There is precious little intermediate discussion threads i've been able to find on 2p2 so I thought it'd be good to create somewhere where people can browse all the common questions and queries without getting monthly LC and log threads in their searches.


I have some question related to Texas Method.

The exercise selection I wish to keep atm are (open to change if a good argument is put forward) SQ, DL, PC, OP, BP and i'd really like to keep doing weighted chins and pullups but I've seen that it could hamper recovery so i'm unsure of where to place them.

-PC and OP would NEVER be used on an intensity day amirite due to the nature of them being less taxing and we really want taxing on intensity right? Obv they are v taxing but you know what i mean.

-Where would I place weighted chins? Volume day? Would I have to take out one of my main lifts out of my workout to fit it in?

-What's meant by assistance exercises?

-What's the standard for intensity day? Is is very rigid or do most people go with the flow and jump around with reps from week to week. ie. I'll do a some max singles for a few weeks (increasing weight), do you know what i'll do next week a few higher reps for a while....and then calculate it roughly???

And any other wisdom you guys have picked up that you wished you knew when you started would be gratefully received. Thanks.

Assuming OP is overhead press, I think you're wrong there. I'm pretty sure most people alternate weeks between OHP and bench.

No way, you should definitely include these.

I like DL's on intensity day, but some people have it on monday or wednesday. You could definitely put DL's on some other day and use PC's on intensity day. Alternating presses and bench presses just like SS works well.


It fits fine without taking anything out. I'd arrange it like this on volume day:
Pressing movement -> Squat -> Upper body Pull

Less taxing movements, isolation movements, higher rep work, shorter ROM movements, weak point work, etc that complement one of the main exercises you're doing that day. Typically an upper body lift though.


I'd stick with a set of 5 as long as possible since just 1 single does not provide much stimulus at all. I think miles also supports using a set of 5 as long as possible.


I might be alone in this, but if I had to run it again I'd put the 2 day break after volume or light day since I was barely recovering from the volume workout, and the intensity day was not very stressful at all.

Here's my variant that I (think I) ran, although I made a couple adjustments due to bench press issues.

Monday
Press-5x5
Squat-5x5
Chinups-stuff

Wednesday
Power Clean-either 5x3 or work up to some heavy ass weights
Light squats-2x5 @ 80% of monday
Bench Press-3x5 (in my case a substitute like dips or weighted pushups)

Friday
Squat-1x5
Press or Push Press-1x5 or something
Deadlift-1x5
Possibly some more chinups or something. Take them out if you aren't recovering.

Bleh I gave somebody a lend of my copy of PP 1st ed

From what I recall I think I would really like to have DL on Heavy day also theblackkeys. It seems to make most sense putting it there.

-Can you go full out with power cleans (PR's and such) on the light day and expect there relative lack of CNS intensity compared deadlifts to still constitute a "light" day?

Does this look alright?

Volume
SQ 5x5
OP/BP (alternating weekly) 5x5
Is anything to be said for push presses? I see alot of templates with them included.
And either choose PC 5x3 or Weighted pulls/chin ups 5x5 Not both? Or are both cool?
Dips as an accessary?

Light
BS@80%
OP/BP@80%??? for 2x5. This is where i'm getting confused. Alot of templates have OP and BP with no % quantifiers. Does this mean it's the same weight as the volume day. It can't be surely?
PC 5x3 or 3x3 for PR town

Heavy
BS 1x5
OP/BP 1x5
DL 1x5
AND Weighted Pull/Chin ups for 1x5 or 3x1 or similiar. It'd be fine to fit both in here I take it? Weighted pulls are hugely taxing for me. I get wierd involuntary fullbody shaking after heavy sets. That being said I really want weighted pulls somewhere in there as I love them tbh.

Feel free to change or make improvements. Sorry for the 100 questions it's what comes of having to think for myself in relation to programming, lol.

I can barely fit 3 exercises in under 2 hours on volume day, because squats take so goddamn long.

DL is hard to do in a 5x5 TM-type program. This is the sad reality of the situation. Try rotating partials, like rack pulls/halting DLs/speed DLs. Full ones are going to be probably impossible to do in a three-day setup.

Ok. So it would be deadlifts once every two weeks with a DL substitution or maybe heavy power cleans once in a while on intensity day?

Apart from that does my template look ok? I'm still pretty unsure if i've got the pulls/chins and power cleans in the right place without screwing things up? I really enjoy weighted pull ups and power cleans and would love to have both in but I don't want to get crappy results with trying to go for too much. Any advice would be appreciated.

The best part about being stronger than a housecat is that you get to have your own ideas about programming. Try something for 6 weeks and see how you progress (or don't). Eventually you figure out what you can and cannot do based on your schedule and athletics (if you compete in anything).

sigh.....life was easier when the rippetoes said "you do this" and I did it. I'm not too fond of this thinking for myself carry on. euro habits die hard

Cool then. As long as i've not made any glaring mistakes in my attempt I should be good to go then when the time comes.

On second thoughts unweighted pull ups would be better choice for volume and weighted on intensity prob. lol this stuff is a nightmare.

Most people feel the same way. I know I did, until baseball made it a moot point since I can't make any progress while competing in my sport of choice. You see ridiculous gains in strength on a simple program and hope it transfers easily to the intermediate stage when recovery slows down. But it doesn't, because each person has a different propensity to recover from heavy barbell training based on genetics. Additionally, nutrition plays a huge role here and supplementation has its biggest effect in this stage of development (so maybe consider creatine and some other substances if you haven't already), so there's tons of confounding variables that make it a much more personal level of development compared to the novice stage.

If you think this is bad, how do you think Olympic athletes feel when they have goals of adding 6 kilos to their totals in four years?

Jimi,

I am currently doing a bastardized Texas program. I only squat M & W, and on Friday I deadlift 1x5. Only squatting 2x a week, I find I am still able to add 5 lbs a week deadlifting and recover ok over weekend

I know Rip thinks you should squat at least 3x a week, but he is coming from the vantage point the squat is more important than everything else. However, I am not interested in being a powerlifter, so I squat less and it gives me A LOT more energy/recovery ability to progress in other lifts.

I also do not do powercleans, which makes it easier to fit in assistance exercises, especially pulling exercises such as weighted pullup.

I think this could be a cool place to just dump our intermediate programming

I've been going 4x/week and splitting upper/lower volume days with lower volume being Day 1, upper Day 2, recovery 4, and intensity 6. Volume crushes me so much more than intensity so I get an extra day lower-body wise to recover and I don't feel any ill effects from Day 6 to the next week's Day 1.

Also, in honor of Jaysick I've been benching 4x/week so I throw in a 3x5 on Day 1.

I agree with leaving out powercleans if you want to do more assistance work. There's only so much time/room for everything.

On the squat, do you just do the volume squat and then a light squat? Or do you rotate through the Volume/Recovery/Intensity sessions? Sounds like a good idea.

TBK, I do not know if your question is for me or not, if it is I am still doing linear increase 3x5 in squats. Even when I was doing "SS" I only squatted twice a week so my squats have been going up slower than in SS so my upper body lifts plateau'd first.

I never liked squatting 3x a week because of what it took out of me, both in terms of energy and time (I often have to wait for power racks to open for squatting, so counting wait time and long rests squats can take a very good chunk of time)

When my squats plateau doing 3x5 I am not sure what I will do. Maybe I will rotate doing volume and intensity one week and volume and recovery/front squat the next week.

There's about 0% chance you'll be able to do anything resembling "intensity" 2 days after heavy 5x5 volume squats. You could do intensity->volume though.

Yeah, this makes sense. Will probably do that then. Maybe will just do Volume (Mon), Intensity (Wed) and mix in recovery days when start to stall.

Push presses are a lot like utilizing chains or bands on your bench. It allows you to develop more force at the bottom and generate more force than you might if you were simply OH pressing the weight. If I were you, (especially for something like 5x5 with the same weight) I might pick a weight right at ~70-75% (slightly heavier than a weight you might select for a dynamic effort day), and start with the OH press (focus on generating maximal force and accelerating the weight) and move to push press as I fatigued. It's at least worth playing around with a bit.

Like KyleB said, the fun thing about getting the most out of a program like SS is that it provides you the foundation necessary to go about formulating your own program without running into the normal pitfalls that others might. Experiment and go with what works (and don't be afraid to change things if you plateau).

Something I've been wondering about:

If your goal is to have the biggest S/B/DL total, does it ever get to a point where your training abandons two of the lifts to give you enough recovery room to progress on the third? Like if you have a 600lb squat and a 700lb deadlift and "only" bench 315 and are thoroughly stuck on bench would it make sense to abandon all squats and DLs to bring your bench up? The hope would be to do whatever it takes to get your bench to 400, then try to hang onto those gains while rebuilding your squat and DL numbers.

I guess this is actually an advanced programming question.

Ive been doing this for about 2 months now:

Volume:
5x5 Squat
5x5 Bench/Press (alt weeks)
5x5 Pendlay Rows

Recovery
3x3 or 2x5 Squat/Box Squat/Front Squat (whatever I feel like on that day)
3x3 or 2x5 Press/Bench/Incline
3 sets of pull ups to "failure"

Intensity
1x5 Squat
1x5 Bench/Press
1x5 Deadlifts

Notes:
Volume day is the hardest. Intensity day is most fun. I messed up my intensity day a few times by going too heavy on recovery day. I am also eating at a 25%+ calorie deficit, but still making slow progress. There is a spreadsheet for my workout in my log.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...9&postcount=67

You wouldn't abandon squats or deads to favor your bench. In going from 315 to 400, generally your problem is not going to be in muscle groups that are going to overlap with the primary movers in the bench. Squat is a little different because low-bar squats hammer your shoulders, but if you have enough recovery programmed in you shouldn't face a problem.

Squat has high carryover to DL, perhaps for obvious reasons. That's why cutting back on full DLs isn't a big deal in this stage.

I'm not sure I'm totally on board with this, for a couple reasons.

1. Fatigue doesn't have to be muscle specific. You could leg press your way to a lower bench even though the muscle groups worked have almost no overlap.
2. You can't just keep adding in more recovery. Eventually it takes too long to recover from a stimulus to expect any supercompensation.

Been doing this for 2-3 weeks:

Monday Volume: Squats 5*5, Press 5*5, Deadlift 5
Wednesday Recovery: Squats 2*5, Bench 3*5, Pullup ladders
Friday intensity: Squats 5, Press 5; Rowing intervals

ftr, this is used quite a bit and is very effective. Do strict til failure, switch to push press til failure, switch to jerks til failure.