I’m currently on week 4 of The Bridge (second time running it, but not back to back). I’m already looking ahead to what I can do once it’s complete (contemplating running it again).
Can I have some critique on the below possible program? I’m looking to add strength and size whilst reducing bodyfat. I’ve successfully been losing weight since the start of the year (17st2/240lbs on Jan 1st, 15st11/221lbs this morning) so want to keep this up.
I’m looking at trying something where I focus on one of the 4 big lifts each workout, with supplemental lifts thrown in. I’m thinking this might expose me to more volume on the big lifts, thus more strength/size gains?
A work out would look like this, done on Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday:
Main lift: Squat/Bench/DL/Press - work up to 5x5@8, followed by back off sets
Supplementary: Bench on squat days/squat on bench days/press on DL days/DL on press days (either standard lifts or some sort of variation) - something higher volume (e.g 5x8@8), this is more for hypertrophy really.
I’ll have 1 rest day per week, and on the 2 remaining non-lifting days I’ll do something like HIIT (which I currently do) with GPP, like curls, pull ups, ab work etc.
This is similar The Bridge, but I’ll be spending more time with more volume on the main lifts, split over 4 days. I’ll look to increase the weight every 2-3 weeks.
Have you considered Bridge 2.0 or 3.0? 12 Week Strength? HLM? Hypertrophy?
Also, Jordan keeps teasing a lot more templates that are coming out “soon”. He posted a instagram story showing what I believe was around 5+ new templates and an ideal progression through them
Thanks Eric - I’ve not looked at the other templates yet, reason being that I don’t believe they are based on the proposed ‘1 big lift per day’ method I outlined above. I should have also said, another reason for my thinking above, is that if I’m short on time for example, I can still just do the main lift and then leave, knowing I’ll have gotten in sufficient volume and intensity to still make progress even though I’ve only done 1 exercise.
Not sure why you think that? Bridge 3.0 has 2 big lifts on Day 1, 1 on D2 and 1 on D3. If you want a 4 day program, you can easily split Day 1 into two.
Critique: the hypothetical program you describe has less volume than the Hypertrophy template (depending on your variations, I guess). If I was you, I would just buy the Hyp template, run that, and then re-evaluate afterwards.
Virtually all the basic templates consist of a squat, a press and a pull variation for every workout, just in varying intensities and set/rep schemes. If you were to spread those 9 or 12 slots across 6 or 7 days you would need to change the set and rep scheme to compensate for the differences in fatigue level.
For instance, on Monday I did competition squat, 2 count paused incline bench and pendlay rows for myoreps. If I broke that up across multiple days I would need to change the rep and set schemes of the later movements because I would be walking into those fresh instead of pre-fatiguing myself with the previous lifts. Walking in off the street and doing myorep barbell rows is a different stimulus than doing them after squatting and benching.