So does the Texas method suck?

[m_sporkboy]

I was pretty confused to see a whole chapter on texas method in Barbell Prescription; I kinda get why it's maybe worth talking about a bit, but everyone agrees it's not a good program for people in their 40's and up.

[hamburgerfan]

Some general recommendations for who is a good candidate, though not perfect and not always exactly necessarily true and not exhaustive:
Be a more athletic than average 18-33 year old person, who is very dedicated to lifting, has time for 2+ hour workouts at least once or possibly twice a week, and who can and wants to plan eating, sleep, and other physical activities around lifting with lifting as the priority.

Someone who fits this description will make solid progress on any decent intermediate program, which kind of renders TM obsolete imo.

[marcf]

I was pretty confused to see a whole chapter on texas method in Barbell Prescription; I kinda get why it's maybe worth talking about a bit, but everyone agrees it's not a good program for people in their 40's and up.

There are definitely some outliers, though. SSC Karl Schudt manages to survive 5x5 squats.

[Michael Wolf]

Someone who fits this description will make solid progress on any decent intermediate program, which kind of renders TM obsolete imo.

While I largely agree with the first part of the sentence, the second doesn't necessarily follow. As I wrote, I don't love the boilerplate TM. But it will and has worked for a lot of people in this demographic. So have lots of other programs, sure, and they should all be evaluated on their merits and suitability to the circumstances of that particular person.

[BBB]

I think people forget that TM is a template as much as it is a program. It can be tweaked, just like anything else. It's a dead simple program and I've made pretty respectable gains on it. In one year on the program, I went from being the lowest finisher in my weight-class in an uncompetitive meet to mid-high pack in a competitive meet.

I'm also not an ideal candidate... I'm old(er!), have wife, kids, stress, work, get sleep as I can get it, don't count my calories and so on. As with anything else, you get out what you put in. BUT, with this program you do have to put in and you do have to be religious about your training. The next week builds upon this one and this one built upon the last one.

One of my friends runs a DUP program (and also lifts much more than I do), but he trains 6-days per week (no kids). I asked him to make a DUP program based on the 3-days per week I'm able to train and there's so much volume, no way I'm out in less than 2-2.5 hours. With TM I dedicate no more than 1-1.5 hrs/day. It's a tradeoff I have to make, maybe others don't. So yeah, even though my bench has stalled on TM, I've just changed that portion of the template and seeing where it takes me.

My point with all of this; just like anything else, you get what you put in. If you can run a 4-day split, you'll be better off. If you have more time to devote to the sport, you'll be better off. You can rest longer, do back-off sets or other volume work and so on. You can even tweak your intensity day to a higher intensity single with some lighter sets across for additional volume/stimulus. Millions of ways to skin that cat. This isn't rocket science or brain surgery

[Praetorian]

While I'm not going to go so far as to say that you won't make progress on TM, or even that it is a bad program, I remain THOROUGHLY convinced that a more modern approach to programming works infinitely better. I made gains on TM-esque programming, too. And then I made gains at three times the rate as a more advanced lifter when I started using DUP/block periodization. In the lifters I coached, 500 squats went from being pretty special to run of the mill for someone with a year or two of consistent training. It took me like three years to go from 275 to 315 on bench using similar, old-school American style programming. Then I went from 315 to 365 in less than one year with DUP and other high frequency, high volume templates.

So, again, I won't say it "sucks", but along the continuum of "good, better, best", I'd stop running TM once you stop being able to get that coveted 2.5/5lbs per week. Once that happens, you're no longer an "early intermediate" and a program with some actual periodization will work better.

Tom, where did you learn to apply DUP/block periodization programming? I tried digging through resources a year or so ago and could never find the DUP equivalent of PPST (or anything close really).

[ithryn]

This you? I dunno, you could probably eat moar and squat moar than 285 before switching to intermediate, pretty sure that's the standard response.

I think Texas Method was great for a while. I think if a guy is eating and sleeping it can be treated like an LP, do it for a time limit (4-6 months maybe?) and go from there.

[Tom Narvaez]

For DUP, try to absorb everything you can from Zourdos. For block periodization, you're gonna want Bompa and Issurin.

[Praetorian]

For DUP, try to absorb everything you can from Zourdos. For block periodization, you're gonna want Bompa and Issurin.

OK, I've got Block Periodization by Issurin and Periodization-5th Edition by Bompa on order.

The only resources from Zourdos that I've been able to find are his research paper and a slide deck. I've read both, but they were too general for me. I understand DUP at a 50,000ft level, but not how to translate the principles into specific sets and rep ranges over a longer training cycle. I'm assuming the extra details that I need are in the books that you mentioned.

If you wrote a DUP e-book I bet it would sell very well. There are a few people who are constantly promoting DUP, but no one ever gets into exactly how to apply it in practice.

[ithryn]

Just to interject again, I'd kinda like to see what the roundtable discussion is of doing Texas Method immediately after SS advanced novice. At least for the squat. I think if your squat is between 300 and 400, and you're an average male, the 5x5s won't fail to produce results and the weekly peak on intensity day is good for both muscle/tendon/bone density and mentally handling the stress of heavy weights.