The Texas Method Split (The Better Way To Do Texas Method)

A while ago I wrote an article about the Texas Method. The purpose of that article was to introduce the idea of intermediate training; programming your lifts on a weekly basis. However I believe that the original template for the Texas Method has its flaws; the main limitation being that you cannot train the bench press and overhead press equally in the same week.

The Texas Method split solves this problem. It breaks away from the typical squat-push-pull template that you see in typical 5x5 programs, and in my opinion opens more doors for the lifter, training wise. The Texas Method split follows this basic format:

Day 1: pressing
Day 2: squats and pulling
Day 3: pressing
Day 4: squats and pulling

As a rule of thumb, I'd probably recommend this program for a lifter who's max lifts are around a 160kg squat, 100kg bench, 180kg deadlif (but if you can go higher than this by doing linear progression, then by all means go for it!).

The Program

If I were to list all the exercises and volume/intensity relationships the program would look like this:

Monday

Overhead Press (Intensity)
Bench Press (Volume)
Pressing assistance
Arms
Ab work

Tuesday

Squat (Volume)
Light Deadlifts
Barbell Rows
Extra leg and back assistance if you need it
Ab work

Thursday

Bench Press (Intensity)
Overhead Press (Volume)
Pressing assistance
Arms
Ab Work

Friday

Squat (Intensity)
Heavy Deadlift
Weighted Pull-ups
Ab Work


The rep scheme for the intensity lifts being 1 x 5, and the rep scheme for the volume lifts being 5x5. Increase the weight for the heavy squat and heavy deadlift days by 2.5kg each week, and microload (using 0.5kg fractional plates) for the bench press and overhead press. Don't increase the volume day weight too rapidly. Increase it by 2.5kg every 4 weeks. Remember volume day weight should be ~85% of the intensity day weight.
 
As you can see, the template not only allows the overhead press and bench press to be trained together in the same week, but it also allows you to add in more assistance work. This can allow you to put on more size, if the assistance exercises are performed in the higher rep range 8-12.

Assistance Exercises

Pressing Assistance:

• Dips
• Incline Barbell Bench
• Incline Dumbbell Bench
• Higher rep overhead press
• Higher rep bench press
• Dumbbell Shoulder Press

Leg Assistance:

• Lighter high bar squats (if you currently squat low bar) to hit the quads
• Leg curls
• Leg press

Back Assistance:

• Weighted pull-ups
• Lat Pull-downs
• Barbell Shrugs

Arms:

• Curls for biceps
• Lying tricep extension for triceps
• Tricep pushdowns

Other assistance work that is still very important:

• Ab work (ab roller, hanging leg raise, weighted planks)
• Rear delt work (very, VERY important to keep your shoulders healthy)
• Mobility work (hips, shoulders, ankle, etc) 
• Calf work (not that important but you can do it if you want lol)

Its really up to you what assistance exercises you choose to do, but try to keep the exercises somewhat useful. If you use a big arch on the bench press then I recommend you do incline bench work in order to help fill out the upper pecs more (no homo). It is also (for me anyway) a fairly grindy (slow and difficult) exercise, which I find helps me on the flat bench press as it teaches me to push harder through tough reps and not give up easily.


-----------

That brings an end to this article, hopefully it will help out other lifters out there. I'll write another article later down the track about how to modify the programming (the rep schemes in particular), once you have exhausted weekly programming.

GPC NSW States Meet 2013

Meet results:

82.5kg weight class

• Squat 190/197.5/207.5 (PR)
• Bench 110/115/117.5x
• Deadlift 225/240/245x

My training for the meet:

This was my meet prep over the course of 11 weeks:

http://i.imgur.com/COn4A0H.png

I was on Texas Method so only the Intensity days (the days where I lift heavy) are shown. I pretty much planned all the numbers I was going to hit beforehand.

The bench numbers look funny because I used percentages, I just rounded up to the closest 2.5kg. I did 2 working sets for the bench which worked pretty well. If the first working set felt easy, I would add 2.5kg for the second working set (which I did pretty much every week, so in the last week I benched 105kg x 3, 107.5kg x 3 for example).

An observation from my previous training cycle for the squat was that I got really beaten up towards the end when I stuck with 5's throughout the training cycle, so this time I decided to switch to triples about 5 weeks out which worked well. I'm not making good progress with one working set on Intensity Day anymore so I think more adding more volume for my next meet prep will help me to continue to make progress..

For the deadlift I stuck with 2 sets of 4 reps throughout the cycle. This might have been a stupid thing to do seeing as I did worse on the deadlift at this meet compared to the previous one (although there was no squat in the last meet), so for the next cycle I plan to taper down the volume in the last 5 or so weeks.

Thoughts on the meet itself:

The squat felt strong. although I did lose the feel for heavy weights because of the deload week I took on the week of the meet. For my opener of 190 I didn't sit back enough so it felt a bit off. I got friends to cue me to sit back for my next 2 attempts which helped, they felt a lot better. It felt like I used a lot of back for my third attempt of 207.5kg but on the video it doesn't look too bad.

For the bench, people might be thinking why it didn't improve much. A possible explanation is that for my previous comp I did Smolov Jr for the bench, but I lost a lot of the strength I gained from Smolov Jr afterwards (for those unaware, the program involves benching 4 times a week for 3 weeks) because I didn't maintain the volume and frequency for the bench. For this training cycle I pretty much had to make back the strength that I lost but that being said though 115kg this time around felt stronger than the last 115kg I did.

I think the training approach I used for the bench works pretty well in the off-season when there's no competition to prepare for, but I'll be training the bench differently when preparing for my next competition (start out with lots of volume but taper it down over the weeks and gradually handle heavier weights).

For the deadlift, I think my crap performance was due to a combination of feeling tired on the day plus not being fully recovered from training. I really need to learn to back off in training early enough so that I can display my full strength on competition day. I won't make the same mistake again.

 Video:

General Lifting Advice for Beginners

Sup errbody. It's been a long time since my last post, mainly because I couldn't really think of anything useful to write about. I guess that beats writing a crappy post on a daily basis.

I've still been training hard, currently preparing for a meet on March 10th. Training has been going well so far, I've hit a few rep PRs recently:

Press 75kg 2 x 3 (form could have been better)



Bench 100kg x 5



Deadlift 215kg 2 x 4



I feel like I should be able to make good progress on the bench press this year. Anyway thats enough about me.

---------------------

I've made some observations of beginner lifters at the gym I've trained at, and the following are some tips which I believe beginners will find useful. Just to clarify, you're a beginner if you're on linear progression.

Mental Preparation

Don't do a set until you feel mentally ready. A cheesier way of describing mental preparation is 'getting into the zone'. Your body as well as your mind need to both be ready to lift the weights. Chances are, once the weights get heavy enough you will naturally find you need to psyche yourself up before the set, due to not wanting to fail the set.

How to mentally prepare is something you will have to figure out for yourself, but once you do, it will become a ritual that you perform before each PR.

Also, don't waste your rest periods. Use that time to think about your next set. Chances are if you are constantly on your phone during your rests then you aren't very focused. Get that sorted out.

Fighting Through Tough Reps

I've seen some beginners who give up too easily during a set. As soon as a rep gets hard, they give up without even putting up a fight. I've seen other cases where the beginner initially gives up on the squat for example, where they drop by about an inch then decide to keep pushing and end up getting the rep. I think the word I've used the most for beginners during their sets is "push". I tell them to keep pushing, and not to stop.

If you don't learn to push yourself your results will be suboptimal. Training is not meant to be a walk in the park. You don't go to the gym to go through the motions. Go to the gym to crush the weights.

Find The Sweet Spot For Your Bodyweight

You'll know you've hit it when progress hasn't been that great, but once you reach a certain bodyweight your lifts shoot up. This doesn't go on forever of course. Don't interprete this as the maximum bodyweight you should be at, it's more like the minimum bodyweight that lets you be strong for your height.

For example in my case, there is no way I could possibly be strong weighing 50kg. When my bodyweight was in the 70kg range, I was making steady gains on the squat and deadlift but my bench and overhead press were miserable. Once I hit the 80kg mark thats when I started making much better progress for my upper body lifts. Don't feel the need to rush to get to whatever this bodyweight may be for you, try to gain weight whilst keeping the bodyfat levels relatively constant for best results.

Remember if you don't eat, you won't grow which means you're wasting your time if putting on muscle is your goal.


This will probably be my last post for beginners unless I can think of something else to write about in the future. I have ideas for new posts which will be more targeted towards intermediate lifters, such as how to modify the Texas Method, so stay tuned!

If You Physically Can't Squat...

...then your mobility probably sucks. What this means is, your body is not flexible enough to perform the squat correctly, so you physically cannot perform the squat with proper form. The reason for this is most likely due to your lifestyle, if you spend a majority of your time sitting down for instance.

For the low bar squat, the three most common areas (from what I have seen) where people have mobility issues are in:

• the hips
• the shoulders
• the ankles

If you are teaching someone to squat correctly, the first thing you should do is use coaching cues to try to get the lifter to use proper form; e.g. "knees out", "chest up", etc. If this does not work, the following sections may be of use.

Mobility issues don't only apply to new lifters. For instance in my case, my knees only buckled in during heavier weights, so I didn't know for a long time that I needed to work on my hip mobility.

Hip Mobility

A person with tight hips will have trouble keeping their knees shoved out on the squat (demonstrated on the left in the figure below):

An example of knees buckled inwards vs. knees shoved out on the squat

 Having the knees shoved out in the squat (shown right in the above image) is important because:

1. It pushes your legs out of the way and gives space for your body, making it easier to hit depth.
2. It ensures optimal distribution of forces through your knee. If your knees are inside of your feet instead of pointed directly over your feet, there is more torque on the knee.
3. It's prettier to look at

Seriously though, squatting with the knees shoved out is important in keeping the movement as safe as possible. So what if you absolutely cannot shove the knees out?

There is a great drill you can perform daily in order to improve your hip mobility shown below:

http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/01/episode-363-pre-squat-hip-opener-mob-rx.html

The above drill should be performed after all your training sessions, as well as every night before you go to bed. You will notice an improvement in your hips (and subsequently your squatting) after about two weeks or so.

The below stretch is also worth doing before you start doing squats in your training session. Hold the stretch for about 30 seconds, and take the same foot stance that you squat with. Also keep your chest up.

 

Squat stretch

Shoulder Mobility

Basically, your shoulder mobility needs improving  if you are unable to put the bar in this low bar position:

The low bar position

The low bar position will initially feel quite uncomfortable. Your wrists may also not be as straight as in the above figure (that is, they will be very bent). Your body will get used to this position over time, you may also want to try shoulder dislocations to help open up the shoulders. 

Also when getting into the low bar position, you may need to jam your body into place, and it may take a few pushes with your body until you can get the bar low enough. You can see me doing this here.

Ankle Mobility

Poor ankle mobility can be in different forms. One case is shown in the left in the below figure, where you can see the feet caving inwards in the bottom of the squat position:

  A comparison of poor vs. adequate ankle mobility. Yes I edited this in Paint.

 

The second case is harder to identify, and is basically when your ankles are so stiff, you literally cannot hit depth without rounding your lower back. This is sort of shown on the right in the figure below:

Just imagine that the lower the man squats, the more his lower back rounds, because his stiff ankles do not permit his knees to track forward (the ability for his knees to track forward is shown on the left figure).

In order to identify this ankle issue, stand with the balls of your feet on the edge of a box, and basically perform the negative portion of a standing calf raise. In other words, you want to place your ankles into dorsiflexion. If you cannot get much dorsiflexion in your ankles, you will need to stretch them out. 

A good ankle stretch you can do will involve you getting into this position, and try to get your knee as close to the wall as possible (don't go too overboard with this). You can do this stretch for both ankles in between all your squat sets. You may also wish to try out this ankle stretch too.

------------------

Hopefully you squatters out there will find this post useful. Individuals will have varying levels of mobility in their hips, shoulders and ankles based on their lifestyle and how long they have been living this way. If your mobility is absolutely shocking, you may need to do further research into how to further improve on your mobility outside of the drills that are shown in this post, and it may take longer to be able to squat properly. Don't give up however, it'll be worth it in the end.

GPC Push Pull Meet

I recently competed at the GPC Push Pull Meet on the 18th of November. It was a great experience and I got to see a lot of big lifts. I came fifth overall.

My attempts:

• Bench 1st attempt: 107.5kg
• Bench 2nd attempt: 115kg
• Deadlift 1st attempt: 220kg
• Deadlift 2nd attempt: 242.5kg
• Deadlift 3rd attempt: 250kg (failed)

Here's the video of my attempts:



Meet Prep:

Even though the squat wasn't a contested lift in this meet, I still trained it, wouldn't want it to fall behind :P

So I planned ahead what numbers I wanted to hit. Everything pretty much went according to plan, I ended up squatting 185kg x 4, deadlifting 225 for 3,2. I was doing Texas Method for the bench press but it stalled earlier than I expected so I did Smolov jr just to make a bit more progress. I'll be continuing with the Texas Method for the bench in the future but adding more sets on intensity day to get in more volume because I feel that's what was lacking the first time.

In Week 8 I hit what I expected to get for my 2nd attempts. For the squat I did 205kg, and for the deadlift I did 240kg. I decided to do doubles for the bench that week and did 110kg x 2. You can see the video here.

At this stage I don't feel like it was worth it doing the '2nd attempts' in training, because the fatigue built up over the weeks made these attempts feel pretty tough. I didn't end up deadlifting much more than 240kg in competition anyway.

Week 10 (the week of the meet) was a deload week, so I was just lifting light weights to reinforce technique.

Weigh-In:

For this meet there was a 24 hour weigh-in. I wanted to lift in the 82.5kg weight class but weighed about 84kg. It wasn't hard to make weight because during my deload week I lost 1kg of water weight because I wasn't drinking as much water (because I wasn't lifting heavy). So all I had to do was not eat as much on Friday night and I weighted 82.3kg on Saturday morning. After weigh-in I drank and ate a lot and was 85.5kg that night.

Thoughts about the day:

Based on how I went, I think I overestimated what I could do. I was hoping for a 120kg bench and at least a 250kg deadlift. I based these numbers off what I hit for triples in training. At least now I have a better idea of what maxes I can hit, based on what I can lift for reps in training. My paused bench and deadlift improved by 7.5kg since the last meet, so I'm happy that I got stronger.

There was a lot of big lifting at the competition which was amazing to watch, 200+kg benches, 300+kg deadlifts. Check out PTC Sydney's YouTube channel over the next few days to see videos of these lifts.

Intermediate Programming: The Texas Method

Linear progression does not work forever. Eventually the stress induced on your body will take longer than 48 hours (the time until the next training session if you're training on Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to fully recover from, and as a result your next training session will be affected negatively. For example if you squat 140kg for 3x5 on Monday, you might only get 142.5kg for 4,3,2 or something like that on Wednesday. If you're not fully recovered, you'll feel it.

Stress on your body when you're on linear progression

If linear progression is right for you (and it will be for anyone who is new to lifting), the stress induced on their body will behave like the above diagram. Your body gets stressed by the first training session on Monday, but then the body is able to recover from it before Wednesday's training session, and so on. During this period you'll make the quickest gains you'll ever make.

  Stress on your body when linear progression is no longer suitable

As you can see from the diagram above, as I described previously eventually you'll reach a stage where the stress induced on your body will take longer than 48 hours to recover from and will affect your next session. This isn't invitation to be a pussy at the first sign of missing a rep though. If you get 3x5 on Monday but 5,5,4 on Wednesday, repeat the Wednesday weight for the next session.

A good rule of thumb of knowing when your linear progression days are over (PROVIDED YOU HAVE GOOD TECHNIQUE) is when you stall at a certain weight, then you deload but once you work your way back up you stall again at pretty much the same time, or a little bit higher. This means the time you put in to get little to no improvement is no longer worth it and you need to change how your program things.

If you started out on 5x5  and are experiencing the above, drop down to 3x5. You'll be able to continue making progress.

Introduction to Intermediate Training:

Intermediate model

In the above figure, you can see the model for intermediate programming. This is also known as the "Texas Method", because it was developed in Texas I guess. Basically you have a Medium day on Monday, a Light day on Wednesday, and a Heavy day on Friday. In terms of rep schemes it goes like this:

Monday

5x5 (~80-85% of Friday's weight)

Wednesday

3x3-5 (at a weight ~80-85% of Monday's weight)

Friday

1x5

This is the concept, remember how I said once you're at the end of your linear progression days, the stress induced from your first training session in the week will take longer than 48 hours to recover from? In intermediate programming, we take advantage of that. You will do a moderately heavy weight for 5x5 on Monday, then on Wednesday you will lift a light weight for low reps just to flush blood through the muscles (and whatever other justification there is for having a Light day, e.g gives you a mental break etc.), then on Friday you will lift a heavy weight for 1x5. 

Friday is the most important day, this is the day where you handle real weights. But it is important to get the volume on Monday's session in other to set yourself up to being able to lift heavy weights on Friday. Monday will be referred to as your "Volume day" and Friday will be referred to as your "Intensity day". You'll understand why when you look at the figure below:

Relationship between volume and intensity during a week of the Texas Method

So the week starts out with high volume moderate intensity, then you have the light day in the middle of the week, then the week ends with high intensity low volume (since you only do one heavy set).

The Texas Method Template

Here is what the program looks like:

Monday

Squat 5x5

Bench 5x5 (alternate with Press 5x5 in the next week)

Row 5x5

Curls

Wednesday

Squat 3x3

Press 3x5 (alternate with Bench Press 3x5 in the next week)

Power Cleans

Weighted chin-ups

Friday

Squat 1x5

Bench 1x5 (alternate with Press 1x5 in the next week)

Deadlift 1x5

Dips

Ab work should be done everyday too, just one exercise for 3 sets should be fine.

NOTE: Since the bench press and press alternate from week to week, the percentages for the light pressing days are determined from the volume day weight from the previous week. E.g in the above case, the weight to be used on the Press on Wednesday for 3x5 is 80-85% of what was done for 5x5 last Monday.

Getting Started on Texas Method

When you first start on the Texas Method, start light. Give your body time to adapt to this way of training. Whatever weights you finished with on linear progression, take around 80% of those weights and use them as your starting weights.

Your first week should feel easy. Let's say you stalled on 140kg for 3x5 on squats on linear progression. When you start on Texas Method, do 110kg 5x5 and 130kg 1x5 in your first week, 115kg 5x5 and 135kg 1x5 in your second week, 120kg 5x5 and 140kg 1x5 in your third week, 125kg 5x5 and 145kg 1x5 in your fourth week. The weights probably won't feel easy at this stage, so from here on take smaller jumps. Increase Friday's weight by 2.5kg.

Don't obsess over how much you do on Monday. It is just a volume day. After your fourth week on Texas Method, you can stick to the same weight on Mondays for 2-3 weeks. If you increase the 5x5 weight every week eventually you'll burn out too soon for this routine. At the moment I'm doing 145kg on Monday, and in the 180's for 1x5 on Friday (this may vary depending on individuals, but if you're doing 150 for 5x5 on Monday and 160kg 1x5 on Friday, the weights are too close).

I've been running Texas Method for squats for almost a year, and I can imagine doing it for much longer still.

Things You Should Know

• The weight you handle on Volume day doesn't matter to the point where you care about setting PR's on Monday
• Don't skip Volume day ever, without it you cannot perform well on Intensity day
• You can microload on the bench press and press if you wish
• If you stall, deload by 10% and take 3-4 weeks to work your way back up
• If you don't like benching and pressing heavy every second week, you can switch into a Texas Method split:

Monday
Bench 5x5
Press 3x5
Row 5x5

Tuesday
Squat 5x5
Power cleans

Thursday
Bench 1x5
Press 1x5

Friday
Squat 1x5
Dips
Deadlift 1x5

I haven't really listed assistance lifts in the above template. Note that you'll be focusing on one pressing movement over the other since one of them has to be done first. The light day has been omitted, but you can still do it on Wednesday if you wish (I do this).


Hopefully this post will be useful to fellow lifters out there!

Training 12/10/12

Haven't updated in a while, I'm currently training for a meet in November. Training is going well so far, yesterday I squatted 182.5kg x 5, and deadlifted 220kg 2x3. I'm doing Smolov jr for the bench press at the moment. It's a 3-week routine that involves benching 4 times a week It's a great program to use if your bench press has been stuck, however it is not to be taken lightly, if you have any shoulder or elbow problems this routine may aggravate them.