Too early for the bridge?

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First of all, I’m new to the forum so hello everyone.

I’ve been lifting for several years now but without proper programming for most of it. I also had a lot of injuries as sicknesses interrupt my development. Around August 2017, right after an ankle injury, I decided to focus a bit more on programing so I started doing stronglifts 5x5.

After a few months, my squat was at 120kg for 3x5, Bench 80kg for 5x5 and my Deadlift at 140 for 5x5. At that time I also developed a really painful Subacromial bursitis which rendered me unable to train at all for a few weeks. In February I injured my ankle again. Then in June/July I had a laparoscopic surgery, which made me unable to train for another 2 months.

After that I started Stronglifts again and ended up at 120 3x5 squat, 85 5x5 Bench, 140 1x5 Deadlift. I then wanted to change things up and made my own program based on the Greyskull Lp, basically doing 2x5 and 1amrap on every exercise plus 2x8 of Bench on OHP day and vice versa.
I started this with 110kg in the squat because I felt my technique was shit, and ended up back an 120 for 3x5. It took my bench to 95 on a 3x5, OHP from ~55 to 60kg 3x5, and deadlift to 140 on a 3x5. All in about 6 weeks.

My amraps all got down to 5 reps btw.

I now finished week 2 of the bridge 1.0 but I’m not sure if that was the right move. I never progressed to 5x3, 3x3 etc. But I also don’t know if that’s even necessary or if I’m missing out on some easy lp gains. Also 2 ct pause bench with just 85kg seems silly.

Sorry for the long post with the probably unnecessary life story :smile:

Age: 23
Weight: 85kg
Waist: probably normal

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Sup dude.
So I think that you made the right choice to move on the the bridge given the details you posted.
There could be an argument to “run out” the 3x3 and 2x3 but that doesn’t really mean you’re getting stronger, just as Jordan says “changing the test”.
Hope you have good results from the bridge.
Dont worry about the 2ct paused bench, my 1rm is like 290 and I only use 160-180x8 on that movement because it’s challenging.

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I agree with Dhruv4 and I’ll add that when it comes to paused and tempo movements, leave your ego at the door. This goes even more for the squat variants. That said, it is my assessment that getting used to doing them transferred immensely to my “competition” squat form, something you voiced concern with. An interesting thing about the Bridge is that as soon as you get used to a variant and your ego for getting the weight heavier can start to factor in, the program switches to a different variant that helps with a different aspect of your competition form. This was the biggest thing I liked from my Bridge experience.

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Thanks for the responses guys. I think I’ll just stick to the program and see what happens. Even though I can’t squt right now because my knee hurt like crazy and I can hardly walk. But what am I gonna do? Not train? :roll_eyes:

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