Strength Stagnation on 12WS

Just finishing week 11 of 12 week strength.

In weeks 10 &11 my strength gains slowed considerably in the main comp lifts. Strength gains were minimal or non existent in these weeks.

Is this a result of;

  1. Inaccurate RPE judgments earlier in the program coming back to bite me?, or
  2. Programmed build up of fatigue that will dissipate during the “deload” in week 13 to allow a peak at the end of that week.

I.E. did I do something wrong, or is this sort of expected? (Sleep, diet, stress, etc not a factor in these results. I’m good on all of those fronts. This is training related, just not sure if it’s acceptable or not)

I noticed a similar result, but only with my Bench, on 2 runs of the stock template, then a 3rd one where my first backoff set is a @9. I typically have good progress during the development phase, but after the pivot, my e1rms drop a little after the pivot then flatline despite the peaking phase. I have just recently realized that my Bench e1rms are consistently lower than my e1rm with my singles. As much as 7% lower in the 2-3 rep range, and less in the 4-6 rep ranges. Adding the first workset @9 helped with this realization. I think this issue has been causing any worksets based on a percentage drop from the single to be too high of a relative intensity, even more so in the lower rep ranges for me.

I’ve adjusted the e1rm table percentages for myself for the Bench, and looking back I’ve seen that this would have dropped the workset loads in the specialization block by ~10-15lb. I plan to rerun the template, with the adjusted Bench e1rms, and a modified increase to the percentage backoff prescription to match the relative intensity to what I think the program intended.