Volume squat phenomenon

[DirtyRed]

What are your last 3 weeks of lifting? How much undisturbed sleep do you get?

And post videos.

I think Jesus might be on to something. Getting to 450 5x5 in the first place implies he, at least at one point, eats a whole bunch of food. Could be he never gets enough cumulative sleep between VD and ID, or it could be he's not sleeping well the night before ID and then trying to set a PR on 5 hours of sleep or some shit.

[Aryah]

I have no problem increasing my squat weight at the moment, but I certainly wouldn't be able to slap 25lbs on the bar and still be able to do 5 reps. So my recovery is clearly doing okay, I mean, I still squat three sets of five twice a week and will continue to do so until linear progression comes to a stop (I still miss a rep sometimes).

So what is the problem then? Admittedly I get 5.5 - 6 hours sleep four days of the week and that does fall on the nights before squat days. Can sleep have an effect like that in spite of still increasing the weight week after week?

[Mark Rippetoe]

How old are you, Aryah?

[Aryah]

How old are you, Aryah?

I'm turning 30 in a few months.

[heavyiron8]

Started the Texas method approximately 6 weeks ago. I recall in one of your talks, when the Texas method was brought up, you gave an example that a lifter would do 405x5x5 and then on the intensity day they'd hit 445x5.

Now obviously this is just an example and the weight separation between volume and intensity day will be different for everybody, but my difference is absurdly small. I squatted 455x5x5 and failed to complete 470 for 5 reps on the following intensity day, getting just 4. This is not an isolated bad-day incident, as my volume work has consistently progressed better than my ID work. I drink 2 cups of coffee an hour before my warmups.

Thoughts on what's wrong with me and is this unusual?

This kind of problem was covered in PPST3. I remember reading something about volume day progressing but ID day stalling. It's definitely a recovery issue.

[Troy May]

Was just going to ask his age. If you're an oldster like me dropping a set on volume day allowed me to keep moving on intensity day whereas all the sleep and food and beer I tried didn't. If you're a youngster I would be looking at the food and sleep and rest prior to your top set on ID day.

[elVarouza]

It might not be fun missing weights on ID but I've had a lot of success in the past just pushing VD up. It's ideal to progress both sure, but my thought has always been if you're making progress on one or the other it's still progress. I got my bench up from 225ish to over 300 on a pretty standard TM template. During that time I might've made my ID set once or twice but I was able to increase the VD every time. My VD weights went from 215x5x5 to 282.5x5x5 before I stalled out. I'd miss an intensity day weight for a single set of five then come back in 4-6 weeks when the volume day caught up and hit it for 5 sets of 5. Worked pretty well for the bigger part of a year.

[Aryah]

Was just going to ask his age. If you're an oldster like me dropping a set on volume day allowed me to keep moving on intensity day whereas all the sleep and food and beer I tried didn't. If you're a youngster I would be looking at the food and sleep and rest prior to your top set on ID day.

That's interesting. I've always been under the impression it would be sleep after the session which mattered, not before. I mean, far be it from me to just sleep 7 - 8 hours every night. I think I need a new job.