Issues w/ Deadlift Programming in Texas Method

Training
1

I’ve been running the Texas Method for the last 7 weeks and I’ve been having issues with the way the deadlift is programmed in the schedule. I’m currently deadlifting 1x5 on Intensity Day, which seems to be the most common way to program deads. The problem is that the ID squats + ID bench takes a lot out of me and leaving deadlifts at the end of ID is causing my deadlift to suffer due to fatigue. I’ve been stalled at 320x5 for the last few weeks, but my squat has been steadily climbing and is currently at 308x5. After the first two lifts on ID, my posterior chain is simply too fatigued to be able to deadlift with the intensity that I would like and I’m unable to progress as a result.

Form is not the issue. No video but take my word on that
Nutrition is in check: eating about 3000kcal/day at about 5’8, 185lbs.
Yes, I am reaching sufficient depth on squats for those wondering about the discrepancy in numbers between my squat/dead

Is there some way to program a separate day for deadlifts so that I can put all my focus into deadlifting? I have considered switching the deadlifts over to Recovery Day but this seems to be ill-advised from what I have read, so I was wondering if there was any intelligent way to include a separate deadlift day into the program. Currently, I’m running the basic version of TM.

This means I am training M/T/W/F, Tuesday for assistance work and Wed for recovery. I am fine dropping the non-important assistance days if it means that I can schedule in a deadlift day.
Suggestions are greatly appreciated!

2

Could be a recovery issue. Try dropping the assistance day for a few weeks.

3

deadlifts are on volume day, NOT on intensity day.

4

Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. Personally I preferred doing them on Intensity Day, because I found fatigue to be more of an issue on Volume Day.

I’m not sure why you’re so fatigued on ID – it’s supposed to be lower volume, only one “difficult” set. So if you’re going to squat 315x5 something like 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x5. That shouldn’t leave you too fatigued. Especially if you’re then doing bench press and resting the back/legs. You could try resting an additional 5-10 minutes after Bench Press before starting Deadlifts. You also may not be resting enough between sets.

Remember the goal of ID is not to destroy yourself – it’s to test your strength levels and make sure the load on volume day was sufficient to cause adaptation. One of the first changes to the programming when progress stops is to reduce volume even further on ID by ramping to a top set of 3’s, or multiple singles, rather than 5’s.

What assistance work are you doing on Tuesday? Typically TM is 3 days / week, MWF, so just make sure nothing you’re doing on Tuesday is affecting recovery.

5

[quote]craze9 wrote:
Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. [/quote]

You missed the part:

[quote]
However, deadlifts are another story. There is no volume day for deadlifts, because deadlifts are too hard â?? you can’t recover from them if you do more than one heavy set.[/quote]

Hence, doing them on a monday.

He is not progressing, so following the original program is a better option then trying to split the atom. Go back to basics, keep it simple, follow the program.

Stop worrying about splitting things up, adding crap and leave the calculator at home.

6

Not sure how the quote is relevant – regardless of when you do deadlifts, you ramp up to one heavy set. And it’s not uncommon to do them on ID. If you don’t believe me go to Rippetoe’s forum and do some reading, or read Practical Programming. The article you link is from 2010 and not the be-all-end-all of the Texas Method.

That said, if doing deadlifts on ID isn’t working for the OP, then yes doing them on VD instead is something to try. Though if I had to bet, I’d say it isn’t going to solve the problem because doing 5 heavy sets across (of squats) is more fatiguing than doing one heavy set. And the OP ascribed the lack of progress to fatigue during the workout.

7

According to Justin Lascek’s Texas Method book, he states that “once the squat transitions to the TM, the deadlift should be done on Intensity Day… trying to deadlift something significant after squatting on Volume Day won’t be as effective; the posterior chain will be destroyed after 25 significant squat reps”. Since, as craze90 stated, my issue is currently that the ID squats and bench are fatiguing me and affecting my subsequent deadlift performance, I feel that shifting it to Volume Day would only affect performance even further.

However, I also feel that leaving the deadlift til the end of ID, almost as an afterthought, isn’t giving it the effort that should be put into it. My focus right now is on trying to bring the deadlift up, but I would like to continue to run the TM as it is giving me good results on the other lifts.

What is the general consensus about allocating a separate day for deadlifts, say, on Saturday? My split would then look like:

Mon: Volume squat/bench
Wed: Recovery
Fri: Intensity squat/bench
Sat: Deadlifts

Would this be unintelligent/ill-advised?

8

[quote]craze9 wrote:
Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. Personally I preferred doing them on Intensity Day, because I found fatigue to be more of an issue on Volume Day.

I’m not sure why you’re so fatigued on ID – it’s supposed to be lower volume, only one “difficult” set. So if you’re going to squat 315x5 something like 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x5. That shouldn’t leave you too fatigued. Especially if you’re then doing bench press and resting the back/legs. You could try resting an additional 5-10 minutes after Bench Press before starting Deadlifts. You also may not be resting enough between sets.

Remember the goal of ID is not to destroy yourself – it’s to test your strength levels and make sure the load on volume day was sufficient to cause adaptation. One of the first changes to the programming when progress stops is to reduce volume even further on ID by ramping to a top set of 3’s, or multiple singles, rather than 5’s.

What assistance work are you doing on Tuesday? Typically TM is 3 days / week, MWF, so just make sure nothing you’re doing on Tuesday is affecting recovery.[/quote]

I’m not sure, maybe I have poor work capacity, but then again, the 5x5 Volume Day isn’t too hard for me. I just find that after mentally psyching myself up for intensity squats and bench, and putting all my effort into them, I can’t bring the same kind of focus that I would like to the deadlift. It’s not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue as well. I feel kind of “neither here nor there” by the time I get to deadlifting, whereas if I had a separate day allocated for them where I could concentrate on them fresh, I feel that I would be optimizing my deadlift progress a lot better.

Justin Lascek’s book says that I can add assistance work in on Tuesday. Currently, I’m following a TM layout I found online at traineatgain (can’t post link). I’m just doing close grip bench, chin-ups, hip thrusts, external rotations for my rotator cuff. Nothing too taxing, just stuff I think would help the big lifts.

9

[quote]qpalzm wrote:

[quote]craze9 wrote:
Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. Personally I preferred doing them on Intensity Day, because I found fatigue to be more of an issue on Volume Day.

I’m not sure why you’re so fatigued on ID – it’s supposed to be lower volume, only one “difficult” set. So if you’re going to squat 315x5 something like 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x5. That shouldn’t leave you too fatigued. Especially if you’re then doing bench press and resting the back/legs. You could try resting an additional 5-10 minutes after Bench Press before starting Deadlifts. You also may not be resting enough between sets.

Remember the goal of ID is not to destroy yourself – it’s to test your strength levels and make sure the load on volume day was sufficient to cause adaptation. One of the first changes to the programming when progress stops is to reduce volume even further on ID by ramping to a top set of 3’s, or multiple singles, rather than 5’s.

What assistance work are you doing on Tuesday? Typically TM is 3 days / week, MWF, so just make sure nothing you’re doing on Tuesday is affecting recovery.[/quote]

I’m not sure, maybe I have poor work capacity, but then again, the 5x5 Volume Day isn’t too hard for me. I just find that after mentally psyching myself up for intensity squats and bench, and putting all my effort into them, I can’t bring the same kind of focus that I would like to the deadlift. It’s not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue as well. I feel kind of “neither here nor there” by the time I get to deadlifting, whereas if I had a separate day allocated for them where I could concentrate on them fresh, I feel that I would be optimizing my deadlift progress a lot better.

Justin Lascek’s book says that I can add assistance work in on Tuesday. Currently, I’m following a TM layout I found online at traineatgain (can’t post link). I’m just doing close grip bench, chin-ups, hip thrusts, external rotations for my rotator cuff. Nothing too taxing, just stuff I think would help the big lifts.[/quote]

Well, I don’t know who Justin Lascek is or what traineatgain is, but not sure why you’d listen to them about the Texas Method. I suggest you buy and read Practical Programming. This will not only help you solve your problem but give you a base of knowledge that will last your entire lifting career.

As far as your template, I think the Tuesday assistance is a bad idea. CG Bench (the day after volume bench) and Chins will affect recovery.

I’d say you should either simplify and do the basic MWF program, perhaps trying Deadlift on Monday if as you say Volume Day doesn’t fatigue you. Or if you definitely want 4 days / week, you can try a 4-day TM split. Something like:

Monday: Bench Intensity, Press Volume
Tuesday: Squat Intensity, Power Cleans

Thursday: Press Intensity, Bench Volume
Friday: Deadlifts, Squat Volume

You can add chins and the other assistance work after the big lifts.

10

[quote]craze9 wrote:

[quote]qpalzm wrote:

[quote]craze9 wrote:
Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. Personally I preferred doing them on Intensity Day, because I found fatigue to be more of an issue on Volume Day.

I’m not sure why you’re so fatigued on ID – it’s supposed to be lower volume, only one “difficult” set. So if you’re going to squat 315x5 something like 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x5. That shouldn’t leave you too fatigued. Especially if you’re then doing bench press and resting the back/legs. You could try resting an additional 5-10 minutes after Bench Press before starting Deadlifts. You also may not be resting enough between sets.

Remember the goal of ID is not to destroy yourself – it’s to test your strength levels and make sure the load on volume day was sufficient to cause adaptation. One of the first changes to the programming when progress stops is to reduce volume even further on ID by ramping to a top set of 3’s, or multiple singles, rather than 5’s.

What assistance work are you doing on Tuesday? Typically TM is 3 days / week, MWF, so just make sure nothing you’re doing on Tuesday is affecting recovery.[/quote]

I’m not sure, maybe I have poor work capacity, but then again, the 5x5 Volume Day isn’t too hard for me. I just find that after mentally psyching myself up for intensity squats and bench, and putting all my effort into them, I can’t bring the same kind of focus that I would like to the deadlift. It’s not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue as well. I feel kind of “neither here nor there” by the time I get to deadlifting, whereas if I had a separate day allocated for them where I could concentrate on them fresh, I feel that I would be optimizing my deadlift progress a lot better.

Justin Lascek’s book says that I can add assistance work in on Tuesday. Currently, I’m following a TM layout I found online at traineatgain (can’t post link). I’m just doing close grip bench, chin-ups, hip thrusts, external rotations for my rotator cuff. Nothing too taxing, just stuff I think would help the big lifts.[/quote]

Well, I don’t know who Justin Lascek is or what traineatgain is, but not sure why you’d listen to them about the Texas Method. I suggest you buy and read Practical Programming. This will not only help you solve your problem but give you a base of knowledge that will last your entire lifting career.

As far as your template, I think the Tuesday assistance is a bad idea. CG Bench (the day after volume bench) and Chins will affect recovery.

I’d say you should either simplify and do the basic MWF program, perhaps trying Deadlift on Monday if as you say Volume Day doesn’t fatigue you. Or if you definitely want 4 days / week, you can try a 4-day TM split. Something like:

Monday: Bench Intensity, Press Volume
Tuesday: Squat Intensity, Power Cleans

Thursday: Press Intensity, Bench Volume
Friday: Deadlifts, Squat Volume

You can add chins and the other assistance work after the big lifts.[/quote]

Justin Lascek from 70sbig seems to be the authority when it comes to the Texas Method. Not too sure why you wouldn’t have heard of him as his name seems to be synonymous with the TM in most circles. He has a couple of books out on it. That’s why I’m listening to him

It’s my posterior chain that seems to suffer the most when it comes to deadlifting after ID squatting, so not too sure if chins and CGBP would be affecting my deadlift performance, moreso my bench, but my bench is progressing well. I could try cutting back on the assistance, but I’m not hitting the assistance work very hard in the first place. It’s in place there to help weak points in my big lifts - CGBP/chins for bench, hip thrusts for squats/deads, external rotations for shoulder stability. Again, Justin Lascek does suggest putting an assistance day on Tuesday as well

Thanks for all the advice so far regardless

11

Just drop the Tuesday, clearly it’s not “assisting” all that much.

12

I just googled “The Texas Method”. First link is to the Starting Strength website (run by Mark Rippetoe, author of Starting Strength and Practical Programming), second link is to the T-Nation article written by Mark Rippetoe. I don’t see Justin Lascek anywhere. Going to his website, I see that Laskek’s book is a 64 page e-book. Practical Programming is a 256-page “real” book with over a hundred pages dedicated to variations of the Texas Method.

As far as I know, Rippetoe is the originator of and authority on the Texas Method. Have you read the T-Nation article linked above?

To be honest, looking at the eattraingain split, I see a lot of problems. It doesn’t make any sense to me to CG Bench Press on Tuesday when you Volume bench on Monday and OHP on Wednesday. That is three heavy tricep exercises programmed 3 days in a row. Also: no power cleans or even heavy rows? Going to failure on Volume Day? Look, I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure “Sami” who wrote that program isn’t either. That’s why I recommend Practical Programming.

There could be any number of issues contributing to the stalled deadlift progress. But if you’re 100% convinced it’s just intra-workout fatigue, try them on Volume Day or adopt a split like the one I posted above where you deadlift first.

13

[quote]qpalzm wrote:

Justin Lascek’s book says that I can add assistance work in on Tuesday. Currently, I’m following a TM layout I found online at traineatgain (can’t post link). I’m just doing close grip bench, chin-ups, hip thrusts, external rotations for my rotator cuff. Nothing too taxing, just stuff I think would help the big lifts.[/quote]

It says you can. Not that you should. Heck, it says even the Wednesday workout is pretty much optional.

14

[quote]qpalzm wrote:

[quote]craze9 wrote:

[quote]qpalzm wrote:

[quote]craze9 wrote:
Deadlifts can be done either on Volume or Intensity day. Personally I preferred doing them on Intensity Day, because I found fatigue to be more of an issue on Volume Day.

I’m not sure why you’re so fatigued on ID – it’s supposed to be lower volume, only one “difficult” set. So if you’re going to squat 315x5 something like 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2, 315x5. That shouldn’t leave you too fatigued. Especially if you’re then doing bench press and resting the back/legs. You could try resting an additional 5-10 minutes after Bench Press before starting Deadlifts. You also may not be resting enough between sets.

Remember the goal of ID is not to destroy yourself – it’s to test your strength levels and make sure the load on volume day was sufficient to cause adaptation. One of the first changes to the programming when progress stops is to reduce volume even further on ID by ramping to a top set of 3’s, or multiple singles, rather than 5’s.

What assistance work are you doing on Tuesday? Typically TM is 3 days / week, MWF, so just make sure nothing you’re doing on Tuesday is affecting recovery.[/quote]

I’m not sure, maybe I have poor work capacity, but then again, the 5x5 Volume Day isn’t too hard for me. I just find that after mentally psyching myself up for intensity squats and bench, and putting all my effort into them, I can’t bring the same kind of focus that I would like to the deadlift. It’s not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue as well. I feel kind of “neither here nor there” by the time I get to deadlifting, whereas if I had a separate day allocated for them where I could concentrate on them fresh, I feel that I would be optimizing my deadlift progress a lot better.

Justin Lascek’s book says that I can add assistance work in on Tuesday. Currently, I’m following a TM layout I found online at traineatgain (can’t post link). I’m just doing close grip bench, chin-ups, hip thrusts, external rotations for my rotator cuff. Nothing too taxing, just stuff I think would help the big lifts.[/quote]

Well, I don’t know who Justin Lascek is or what traineatgain is, but not sure why you’d listen to them about the Texas Method. I suggest you buy and read Practical Programming. This will not only help you solve your problem but give you a base of knowledge that will last your entire lifting career.

As far as your template, I think the Tuesday assistance is a bad idea. CG Bench (the day after volume bench) and Chins will affect recovery.

I’d say you should either simplify and do the basic MWF program, perhaps trying Deadlift on Monday if as you say Volume Day doesn’t fatigue you. Or if you definitely want 4 days / week, you can try a 4-day TM split. Something like:

Monday: Bench Intensity, Press Volume
Tuesday: Squat Intensity, Power Cleans

Thursday: Press Intensity, Bench Volume
Friday: Deadlifts, Squat Volume

You can add chins and the other assistance work after the big lifts.[/quote]

Justin Lascek from 70sbig seems to be the authority when it comes to the Texas Method. Not too sure why you wouldn’t have heard of him as his name seems to be synonymous with the TM in most circles. He has a couple of books out on it. That’s why I’m listening to him

It’s my posterior chain that seems to suffer the most when it comes to deadlifting after ID squatting, so not too sure if chins and CGBP would be affecting my deadlift performance, moreso my bench, but my bench is progressing well. I could try cutting back on the assistance, but I’m not hitting the assistance work very hard in the first place. It’s in place there to help weak points in my big lifts - CGBP/chins for bench, hip thrusts for squats/deads, external rotations for shoulder stability. Again, Justin Lascek does suggest putting an assistance day on Tuesday as well

Thanks for all the advice so far regardless
[/quote]

Rip also makes fun of Justin…

15

Does stuff that isn’t working
Asks for advice
Gets essentially the same advice from a bunch of experienced people
Chooses to defend his method - which he knows doesn’t work - over simply trying the recommendations.

I don’t understand the internet

16

Practise taking a big breath before you deadlift, and bracing your core properly. and how many people have reviewed your form? Don’'t assume it is perfect because it feels like that. You should videotape that last deadlift set where you are going all out.
I know it was not the question but in my opinion it’s alot more important.