Couple Questions, new to TM

[stt816]

Hi i'm new to tm, 24 years old powerlifter, competing in my first national meet in october. I'm 150lbs and current maxes are 361s/235(comp bench),470 deadlift

My current setup is this:

Mon
5x5 squat 270 (staying the same for 3 weeks)
5x5 bench 185 (pause)
2-3x5 330 beltless deficit dl (doing 80% of my deadlift for the ID every week,not making it too hard)
chins/rows

Wed
2x5 squat 215
press 105 3x5
curl 3x10

Fri
5RM squat 315 increasing 5 per week
5RM Bench 205 (pause) increasing 2.5 per week
5RM Deadlift 405 increasing 5 per week
Weighted Dips 3x8


I would use the same setup every week without alternating press. Just got done with today's workout everything went well hit everything but I think I set my deadlift too high, almost failed out. I've seen people use 3RM for deadlift, should I lower the weight and still use 5RM or switch to 3RM....

I've also seen that it's suggested you use 3RM for all lifts if you are a powerlifter, but I'd thought I'd run through 5RM for as long as I can and go to 3RM when I need to, thoughts?

Thank you!

[Eric Larousse]

you should change to a 3rm before you fail..in other words make the decision to change the rep range before you actually fail

[stt816]

ok great so that settles the deadlift so basically next week I'll do 410x3?

How about everything else should I ride out the 5RM for as long as I can?

[Tom K]

You should read PPST3 which details the TM to death.

Basically you run 5 RM's as long as you can. When you feel that failure is imminent for the next week, switch to 3's. Like Eric said, you want to make the decision to go to 3's, you don't want to outright fail a 5.

How long have you been doing TM? If only a short time period and you already failed 5's on the DL, you may have started too high.

[stt816]

You should read PPST3 which details the TM to death.

Basically you run 5 RM's as long as you can. When you feel that failure is imminent for the next week, switch to 3's. Like Eric said, you want to make the decision to go to 3's, you don't want to outright fail a 5.

How long have you been doing TM? If only a short time period and you already failed 5's on the DL, you may have started too high.

I have PPST3 it was my first week doing it so i definitely started to high with deads so would you recommend bringing it down and doing sets of 5 or just continuing with adding weight but switching to 3