Very interesting article. In all honesty, I have modified the program slightly as well. Instead of cleans I do barbell rows. I'm thinking I'm going to sub out the rows and bring in another deadlift day. Oh, one other mod I made. I was not progressing with squats at all. I hit 225 (when I started I couldn't squat the naked bar - had to start with goblets and presses) and then actually started regressing. So, I tried something different. I made the squats on deadlift days "light" squats and do 3 sets of 10. I know that's way off the ranch but my 43 year old never really been in good shape legs are much happier for the change. And most importantly, my squat numbers are going back up.
And I have made mistakes. I was definitely over warming up and exhausting myself before my work sets. I downloaded an app that has a barbell warm-up plan that has helped enormously. Another mistake I made was my form with both bench and deadlift. My poor deadlift form initially caused me huge back problems that put me out of the gym for a couple of months. Essentially a do-over. My poor bench form just caused me impingement pain which lead me to de-load back to the naked bar for work-sets and slowly build back up with proper form. Finally, I learned I needed to rest more between work sets. I increased from 2 to 3 minutes and that helped a ton.
I'm OK with these set backs as I'm not trying to compete with anyone other than myself. And even in that regards I'm doing this mostly because when I leave the gym in the morning I feel incredible and can't wait to get back at it as soon as possible.