My understanding, based on reading various articles from Rip and others, is that the average female has lower motor recruitment rates than the average male and thus needs a relatively higher intensity in her programming to hit the right intensity for building strength. As such, a higher intensity, lower rep is recommended. For example, instead of doing 3 sets of 5, you would do 5 sets of 3 reps.
I have two questions in regards to this:
Do you agree with the above assessment?
Should the reps/sets be modified for female lifters running The Bridge (or Bridge 2.0 for that matter)?
The switch to sets of 3 is offered as one way to help women get a bit more out of their LP, but it’s not a general programming tools, like “women need to do triples, not 5s”. Women still need the volume, and while we may have lower motor recruitment, we don’t need a program altered to higher intensity, we need to continue training in order to build strength. RPE based programs make this pretty easy to manage, because we simply use the program and RPE to manage the bar load.
I think we all find that as women train more, the gap between their volume work and intensity work lessens anyway. And training like the Bridge works great for women who have complete a linear progression.