Powerbuilding I Template: Restart, Continue, or Bail?

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey Folks,

Long time listener, first time caller.

I’ve been barbell training for a little over two years. I started with the SS LP and tried to draw that out for longer than I should have. I had been attempting to do my own programming since LP, always focusing primarily on the squat, deadlift, bench, and press. I recently purchased the Powerbuilding I template to see what a professionally crafted RPE program was like.

This week I started the Powerbuilding I template and everything went pretty smoothly, with the exception of the myo-rep Pendlay rows on day 2 (Wednesday).

I hadn’t trained rows in over a year, so I figured I should keep it light, just to be safe. In hindsight, I’m fairly certain I chose too light of a load. I tossed 135 lbs on the bar and did 21 reps for my activation set. Strength-wise, I could have kept cranking out reps. I only stopped at 21 because I was out of gas (under-conditioned, I guess). Then I went on to do six backoff sets of five reps, then a set of four, and finally a set of three. Again, I believe I only began to fail due to my level of conditioning. With more rest between sets, I could have rowed for hours. Thankfully, this was the final exercise for the session. I had some time remaining to fit in some GPP work, but opted out since I felt like I just completed a marathon.

The day goes by and I feel sore/fatigued in my glutes, low back, and hips. This wasn’t any sorer than I might get after a taxing deadlift session, so I wasn’t very concerned. The next day I had lingering soreness in these areas, but nothing alarming.

This morning (Friday, day 3), the soreness had mostly subsided. I might describe my back and glutes as being “stiff.” I felt confident about going into a deadlift session. After my first couple of warm-up sets, it becomes apparent that my minor “stiffness”/soreness symptoms aren’t subsiding (as I would normally expect after some solid warm-ups). My final warm-up set felt very difficult (@ 8 RPE). Nevertheless, I attempted to pull my first prescribed working set, but the bar barely left the ground. Then, feeling weak and defeated, I moved on to the next exercise.

I believe that not training rows for quite some time and then participating in a row marathon must have fatigued my posterior chain enough that I was unable to recover properly before my deadlift session.

These are my thoughts on moving forward:

  1. Restart week 1 (or just stay the course…)
  2. Find an appropriate (heavier) load for rows so that it’s not a marathon
  3. Move the day 3 (w/ deadlifts) lifting day to Saturday (doing GPP on Friday instead) for more recover time Although, part of me thinks I should postpone the Powerlifting I template and shift to low back rehab work to build up some more capacity in that area.

What do you think?

2

TTL,

Thanks for the post. A few comments:

I hadn’t trained rows in over a year, so I figured I should keep it light, just to be safe. In hindsight, I’m fairly certain I chose too light of a load. I tossed 135 lbs on the bar and did 21 reps for my activation set. Strength-wise, I could have kept cranking out reps. I only stopped at 21 because I was out of gas (under-conditioned, I guess). Then I went on to do six backoff sets of five reps, then a set of four, and finally a set of three. Again, I believe I only began to fail due to my level of conditioning. With more rest between sets, I could have rowed for hours. Thankfully, this was the final exercise for the session. I had some time remaining to fit in some GPP work, but opted out since I felt like I just completed a marathon.

This is fine. Add weight next time, perhaps 155lbs.

. My final warm-up set felt very difficult (@ 8 RPE)./quote]

If It felt like an @ 8, I would’ve tempered your working set weights to reflect the feedback you got from the last warm up set. RPE is more important than the weight on the barbell!

In any event, I would just move on with the program as written. You’ll get used to it :slight_smile:

-Jordan

1 Like
3

I appreciate you taking the time to reply, Jordan.

Quick Update (TL;DR in bold):
I had minor DOMS all through the weekend and even a bit this morning (Monday). The DOMS seemed to move around from hips to low back. Nothing debilitating, just impressive emphasis on the D in DOMS…

My squat was pretty weak today. I really had to slow down my descent (0 bounce) in order to maintain control of the bar. Otherwise my backside (hips/low back/butt, not 100% sure?) felt like it wasn’t going to do it’s job without pain. So hopefully that tempo fatigue was adequate enough to drive adaptation. Do you see anything wrong with intentionally performing tempo squats for a few sessions (at the same prescribed RPE, lower %) until I can confidently bounce out of the hole again? It seems like a rapid rate of increased tension on my posterior chain invokes the most pain, but slow-mo reps feel fine (not pain free, but tolerable).

Strangely enough, my RDLs went fine today. They were slightly tempo-like, close to normal speed.

Something similar happened to me about eight months ago when I over did volume increases too many weeks in a row (I think, retrospectively). I had to significantly drop the weight and tempo squat my way back to normal for several weeks. Then I was back to flying out of the hole and adding weight to the bar.

The end of my last program was getting pretty “grindy” for a few of weeks, so I’m thinking this is just an unfortunate result of unwise load management catching up with me.

I’ll proceed with the program as written, but I’m going to stick with tempo squatting for the time being, unless you have strong feelings against that plan.

Thanks in advance,
TTL

4

I appreciate you taking the time to reply, Jordan.

Quick Update (TL;DR in bold):
I had minor DOMS all through the weekend and even a bit this morning (Monday). The DOMS seemed to move around from hips to low back. Nothing debilitating, just impressive emphasis on the D in DOMS…

My squat was pretty weak today. I really had to slow down my descent (0 bounce) in order to maintain control of the bar. Otherwise my backside (left hips/low back/butt, not 100% sure?) felt like it wasn’t going to do it’s job without pain. So hopefully that tempo fatigue was adequate enough to drive adaptation. Do you see anything wrong with intentionally performing tempo squats for a few sessions (at the same prescribed RPE, lower %) until I can confidently bounce out of the hole again? It seems like a rapid rate of increased tension on my posterior chain invokes the most pain, but slow-mo reps feel fine (not pain free, but tolerable). Strangely enough, my RDLs went fine today.

Something similar happened to me about eight months ago when I over did volume increases too many weeks in a row (I think, retrospectively). I experienced pain in my left backside (hip?) that became exacerbated with squatting. I had to significantly drop the weight and tempo squat my way back to normal for several weeks. Then I was back to flying out of the hole and adding weight to the bar.

The end of my last program was getting pretty “grindy” for a few of weeks, so I’m thinking this is just an unfortunate result of unwise load management catching up with me.

I’ll proceed with the program as written, but I think I’m going to stick with tempo squatting for the time being, unless you have strong feelings against that plan.

Thanks in advance,
TTL