oops. that still isn't close to equivalent though.

Yeah, true- that number was the end product of five years of football weight training though, and he hasn't touched a barbell since.

Imo, guy #1 should stay on SS if strength is his goal. And eat an amount that can facilitate that goal. I "appeared" to be very close to maxing a few times, but it turns out my form was just really ****ty.

Guy #2 could do well on TM. I ran TM while eating at a deficit. The gains are slower than SS, but that is to be expected when you are not eating enough and trying to get abz. Of course the program is not really designed to be used for weightloss, so he could also do any number of other routines and get similar results WRT to weight loss.

Thanks very much. If I'm understanding the last part right, for someone who's eating at a deficit and losing weight, it's not necessarily as important what exact programming they do, as it's basically just a way to burn calories and hopefully aid calorie-partitioning? Am I way off?

Thats about right. afaik, people recommend doing strength training/ resistance work because it will be best for building/maintaining lean muscle mass while cutting. Whereas doing cardio and HIIT will not be as effective.

(had to google calorie partitioning)

Sweet. Thanks again.

Redmen,

Those numbers are kind of low for where I'd expect them to be, even on a "deficit." Have they tried taking a week or two completely off? Sometimes you don't realize how fatigued you really are when you're training with brutal consistency.

My gym was closed for a month so I didn't lift, then when I came back I did SS twice a week for about 6 weeks while eating at a slight deficit. After the 5 weeks of SS I was stronger than I ever was on the TM, probably because I never took time to deload on TM.

Redmen,

consider using the PPAN template if recovery is an issue? I.e. basically light squats/front squats on Wednesday.

Do you guys switch to PPAN before or after you miss some of the squat reps in the normal linear SS?

It's not really formulaic like that. You switch when you judge that your progress will be faster only squatting heavy and adding weight twice a week as opposed to three times a week. If you have a lot of lifting experience and know what actually failing a rep means, then you could maybe switch to PPAN before your squat truely stalls. Most people, however, are huge bitches and start missing reps way before they should, so the best course of action for them would likely be to keep grinding SS after the first stall.

I do suspect my brother (Guy #1) has a fair bit of room left in most of his lifts before he fails. Guy #2 could probably go a little further as well, at least on squats and DL, but I didn't think his numbers were especially low at this point.

I don't have the PPAN book, unfortunately. Is there a decent summary somewhere online?

It's under The Advanced Novice Program

http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wi...rting_Strength

I've never missed a squat rep in my life, so I hope I'm not a bitch...

Regarding the part in bold: I don't follow: 3>2, unless there's an implied assumption that you add more each time during the PPAN than the regular end of SS?

It's more that continuing to squat heavy 3/week will lead to recovery issues, which lead to failing squats. So the answer is switch to PPAN whenever you have problems enough with recovery to advance 3/week. Advancing 2/week on PPAN is better than 1/week on TM.

I've had success squatting heavy 1-2 times per week and adding weight when possible - and when too fatigued, using dynamic effort (DE) work to maintain a training stimulus without severely impacting strength-based recovery. This seems to work fairly well. I use this concept for squats (box squats) and deadlifts (speed DL with bands).

I also do speed benching, but I can't act like I am the authority on that, since my max bench is probably ~220 at BW 230.

My big thing is I can not force myself to take more than 2-3 minutes max in between sets. I am a gung-ho type of person. It doesn't seem to effect me much, hopefully it won't. I seem to recover fine to add 5lbs a week, especially since I quit drinking soda. Sleeping in a REM state seems to keep me fresh.
You guys who are having recovery issues how do you feel after you finish working out? Are you dragging yourself out of the gym home or do you feel fine? How does the lack of sufficient recovery effect your lifts?

Here's my program.
Monday
Squat 5x5
Bench 5x5
PC's 5x3

Wed
Front Squat 3x5
Press 4x5
DL 4x5

Friday
Squat 4x5 1x3 1x8 of 3rd set - I add 5lbs on Fridays on the 5th set where I do 3 reps
Bench 4x5 1x3 1x8
PC's 5x3

The implied assumption is that you can't always add weight while on SS because you're more run down from squatting heavy 3 times a week. So compromising and only squatting heavy twice a week lets you add weight with more regularity.

And don't feel bad about potentially being a bitch. Just about everyone on here is a bitch. You're only no longer a bitch when your WIM is so high that you achieve feats of strength like Jaysick.

What, if any, modifications should there be to 5/3/1 for a woman? I'm assuming the 4 week increments of +5 for press/BP and +10 for squats/DL would go to +2.5 and +5 pounds.

Beyond that, I'm wondering if there should be any further adjustment to the 1RM number (or 90% 1RM). One of the few differences mentioned in Practical Programming is that women have a lower 1RM, but can do more reps close to their max to produce an adaptive response. Should I therefore use a lower 1RM and perhaps push harder for more reps on the 5+/3+/1+ sets?

I'm guessing it doesn't matter that much, but Wendler seems to really stress not to go too high with the starting 1RM number, so I thought it was worth asking.

I dunno. Either way let us (me?) know what happens after a few cycles. I'm curious.

I would just run it like a dude. If it ends up a little too easy the first cycle, that is not a bad thing. You would just have some more momentum to keep progress going, imo.

Doing our first texas method intensity day today. What I was thinking of doing is doing all five main exercises every Friday for either a 5 rep PR or a 1 rep PR (3 rep for power cleans). Each exercise would alternate 1rep/5rep, so it would look like this:

Week one Friday:
Squat - 5 rep PR
Bench - 5 rep PR
Deadlift - 1 rep PR
Press - 1 rep PR
Power clean - 3 rep PR

Week two Friday:
Squat - 1 rep PR
Bench - 1 rep PR
Deadlift - 5 rep PR
Press - 5 rep PR
Power clean - 1 rep PR

Is this stupid? My thinking in doing all five exercises each Friday is to get a little bit more volume in, since I think my workout partners and I can still handle it.

Might work for a little while, but I can't see press and bench PR on the same day for too long.

Yeah, true. So just make press/bench alternate each week? Although then it'll be a month in between new attempts at 1-rep or 5-rep PRs if I keep everything else the same. Though that may not be a bad thing since it's hard for us to microload (each attempt is probably going to be +5 pounds)

Assuming doing a 1RM and doing a 5RM give you equal training benefit (I doubt they do), then does it really matter if each respective one is a month apart, as long as you are doing one or the other every 2 weeks? And if they are in fact not equal, why not just do the more effective one? (5RM)

Makes sense.