Different RMs on TM Friday

[LudwigVan]

Quick question about programming on Friday with Texas Method. For the last several weeks I've been doing 1RMs on my squat and press and 3RMs on my bench every Friday.

I do a 1RM on my squat and press for a few reasons. I like doing heavy singles; I saw someone on here (KSC I think) say that it's most effective to make your Friday as different as possible from your Monday, which makes some intuitive sense to me; and it's easy for me to program and see progress. If I squatted 380x1 last week and 385x1 this week, I know I got stronger. I've been doing 3RMs on the bench mainly because I'm afraid of injury from inadequate spotting.

Is there any advantage to be gained from changing this up and doing 2, 3, and 5RMs? How regularly should it be changed? PP seems to recommend cycling through different rep schemes on Friday. My main issue with this is selecting weights to ensure progress. If I squatted 385x1 last week, for instance, how do I decide what RM to go for this week, and how do I select the right weight to ensure incremental progress?

[MilkEnthusiast]

I understand where you are coming from as far as the ease of comparison. However, I varied Friday's rep scheme when I was using the Texas Method. Even if it takes 3 or more weeks before you do another squat 1RM, you can always compare to your last 1RM as long as you keep a journal.

Personally, I wonder if a new 1RM every week will become difficult to recovery from.

As far as your bench, I think you should strongly consider changing your situation in regards to spotting. Are you in a rack? Do you train with partners, or alone? I know that some racks aren't designed the greatest as far as pin distance. Hopefully you find 2 people who are willing to watch the bar for you, and who are competent enough not to decide to get involved unnecessarily.

[hatmanii]

Once I exhaust my linear progression, I plan on using the following as my Friday template:

3 week cycles of...
Week 1: 1rm
Week 2: 2 reps of week 1
Week 3: 3 reps of week 1
Repeat.

This takes the guesswork out of trying to figure out what progress means between variable rep ranges. If I'm dong Monday correctly, and I'm able to increase my 1rm by 1 rep each week, I will know that I've gotten stronger and then will be able to attain a new 1rm on the first week of the next cycle.

[Jason B]

This takes the guesswork out of trying to figure out what progress means between variable rep ranges. If I'm dong Monday correctly, and I'm able to increase my 1rm by 1 rep each week, I will know that I've gotten stronger and then will be able to attain a new 1rm on the first week of the next cycle.

That's true, but keep in mind why you're doing TM and not the beginner model... you are past the point of linear progression. I understand your desire to track everything and have a solid plan for each week, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way. I'm not saying don't try your plan, by all means go for it and good luck, but don't be surprised if you're not able to maintain that very long. I tend to agree with Milk's idea, vary the rep scheme. I would vary it based on how you feel that day, if you're feeling strong go for a 1RM, if you're not feeling great grind out a 3RM or 5RM. You can still keep track of these records and if you don't hit a new 1RM for 6 weeks then so be it, it's still progress. Understand that progress slows as you get stronger, you won't be able to set the PR you want every week.

[LudwigVan]

Personally, I wonder if a new 1RM every week will become difficult to recovery from.

That would make sense. I'm thinking about changing things up because I failed on Monday and Friday with squats last week. My last successful 5x5 was 320 and my last successful single was 385x1, at a bodyweight of 200. I don't feel like I missed Monday because of the Friday before, though -- I'm not sure if my single is heavy enough yet for that to be a big issue.

On the bench, I haven't used a rack, and won't be able to due to the stupid floor setup at my gym. I work out with my girlfriend and she spots me. She knows how to spot just fine, but I worry that in a missed heavy single she might not be able to help. My bench isn't all that heavy yet, and she's been doing fine so far, but I've been sticking to triples anyway. Last week I did 220x3.

I'm curious though whether there's some other benefit/reasoning behind mixing up Friday's rep scheme, other than a max single potentially being too difficult to recover from.

Week 1: 1rm
Week 2: 2 reps of week 1
Week 3: 3 reps of week 1

Has anyone used something like this successfully? I like the idea, but it seems to me like going from 385x1 to 385x2 is a bigger jump than going to 390x1. Also, where do you set the next week 1 weight?

[dankid]

I came on here to ask a similar question, so rather than start a new thread, i'll offer my opinion and questions here.


I just started the TM, and my goal is to continue to add weight to the bar each week. I want to extend the linear progression as long as possible, and will likely end the program when I can no longer add 5lbs consistantly. I understand that this will probably happen fairly quickly and that I would likely be able to stay on the program much longer by microloading. But i'll probably avoid that, and go to 5/3/1 or something else.


It seems to me that in a perfect world, you'd be able to add the same amount each week to your monday workout and your friday workout. If this didn't happen, eventually your monday weights would catch up with your friday weights. This might happen if you are using the same rep range, and Ripp has covered that, but if you are using 5 reps on monday, it should never close in on your 1rm.

Ok, so ideally the friday workout should continue to increase at least as much as the monday workout, BUT there are downfalls to always "maxing" each week. The Westside guys suggest that training a lift at over 90% of 1rm for more than 3 weeks is a bad idea. This may or may not be true for us on the TM. Switching to speed work would solve the problem, and changing the rep range up could, but I doubt it. A 2 or 3rm is still going to be a very high percentage of your 1RM. A 5rm or the weight used on monday should be under 90% for most of us. So maybe this would be doable every few weeks to allow change, or even every other week.


Based on my limited past experience, ive come up with a few options, and would like to see what you guys think (and if anyone has used this as friday programming).

1) Continue adding weight each friday going for a new 1rm each week. It actually doesn't have to be a true MAX, just more than the previous week. Now ideally, if monday increases 5lbs then friday should increase at least 5lbs. Ok when you get to the point you cant add 5lbs, then the next week you make a change. You then use a weight slightly less than you maxed out on (maybe more like 90% of your max) and you perform multiple singles with this weight. These reps are "practice" with heavy weights but will also serve the same purpose of making the next monday workout feel lighter. It will be entirely individual, and Friday is supposed to be High intensiy / Low volume, so you'll need to figure out what reps work for you. Probably somewhere in the 3-9 rep range will do it for most, depending on how heavy you go. So you can do this for a week or two, and then go for a new max. Now in my experience it doesn't work for a long time or consistantly, but if you do it right you can continue your gains fairly well.

Ex: So say I were to fail this week on friday for bench. Monday I did 5x5 with 205, and friday say I fail at 255. The next week, i'd probably do 225 for 6 singles, then the next week i'd go 235 for 4 singles, and then i'd shoot for 255-260 the next week for a new 1rm. Or something like that.

Ex2: My girlfriend did 95lbs for 1rm on bench last week. That was the second week she has been stuck at that weight. Her 5x5 weight is 80, and this week she'll get 85 likely. I think its a problem of specificity, and she just needs more "practice" with heavier weights. So this week on max day, she'll perform 3-5 singles with 90, then next week she'll either go for 100lbs or she'll do 95 for 3-5 singles, and so on.


2) The other option is to just alternate DE work with max work on fridays. You could figure out whatever ratio works for you, but maybe something like 3 weeks of maxing, then 1 week DE, or maybe the other way around, or every other week. This has worked for me in the past as well, but has downfalls as well. If you dont "need" the DE work, and need more exposure to heavier weights then this might not do much for you.


The last method that I mention is what someone above said, but I dont think it is a viable option. You basically try to do 2reps with your previous 1rm, and then 3 reps and so on. I dont think most people can progress this fast and thus it wont work.

Ex: Say this week you did a 1rm max of 250 on bench. I'd imagine your 2rm THIS week would be 235 maybe 240. And your 3rm would be 225 maybe. Then next week you are going to supposedly do 250 for 2reps. That would likely be an increase of 10+ lbs in one week. And then the next week you'd do 250 for 3reps. That would be an increase of about 25 lbs in 2 weeks. It just doesn't seem to be likely to me.

Another thing that could work would be Supramaximal sets of singles just doing eccentrics, but this is hard to do and easy to overdo. But I imagine doing 275 for a couple slow negatives will make 255 feel easier next week.


So those are my ideas and im gonna give some of them a try. I'd like your guys experiences/opinions on this type of thing. I'll probably improvise a lot and if I am feeling strong go for a new 1RM, and if im doubting it, do some singles.

Thanks in advance.

[hatmanii]

That's true, but keep in mind why you're doing TM and not the beginner model... you are past the point of linear progression. I understand your desire to track everything and have a solid plan for each week, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way. I'm not saying don't try your plan, by all means go for it and good luck, but don't be surprised if you're not able to maintain that very long. I tend to agree with Milk's idea, vary the rep scheme. I would vary it based on how you feel that day, if you're feeling strong go for a 1RM, if you're not feeling great grind out a 3RM or 5RM. You can still keep track of these records and if you don't hit a new 1RM for 6 weeks then so be it, it's still progress. Understand that progress slows as you get stronger, you won't be able to set the PR you want every week.

I've read logs where people have continued this sort of progress for months at a time. Of course nothing works forever, but there is no reason why weekly progress like I described above couldn't be sustained for extended periods.

I'm not new to the iron game. I'm simply new to Rip's ideas/philosophy.

[hatmanii]

Has anyone used something like this successfully? I like the idea, but it seems to me like going from 385x1 to 385x2 is a bigger jump than going to 390x1. Also, where do you set the next week 1 weight?

You simply go for another heavy single/1rm for the beginning of the next cycle. You could go for 1-3% increases as simply as you could just go for broke. In my experience a true 3-5rm is much more physically demanding than a 1rm.

[dankid]

I though TM was still linear progression, but with just a week-to-week progression of the monday and friday workout, whereas SS is a 3x weekly progression.

[stronger]

I've been doing 5x5 monday and 5rm friday for 4.5 months, with no sign of slowdown, so I dunno how necessary it is to change things up unless you need to.

Could it also be possible I wasn't a definite intermediate when I started TM?