Often stop responding to programs and regress after about 6 weeks

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Going through my logs, I have noticed this strange pattern. Here are 3 instances where that occurred while doing BBM programs:

  1. Bridge 1.0 - Had good progress up until week 6. On Week 7 my E1RMs dropped precipitously. I even posted about it here https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…ely-wrecked-me

  2. 12 Week Strength Program - Don’t have that particular log with me atm, but the same pattern happened.

  3. Beginner’s Program - I did this program until recently. Repeated the last week of the free version for 6 weeks. Increased my lifts by 2.5-5kg before experiencing regression across all lifts on the 7th week.

To make it clear, this has happened on other programs as well, not just BBM’s. All of the lifts get affected by this. The first reaction will probably be to just follow the Rx RPEs and let the E1RMs correct themselves but that hasn’t worked in these cases for some reason, I usually just continue regressing/stalling. It seems like I have to actually change programs to get some sort of ‘novel’ training stress and get my E1RM moving again.

Have you guys faced this sort of issue with other trainees before? Any possible causes? Sleep/diet hasn’t been a problem. What possible adjustments that can be done if I wanna do the Bridge 3.0 for example?

2

To be clear – is your expectation that e1RMs should trend upwards continuously, indefinitely?

This seems to be completely normal, and suggests after about 6 weeks is likely good timing for you to do a low stress week and change the programming stimulus for the subsequent block based on what you’ve learned you respond well to.

You should not be forcing yourself to “fit” a template progression – the templates are guides that are open for modification and adjustment based on your individual response.

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