench, and OHP numbers have been decreasing throughout the weeks. Since I’m coming off SSLP, I’m still in the process of getting accustomed to using the RPE scale, and now that I’m looking back, I think that I might have been overshooting the prescribed RPEs. I’ve been eating and sleeping well so I believe that isn’t the problem.

Here are my questions:

1. If my lifts are slightly declining from week to week and session to session, could that be an indicator that I’m just dogpiling excess fatigue that is preventing me from making progress? That being said, would such fatigue be noticeable outside of the weight room? In my case, it’s just that everything keeps getting heavier :frowning:

2. If I’m in a position to where I’ve accumulated too much fatigue, should I change the programming to rebound from it? Or do I just continue to follow the program as prescribed and hope to be more accurate with my RPEs?

Thank you for any help!

2

  1. Not necessarily in either case. My off-the-cuff guess is that you were overcooked and undertrained coming off LP and we’re overshooting the RPE’s currently. I’d really try to be conservative with the RPE’s this week and see what happens.

  2. See above. I wouldn’t change the program right now.

-Jordan

3

Okay, thanks for the response. I’ll try to be a lot more conservative this week and see how that goes.