Trying to understand why I regressed on the last week of The Bridge

Training Q&A [Moderated]
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I recently ran the 8 week program The Bridge and have purchased the Strength 1 Template, to use after in order to get prepared for my first meet. I was progressing so nicely on The Bridge and making great progress, especially about week 5 and 6. It was like magic for my squat and bench. Maybe I added too much weight during that time in my excitement? My deadlift started going down after week 6. All my main lifts went down drastically during week 8. I just felt so weak and lifts I would do for warm up the previous week, I would fail during this last week. I am now on week 2 of the Strength Template and am assessing my progress and seeing what my body responded to or didn’t and want to learn from this situation. Is it just fatigue and this low stress week is here to get me ready for next week so I shouldn’t worry too much about it? Or was I overshooting my RPE during the bridge and that’s why my lifts seemed to go up so well and am now regressing. I tried to add a little more each week, depending on how it felt, while trying to maintain desired RPE. I may have went a little too high on the introduced singles later in the program, because I had never done them and was so excited to do them.

I just feel a little defeated by these last 2 weeks because its such low volume and I still was showing such a loss of strength. I dont want this to happen before my first meet. It is my first time ever posting about anything on a forum and I put in the wrong section for the docs to respond so this is a repost.

One last question out of curiosity, your peaking templates suggest that people who do or don’t listen to loud music while lifting may need different peaking strategies. Where can I learn more about this?

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It’s just a low stress week. We wouldn’t necessarily expect you to be at your best on that week, though people respond differently. I wouldn’t worry about it at all, as the goal of the low stress week is to get you prepared for the upcoming training block. Try to get into a good headspace about your training so we can keep building momentum.

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Ok, thank you so much. I thought I was training too aggressively or something. I appreciate your response about headspace and will not think too much about it. It makes sense when you say it so simply. I guess our body responds in waves sometimes and it’s harder for me to figure out now that I’m not just adding weight to the bar each time on a beginner program.

You guys are awesome!