Hi BBM team,
26M 6’1" 205 lbs.
First time poster on the BBM forums. I discovered you all through your previous affiliation with Starting Strength, and truly appreciate all the unpaid time you put into helping out inexperienced trainees like myself.
Training History:
I have been “lifting” off and on for about 5 or 6 years, but didn’t start taking training remotely seriously until about two years ago when I ran the SSNLP for the first time. I’ve took a couple cracks at the Texas Method after that (had a layoff that affected my progress) and was able to get to the following 5RMs before progress began to slow down - 345/245/390 (S/B/D). After that, I made the decision that I was 1. a little fat, and 2. needed to change up my programming. So I started a 6-month process of cutting about 20 lbs and doing 5/3/1. I lost the weight, but also lost a decent amount of strength (I suspect I didn’t program my volume/intensity correctly and also messed up my cut), and here I am now feeling frustrated with 1RMs that are basically the same as my previous 5RMs.
Anyway, I have gotten fairly interested in powerlifting in the last year or so, and decided that competing in a meet would be good motivation to push myself back to my old numbers (and hopefully beyond). So, I intend to compete in a meet next April to give myself plenty of time to get my strength back up. Even though I’m not technically coming fresh off a novice LP, I’m hoping that I will have a lot of room to progress and make early intermediate type gains coming off of a prolonged caloric deficit. I also have never auto-regulated my training (though I have been logging RPE for the past couple months) but love the idea of using it in my training. Given this, do you think the Bridge would be an appropriate template to start with, or would I need something more advanced? If it is appropriate, how would one modify the template, if at all, to make it more powerlifting-centric?
Thanks for reading, sorry if this has been a little long. I’m looking forward to your advice!