The Best Program, why TM sucks and Jordan's program review

[George Christiansen]

I know that when *I* tried Texas Method, I ran it as if it were SSLP, because that's all I knew.
I relentlessly increased the volume-day and intensity-day weights, no matter how hard I was grinding. This was not good for me.

One benefit of an RPE style program is that it's very explicit about the fact that you should do *more volume* at *lower intensity* than SSLP.

More volume at lower intensity is the big shift in SSLP -> intermediate, for most intermediate programs. But I and many other people miss this point.

I tried to do the same thing and in hindsight don't know why I didn't ust transition into H-L-M. The percentages force you to drop intensity and in reality the SSLP would dovetail into it nicely anyway, The advanced novice already has the light day squat. You can just drop the Friday squat to a Medium squat when that becomes a bitch. Then you can ust tinker with cycles of higher and lower volume weeks overall.

Similar things can be done for everything else. And the more I think about it the more I think it may be worth keeping the deadlifts in every session, but just transition to H-L-M much sooner instead of Power Cleans (which nobody does anyway). It would probably be even easier to transition from this to RPE based programming too.

[Tom Narvaez]

TM is a template, sure. A trash template.

6 sets of hard upperbody presses per week? Who the hell can grow on that? Seriously?

One set of deadlift per week?

It is trash. There's no other way to put it. The volume recommendations are not appropriate and all the whinging about how it needs to be customized as a template ignores the fact that the base program is hopelessly flawed.

[John Hanley]

TM is a template, sure. A trash template.

6 sets of hard upperbody presses per week? Who the hell can grow on that? Seriously?

One set of deadlift per week?

It is trash. There's no other way to put it. The volume recommendations are not appropriate and all the whinging about how it needs to be customized as a template ignores the fact that the base program is hopelessly flawed.

Incorrect. Main lifts are fixed, but accessory lifts are variable.

Intensity, volume, and frequency on all lifts are variable.

There are plenty of examples of young men who’ve gotten extremely strong using this template.

[Tom Narvaez]

Correct. If you change it enough that it isn't the same program, it can be pretty good.

[Charlie Davies]

If you are not a coach you will never have the requisite knowledge to coach yourself. If you are a coach, you know you should not coach yourself.

There may be compromises that need to be made in life, but the above two sentences remain true nonetheless.

This sounds right to me, which makes me sad.

[Aaron Montgomery]

Incorrect. Main lifts are fixed, but accessory lifts are variable.

Intensity, volume, and frequency on all lifts are variable.

There are plenty of examples of young men who’ve gotten extremely strong using this template.

Correct. If you change it enough that it isn't the same program, it can be pretty good.

What we need is for my Hanley to write a computer program to help us determine when someone is still DTP or not. How many accessory lifts can you add and how much can you change volume/intensity/frequency till you're no longer DTP? The outputs would need to be:
- You're doing the program
- You're almost doing the program
- You're not doing the program
- Your program sucks

[Aaron Montgomery]

Ugh, keep forgetting that I'm not allowed to edit my own posts...

The output could also be a combination of the above^. In the case of vanilla TM it could spit out:
- You're doing the program
- Your program sucks

[George Christiansen]

If you are not a coach you will never have the requisite knowledge to coach yourself. If you are a coach, you know you should not coach yourself.

There may be compromises that need to be made in life, but the above two sentences remain true nonetheless.

The coaching version of "A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for his client".

[John Hanley]

The output could also be a combination of the above^. In the case of vanilla TM it could spit out:
- You're doing the program
- Your program sucks

done

if (SRA == 96 hours && (press_tonnage_concentrated_in_one_fucking_session ))

print ("What in fuck did you think was going to happen?");

[Dalton Clark]

done

if (SRA == 96 hours && (press_tonnage_concentrated_in_one_fucking_session ))

print ("What in fuck did you think was going to happen?");

I appreciate this greatly.