new 12-Week Strength - the heavy single (SQ)

Other Discussions Programming Discussion
1

I’m trying the new 12-Week program, I switched from the prior 12-week in Week 4. Before this I had done Bridge 1.0, before that an Andy Baker HLM, and SSLP before that.

One thing I’m noticing…there is one heavy single for competition squat on Day 1, @ RPE 8. For me, this hasn’t moved in the past four weeks – I do warm up sets, eventually working up to a single at 90% of the target, then do the target…but the prescribed goal weight (+5 from my last successful RPE 8 prescription in Week 3) has been RPE 9 for three weeks in a row. To make up for it I advanced the back off sent +5 lbs as if it had gone up, but it hasn’t.

Should this be concerning? Obviously I like it when the weight goes up. But I’m pretty below my SSLP and HLM peak, this RPE 8 single is what I finished SSLP with for 3x5 (admittedly I was bulking and +20 lbs then). I’d hope for the 1 @ 8 to go up on a regular basis, but this program only does one heavy single once a week and I know you can’t really get better at a thing unless you train that thing. Should the weekly volume have an expected carry-over to the single? If not, won’t I just stay at this prescribed weight for Day 1 SQ indefinitely? (…FOREVER! super-villain laugh…) Or should I just be patient and give it more time?

2

It’s not uncommon for e1RM’s to stagnate, or even regress a little bit in a development block as you’re carrying a lot more fatigue than you were a few weeks ago. I would continue on and see how you perform on your 1RM tests. I would expect you will likely get a good peak coming out of this. The unfortunate part of post-novice training is that it simply is not linear, unlike what some people would have you believe. If you really want to get into the weeds on this subject, look up Mike Tuscherer’s stuff on “emerging strategies” as he goes into a lot of the different ways that people react to development blocks and how to use that knowledge to your advantage. Forewarning, it is very deep in the weeds, lol. Make sure you’re ready to take the red pill, haha.