hi, I’m 30 yrs old 5’9” 165 lbs
Ive been running Mike Mathew’s BLS program for the last year and am needing to switch to more intermediate programming. I have been at a calorie deficit for the whole last year to get my body fat down because I was at over 30%ish body fat at 220 lbs. would the bridge still be appropriate as a transition to an RPE based programming still?
BLS uses a “double” progression where you either go up in reps until you hit 6 or 8 reps depending on expand the move up in weight and do 4 reps. I believe it’s been hampering my progress. Well that and the calorie deficit. So run bridge, and then run either hypertrophy I or strength I probably followed by the other and get into a caloric surplus?
mainlifts are:
squat 235 for 5x3
overhead press 105 for 5x3
deadlift 280 for 5x3
bench 160 for 5x3
Maybe consider doing the first (free) phase of the beginner template. Not because you’re a beginner but because it’s a good introduction to RPE and BBM style programming. That would only be 2-6 weeks and then jump in to strength or hypertrophy templates. Jordan has said that the bridge isn’t as good as their more recently released programs, though it’s still fine.
If you’d like to do the bridge then go ahead and it will give you a great introduction to RPE and BBM style programming. There is no right answer here.
Definitely going to look at that. I’m coming back from a week vacation where I haven’t been able to train so it’ll also be great to dial it back a bit too.
Caloric surplus vs deficit: advice on this depends on your waist size compared to 40” and your own personal goals and preferences.
If you are 40” or greater than you would have better health outcomes if you were to continue to prioritize lowering that over potential faster strength gains. You can still gain strength while in a caloric deficit, just not likely at the same pace.
If you’ve managed to get below ~35-36” then it’s more of a matter of what you want to accomplish. You may chose to go more of a maintenance, or maybe cut even more. I wouldn’t recommend much surplus unless it were very carefully controlled while also closely watching the waistline with plans on what to do once you reach certain thresholds.
Or you could be down to 33” or less by now for all I know. With how long you have been in a deficit, I’d recommend you try to at a minimum, ease into maintenance and maybe also titrate up physical activity (the bridge and the novice programs do this to an extent) for better health outcomes but also to get your caloric needs while at maintenance to increase. Then if/when you try to get lean/leaner again you have more to work with.
Edit: The above is mostly my own personal take on a post Jordan recently made discussing the viability of cut/bulk cycling vs “recomp”
I’m down to 32.5 if my powerlifting belt notches say anything. I have a pioneer cut belt and it’s a medium so it maxes out at 40 inches. It legitimately keeps me in line because of I’m on the last notch it is time to “cut” down. Physical activity is pretty high because at my current job I sling 50lb boxes all the time and can get close to 12000 steps often. But yeah titrations calories went out the window with the whole on the road.
If you want to start using RPE, best way is to keep doing what you’re doing, but record in your training log the RPE of your lifts.
That’s the gentlest introduction into RPE.
According to Mike T. RPE is a fundamental training parameter. I totally agree with him.
BBM uses RPE to write awesome templates for training. They have the bridge, but you should consider their other templates too - it’s cheaper and better than coaching, which you have to compare it to. A good template tells you what to do for the next 2 to 3 months.
I decided to run the free part of the beginner template for now. I’m probably going to buy the whole template so I can throw my father on it and my gf is she ever wants to. Running “recomp” macros to see where I’m at once all the bloating from eating out for a week goes away. I know it’s a lot of salt related bloating because I am sure 10lbs is a lot of weight for one week(possible but not likely) and 5 of it is already flushed out.