So, I recently shifted over to The Bridge, and so far am a huge fan of the increased volume and so is my body composition. I would put myself in the “training sensitive” category, and the NLP while an awesome way to build foundational strength, simply had me stacking on weight (on the bar and the belly) and this program is more of what I need.
That being said, a boon of the NLP or any “Fahves” type workout is that when I go into the gym I know 10 more pounds on squat s 10 more pounds on squat and my increases are cave-man simple in that I just throw another disc on and call it good. With The Bridge I’m just unsure about when or how to assume my absolute strength has gone up and therefore am unsure when and how much to increase the weight, on say, a paused squat, or pin press…
I don’t want to undershoot myself, because as I mentioned, I respond well and recover well also, but at the same time, my last workout I feel I overshot RPE because the idea of “just throw ten more pounds on next workout” doesn’t fit The Bridge (or so it seems).
Hope this makes sense. Thanks for feedback and all that yall do.
Hi Apeman,
Glad it’s working well for you! When using RPE and a program like the Bridge, your goal is to still add weight to the bar each week, as long as this fits with the RPE goals as well. So provided that you started the Bridge at reasonable working weight for you, you will be able to continue to add weight-even if it is 2.5-5lbs instead of 10. And then if you track things on the spreadsheets, you will be able to see what your e1RM is doing for each lift. In a lot of ways this number doesn’t mean too much, especially on those supplemental lifts you are talking about since you will probably never actually find a 1 rep max for those. But in tracking this, you will be able to see trends-is the e1RM going up over time? That’s good! It can hold steady now and then, it can even dip down now and then, but the overall trend over weeks should be up.