Searched for this question but I didn’t find what I was looking for, surprisingly. Apologies if this has been asked, as I suspect it has.
I recently started on the Bridge 1.0, and I’ve stumbled in Week 3, Workout 2. I suspect my failure is the result of being too aggressive–specifically, treating RPE 8 as 9. A few questions:
Should I restart, and be more conservative? Or should I just continue on?
I’ve been lifting for about fourteen years–does this mean the Bridge is inappropriate for me? This is my first go at RPE-style training.
We would recommend continuing on. It’s okay if you’re unable to add weight week-to-week, provided things are generally trending up over time (if that’s the goal of the program). We’d also recommend being relatively conservative with your loading, e.g. it’s probably better to undershoot than overshoot.
I think The Bridge is just fine for you at this time
When calculating e1rm, I’m seeing numbers that seem implausibly high. E.g.: Let’s say I squatted 300 for 5(@10), knowing I couldn’t do a 6th rep. Using the RPE table, this yields an e1rm just under 350. But, of course, 350 is a ridiculous 1rm–even when I was squatting 315x5, I highly doubt I’d have managed 350x1(@10).
Bearing this in mind, do I nudge my e1rm downward at my own discretion, or do I roll with the calculation? I’d peg my current e1rm, based entirely on my gut, at about 315.
That said, the calculator based e1RM is useful for bracketing your expectations for the day with respect to warm ups and work sets, though you’ll have to select the actual loads based on feel and the feedback you’re getting during the workout. IOW, you should use the numbers spit out by the calculator blindly.
I don’t think the e1Rm calculations are ridiculous either, though it’s totally possible that you couldn’t have squatted 350 x 1 when squatting 315 x 5 if you’d never done singles before and only trained 5’s (e.g. LP).
For reference, my best set of 5 on the squat in knee sleeves is 518 and my best single is 600.
I’m exactly where you are in the program right now, just did Week 3, lifting day 3 of The Bridge and also kinda crept up the RPE scale lately. I got that Texas Method fever with my rack pulls on Monday and upped the weight a bunch because I was feeling good, but it affected my Wednesday and Friday lifts a bit. My numbers were 5-10lb lower on almost all my lifts at the same RPEs this week and I didn’t feel 100% Wednesday and Friday this week. I think Jordan’s advice about undershooting is sound. I think RPE is supposed to be judged on “when form starts to severely suffer” instead of “I have to go to absolute failure.”
Late reply, but I have kinda found that out organically since posting this. My tendencies on Squat and DL are to under-rate RPE and my presses tend to be overrated (because I’ve accidentally failed a few RPE 9 lifts 1 rep short). Appreciate The Bridge being free though. In the middle of Week 7 right now and my Bench, Press, and Deadlift are back up to my all time PRs when I was doing TM at RPE 8 and 9 now and I’m no longer collapsing on the floor after 5x5 or 6x5 squat days anymore. Thanks
