Hello,
I’ve just recently completed The Bridge 1.0 and 3.0 in subsequent order after reaching what I thought was the end of my NLP in 3x5. After dealing with and addressing some elbow tendinitis in my low bar squat towards the end of 3x5, I moved on after stalling in my lifts because I thought I might have been at a plateau – looking back I realize this had more to do with my consistent elbow pain and less to do with a plateau, and wish I had continued the NLP towards higher numbers. My numbers towards the end of 3x5 were: 275lb squat for 5, 310lb deadlift for 5, 200lb bench for 5, and 120lb OHP for 5.
I transitioned to The Bridge and enjoyed it quite a bit. My numbers didn’t shoot up drastically but I followed close to the program and was consistent until the final two weeks. In the 7th week I “tweaked” an area in my lower back (just to the right and above my butt) during a squat single at 295lbs. The tweak was enough that I couldn’t complete my deadlift sets without significant pain and even failed to complete most of the workouts the following week. I was extremely frustrated and did a bit of research and attempted some form adjustments at drastically lower weights (this was weeks ago, I believe I shot down to 135lbs in my deadlift and somewhere in the high 100s for my squat) and gradually the pain went away. Relieved, I dove into The Bridge 3.0 and went almost the whole program without pain until the final week when the same lower back tweak flared up during a (probably) sloppy 300lb deadlift single. I was enormously frustrated because I knew that I would once again have to start from square one.
Before the flare up, I bought your Powerbuilding template and was eager to start, but come the tweak recurrence I felt it might be a good idea to switch back to 3x5 temporarily at lower weights so that I could work back up to heavier loads before continuing on to your template. Restarting 3x5 in the past two weeks, I dropped to about 200lbs for my deadlift and about 240lbs for my squat, weights I felt didn’t aggravate the tweak, until yesterday when I went to pull a 235lb deadlift and felt the pain yet again during a warmup and couldn’t finish my working set of 5. As I’m sure most feel when they find themselves in instances of recurring pain that stalls lifting progress, I’m at my wits end. I’m 26 years old and I feel like I shouldn’t be experiencing significant pain, especially with relatively light weight.
The past few weeks I added 10lbs per workout on my deadlift in 3x5, was this too aggressive? Maybe I should have undershot and lowered my deadlift all the way down to 135lbs with a less aggressive 5lb increase? I’ve been vigilant about form, but notice a bit of thoracic rounding which I’m trying hard to account for, but I heard in a Barbell Medicine podcast episode that thoracic rounding in the deadlift may not be correlated with lower back pain, and while I have every intention to fix my form, I feel as though it isn’t atrocious by any means and couldn’t be the sole factor in causing my pain, but maybe I’m wrong. Do I need to do what I did before and lower the weight, work back up and hope for the best? At this point, I’m considering a Starting Strength Coach in my area and seeing if they might be able to address some form issues (an expensive option, but at this point I’d do anything to get back up to heavy weight without pain), is this overkill?
Thanks!