Weights and Plates Podcast - #72 - The SRA Cycle and Intermediate Programming

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Dr. Robert Santana and Coach Trent explore the Stress/Recovery/Adapation cycle (adapted from Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome) and how it serves as a guiding model for programming decisions in the intermediate phase of training.   Weights & Plates is now on YouTube! https://youtube.com/@weights_and_plates?si=ebAS8sRtzsPmFQf-   Weights & Plates: https://weightsandplates.com Robert Santana on Instagram: @the_robert_santana   Trent Jones: @marmalade_cream Email: [e-mail]  

Welcome to the Weights and Plates podcast. I am Robert Santana. I am your host along with Trent Jones, my co-host. Yo, what's going on, man? Not much, man. It's, what, seven here? We're supposed to do it at six, which is like, what, eight, nine your time? Oh, yeah, nine o'clock. No, I always bake in an extra 30 minutes for our start time. Mediterranean time, that's what I call it. Yeah, yeah. We usually record these at night, you know, but it's good. It's good. It gets my juices flowing.

I'm usually working on like some coaching stuff before or after we do this podcast. So it's, it's appropriate. Uh, so I squatted today and, uh, I squatted tree Fitty and I, I, I got it for, I don't know if I posted this on Instagram yet, but, uh, well then it didn't happen. It didn't happen then. Right. Yeah, exactly. But you know, here's the thing. I squatted it for four reps and the fourth rep was a real grinder. And I convinced myself that I would, I had a very high chance of missing if I went for a fifth rep. So I racked it. And the minute that bar touched the pins, I regretted that decision. I was just telling myself, what did you just do? Why did you rack that weight? Like literally the second the bar touched the pins, I'm like, damn it. And so I sat there for a second. I'm like, what are you doing? Hit the fifth rep. And so I collected myself. I put the belt, you know, I strapped the belt back on. I hadn't even taken it off all the

way, but I loosened it, you know, so I tightened it back up. I got back under there and hit the fifth rep. It was a minute later. So, cause I looked at the video, I had the video rolling the whole time. I'm like, ah, yeah, that was a minute later. You can't count that as a set of five, but it's, it's better than a set of four. And you know what? It made me realize if I was in a gym with some other serious lifters, people looking and somebody yelling at me, absolutely no doubt in my mind, I would have had five reps. Like I might've had six, but when you're at home and you're, you're alone and, uh, it's middle of the afternoon, you know, been some late nights, whatever. I'm not immune to it. You know, I'm pretty stoic under the bar, but, uh, I'm definitely not immune to it you know i'm pretty stoic under the bar but uh i'm definitely not immune to it there there's something to be said about a good atmosphere

and and getting that last rep it goes a long way it does what is what is rip what does rip like to say you know nobody gives a fuck about anything but rep number five fours fours don't even exist they're a missed set of five right that's right so i mean we have you know singles triples fives eights tens twelves if you're bodybuilder 15s 20s all other references don't exist that's right well did you say doubles doubles exist i think they exist yeah i like doubles did rip say doubles? Doubles exist. I think they exist. Yeah, I like doubles. Did Rip say doubles? Yeah, I think he did say doubles. He might have said doubles.

Trent said doubles. Yeah, singles, doubles, triples, fives, eights, tens, twelves, fifteens, twenties. Yeah, you're right. We don't do nines or sevens. Who the fuck does that shit? No, nobody does that. I mean, ask what Morris does. Sevens.

Sevens. What is he irish i don't know we'll have to ask him is he an irish gypsy that's they they would do sevens sevens i mean six is i i i confess i program sixes sometimes i program four i program fours for women for in old people that's a volume it's a. Volume day is four sets of four sometimes. Dude, I have, when I'm doing like certain exercises, like curls, I guess, or dumbbell rows, I'll do sixes because the thought of fives for something like that seems too heavy, you know?

But something about sixes sounds good. Yeah, sixes feels like high. Sixes, that's the line between a high rep. Yeah. Sixes are high reps. Right. Right. Yeah. That extra rep still keeps it out of that high intensity area. You know, we've talked about this with these bi-dual, whatever joint exercises. Right. Well, you know, I've, I've found, I've settled on, so sixes. All right. So the reason I land on sixes really is because there's some reason why I don't want to program eight for somebody. So here's a recent example.

I have a few people doing stiff leg deadlifts. And stiff leg deadlifts, if you've never done them before, your hips are way high, you know, your legs are nearly straight, if not totally straight, and you're in this really shitty position off the bottom. And it's basically all just hip extension off the floor. You get no leg drive. And as a result, you can't do them that heavy. So they're a nice light pull if you have need of that. We're going to talk about that more later in this episode, by the way. So they can be a nice light pulling exercise because the weight's naturally going to be

a lot lighter because it's so hard to break off the floor in that position. But the problem you run into with a stiff-legged deadlift is even if you do it right, it taxes your lower back a lot. Because you're basically completely horizontal in that position. You might even be like beyond horizontal. Oh, it's a long fucking range of motion. And a very long range of motion. And so it will light up your lower back quite a bit. And so you can run the risk if the lower back is a weak point of reps seven and eight being, you know, being kind of iffy in terms, you know, if lumbar flexion starts to occur.

So in that case, I'll sometimes have people do sixes. I mean, I still have people do fives. You know, I could have them do fives. I have them do like four sets of five. But, you know, I really just want to have people do sixes. I mean, I still have people do fives. You know, I could have them do fives. I have them do like four sets of five. But, you know, I really just want to have them do three sets. And three sets of five is not enough. Three sets of eight is maybe too much because of the fatigue problem I mentioned. So three sets of six is how we land on that.

That's how it happens. It happens. I don't want to hear that you're doing nines, though. No, no, no, no. I never program nines. I never program, I won't say never, but almost never program like a top set of four you know i don't do that like i said a volume day sometimes four sets of four happens for you know for women or whatever uh who cares about your four rm i mean does that even sound cool? You're 4RM? No, nobody says 4RM. Bro, I got a PR set of 4.

You know? Yeah, it's only a stepping stone to your PR set of 5. Exactly. That's it. People, singles, doubles, triples, fives, eights, tens, twelves, fifteens, twenties. Yeah. Okay? There you go.

And then some people do thirties, but I don't want sets 27, you know, come on. No, no, no, no, no, no. If you're doing 30s, that better be a preacher curl with a cable machine, you know? Yeah. It's just some, some AMRAP pump shit, you know, which is fine. It's fine, but yeah, you know, you don't, you don't program that. Speaking of programming, that's what we're here to talk about, right? That's right. That's right. So today we want to do a continuation of what we were talking about last time, which is programming and adaptation as you get beyond the novice phase of training. So I think we've hammered the novice idea in this podcast quite a bit. You know, you're going to be adding weight to the bar every time you lift. That's the gist of it, right? So what happens when you can't do that anymore? Well, last episode, we talked about the principles, like the first principles of programming, right? And how, you know, you have to manage fatigue that starts to build up,

how stress starts to become too much to recover from, from workout to workout. So you have to start spreading out your heavy bouts or your heavy lifts. And, uh, and you got to stick something in the middle, right? So we start introducing things like a light day in the middle of the week, a light day. And we, and you know, we kind of look at the most taxing lifts first, which is the squat and the deadlift. And those are the first lifts to get a light day in the middle of the week. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. And we're going to talk about it in specifically in the context of SRA or the stress recovery adaptation. That's right. Stress recovery adaptation cycle. Should we echo that like Rip does with comments from the haters?

Yeah, we can do that. Stress recovery adaptation. I mean, what we're really talking about here is an approach to training. It's a training approach, right? Yeah. When I'm programming somebody, I'm not like, you know, pulling out the next template, you know, like I might have a templated program where I start people because I don't know who the fuck you are. So if you think that I just were, you know, somehow telepathically experienced all of your training for the years before you hired me and figured out what you need this week, that's not how it works. You know, everything's an estimate when you start with a new person.

Yeah, you got to start somewhere. everything's an estimate when you start with a new person. Yeah, you got to start somewhere. But, you know, like when I'm watching somebody, right, and I see how things are going and I look at all the data, you know, are they completing their reps? Are they beat up, you know? Are things hurting?

You know, I look at all these things that pertain to stress and recovery. And I make my decisions based upon that, right? And I'll get specific with it in a second, but I'm not thinking, okay, we've added weight every week for like six weeks. Now I need to change to this programming template. You know, it doesn't work that way. It's more of, okay, this guy's having a hard time now. Why is that happening? And then you kind of go down the list, right?

So let's kind of review some concepts here, right? When you are a novice, you will respond well to a linear periodized program. Linear periodization is the fancy term that refers to adding weight to the bar each time, which, you know, more specifically put, let's say you're doing an exercise like the squat and you're doing three sets of five, every workout, the only thing that changes is load sets stay the same reps stay the same exercise stays the same right so you're increasing weight in a linear fashion right so if you're plot your data points on a graph the weight goes up every workout you see a nice straight line right and the same thing happens on the deadlift the upper body lifts however

aren't technically on a linear program we'll come come back to that, though. There's a caveat there, right? So like the bench, you're alternating with the press. So you're going up in a linear fashion every few days, but not every workout, right? So one could argue that it could be viewed as a heavy day and a light day, right? Because the heavy bench is a heavy stress on the shoulders and triceps, or the anterior deltoids especially, and the heavy press is a lighter stress on the shoulders and triceps or the anterior deltoids especially. And the heavy press is a lighter stress on that structure, right? So that's kind of like your first exposure to what some would call daily undulated periodization. You know, this DUP term that

was popular 10 years ago. I haven't heard it thrown around lately. Yeah, yeah. That one's fallen in favor, hasn't it? Yeah. 10 years ago, everybody loved doing DUP. It's like you probably were always doing DUP, but I digress. But if you think about it like daily, right? So every day, so let's say you train Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's your days, right? Daily undulated. So you're going heavy because you're benching, let's say 200 pounds, right? For three sets of five. and then on wednesday you're undulating that because now you're pressing you know 115 for three sets of five right so it's a lighter load right and then friday you'll go heavy again on the bench right you could view it that way right if you wanted to view it in the context of exercises themselves you know you look at it as

okay you know i'm benching twice a week so it's heavy and then i get a day off and then it's heavy again you know so you can say that that's linear but so now if you look at it you've changed the angle at which you're hitting those muscles and the amount of stress the load you're placing on them right so that's daily undulated periodization now eventually the deadlift alternates with the power clean and the same thing happens right you're dead lifting heavy one day the power clean is your lighter pulse you're, right? You're deadlifting heavy one day, the power clean is your lighter pulse, you're undulating that, right? And then you're deadlifting heavy the third day, then it flips the next week, right? You're power cleaning two days, you're deadlifting one day. So then from there, what happens next? This is where it gets a little more interesting and

where we can really apply these concepts. You know, you can no longer add weight to the bar every workout or every other workout, right? And I forgot to mention the squat. The squat, you get a light squat in the middle. Lately, I've been just doing light squat every other day for some people. But yeah, yeah. We're going to hit that in more detail here in a bit, but yeah. So, okay, you can't squat heavy twice a week. You can't deadlift heavy twice a week. You can't press heavy twice a week. You can't bench heavy twice a week and bench heavy twice a week, you've reached a point now, where it takes you about a full week to recover from heavy stress on one or multiple of these lifts. Let's just say all of them, right. So this is where we would

say, all right, you're an intermediate, you can no longer recover 24 to 48 hours between workout or even 72 to 96 hours between workouts, you now need more time, right? That's when we would say you're an intermediate. That's where we just where we've need more time, right? That's when we would say you're an intermediate. That's where we just, where we've drawn the line, right? There's no super scientific way to do this because it may not be exactly seven days. It might be six and a half, you know, it might be six, might be five, but for logistical purpose, we go to a seven day gap between heavy attempts. So now your workout may look like you have a heavy day on day one, Monday.

You have a light day on Wednesday. And why do you do a light day, right? Because that's always the question. These people that feel the need to beat themselves up all the time, you know, I make fun of them here at least once an episode. They, oh, why do I do the light day? Well, because if you're doing it right, the light day is not actually light light it's just a lighter load than your heavy day that's right and you're still practicing the movement so that you don't get stale and also so you don't get sore from the next week when you do the heavy movement and uh you're also getting a little bit of volume there right that's right and and like we talked about last episode um one of the things that has to come along with your adaptation to the load is your technique.

And, you know, everybody has, well, I don't want to say everybody, but most people have some degradation in their technique on the heavy days. And now some, right? I'm not talking about a lot. I'm not talking about things, you know, the door flying off the plane kind of breakdown, but it's just minor breakdowns. And so the light days are a great day to practice. That's right. Technique issues too. And then the third day,

well, there's two ways we train intermediates with this. But typically the third day is a medium day. I don't know how I want to segue into this Trent. Yeah. Texas, Texas method is only really funny with the squat, you know? Yeah.

I guess the upper body too. We don't do it with the deadlift. It's not heavy, light, heavy with the deadlift. That's right. Yeah. So let's kind of stop there. So you outlined the sort of the basic progression there in programming, right? The different steps we take.

basic progression there from in programming, right? The different steps we take and let's, let's pause there for a second and let's talk about the stress recovery adaptation cycle, right? And then, and then this is going to make, this is going to help make sense of why we make these moves. And it's going to help you think about what kind of moves you would make to the program. And we're going to give you, you know, the basic things you can do, but eventually you go beyond this and deep into intermediate training, you don't have to make your own decisions about how to handle, uh, programming moves. So SRA, stress recovery adaptation, it's, it's a model that we use to describe what happens to a lifter, uh, in, you know, from the, from the perspective of programming. So, uh, you know, in a nutshell, it's an adaptation of Hans

Selye's general adaptation syndrome, right? And he called it syndrome. Yeah. Basically, about 100 years ago, this guy just made a model, a biological model for all organisms, whereby he observed that an organism is in a state of homeostasis most of the time or that's the state that organisms want to return to a state of equilibrium and if an organism is exposed to a stress and the stress is not so overwhelming as to kill or otherwise damage the organism, then the organism will adapt to that stress and grow in a way that can handle more stress of that kind in the future. Now, we're talking about this in just very, very general terms, right? When we talk about training stress, we're specifically referring to what we're doing

in the gym, which is lifting heavy weights. And the adaptation we want is strength at the end of this, right? So the stress is the work sets that you're doing with a barbell, right? If you squat 315 for three sets of five, that is the stress in quantifiable terms that you're imparting, you're imposing upon yourself in a workout. So you do that stress. If it's not so incredibly stressful that it kills you or injures you, then what will happen is over the ensuing, you know, days after the workout, you will recover from that if you eat enough food and you sleep enough, more or less, you know, that's, that's basically, those are the two factors we can control with recovery. So that's what we care about. Eat enough and eat enough,

the right stuff and sleep enough. And if those two factors are present, the stress was sufficient and the recovery was sufficient, then you will get adaptation in the end and the adaptation is you get stronger that's right now the thing there too that's embedded in that is that you know like i said the organism had to be exposed to a stress that was enough to disrupt their homeostasis yeah and this is this is, this is important because, um, you can't just lift the same weight all the time and get stronger. Right. And the reason being is that you adapt to that weight. And so you have to lift more to drive future adaptations, right? If you, you know, once you've adapted to a certain lifting, a certain amount of weight, you're not going to get stronger

lifting that weight for the same amount of reps and sets, you know, every workout. Yeah, that's right. It changes as you progress as a lifter. So, you know, as Trent said, when you apply stress, you know, we're talking about the training load primarily. Primarily the training load. Yep. Because ultimately, contrary to popular belief, when you're lifting weights, the goal is to lift more weight. Ultimately, contrary to popular belief, when you're lifting weights, the goal is to lift more weight.

You know, I don't really care if you think that doing something else is going to make you grow, that something else is going to result in you being able to lift more weight. But that's just an aside that I have to slip in there at least once an episode because fuck these bodybuilders. But the load is what we're really talking about, right? And the goal is to drive that load up, right? So when you apply that stress, you have to recover from that stress. When you're a novice, that happens in a couple of days, right? As you progress as a novice, you get into what's called late novice, advanced novice. People use different words for it, and it takes about four to five days before you can add a greater stress upon that new PR, right? So you squat 315 on Monday,

you know, you squat 320 on Friday. But earlier on, you were squatting 135 on Monday and 145 on Wednesday, right? Yeah, 155 on Friday. And so, yeah, right there, it's easiest to understand that cycle. When you're talking about the pure sort of beginning novice phase, right? When you're working, let's squat Monday, you squat 135, like you said, Wednesday, you squat 140. So the whole window, this whole cycle of SRA occurs within 48 hours, right? Stress happens, recovery happens, you adapt to it and bam, by Wednesday, you're ready to go. When you get to that advanced novice phase where you add a light day in there, it starts getting fuzzy, right? Because you have the stress on Monday, that's the heavy squat day, and then you have the light day on Wednesday, and then you have the next heavy squat day on Friday. Okay, so it's pretty clear that the stressors that are driving strength are Monday and Friday. So what is that light squat day? It gets a little bit fuzzy, right?

Is it stress? It's recovery. It's called active recovery. Is it active recovery? Right. I think it's, I think it's actually probably a little bit of both. Right. Um, and it depends on where you're at. You know, if you're squatting four5 on Monday for a set of five, and then you squat 315 for two or three sets of five on Wednesday, I think 315 is, does have a training effect. It is a stressor. Um, but it's, you know, if you're, if you're squatting 135 and you squat, you know, 105 on Wednesday for a light day, it's probably not acting as much of a stressor. It's probably more of active recovery at that point, but it does get a little bit fuzzy. So you bring up a very interesting point about this. So we're talking about frequency now,

number of workouts per week or number of times you perform an exercise per week. or number of times you perform an exercise per week. And the frequency variable I find to be the most useful at manipulating when technique is the limiting factor. And, you know, I don't know if Rip was consciously thinking this when he wrote the book or came up with this program, but the squat is the most complex exercise we teach and in the words of good old uncle riv even more complex than the ever so complicated clean and jerk right right and you know the longer i do this the more i see what he means you know um uh but anyways we're not here to on weightlifting because we we do weightlifting you know and it is complex for some people and it's you know it's got its challenges but in some ways the squat is harder to teach people than a clean early on.

But anyhow, so because the squat is complex, you want the lifter to have repeated exposure to it so that they're practicing that squat motion every time, right? And this is something that I kind of hit on when I talk about warmups, right? Like your warmups, you should pretend that they're a max set, you know, because there's that technical component, especially the more novice you are, the more that matters. The earlier you are in your training career, the more technique is a limiting factor. And if technique is the limiting factor, you want frequent exposures to the movement, right? But then if you go down the list, right, something like, you know, deadlift, that's done quite frequently in the beginning and fairly frequently as you go along. You know, you're deadlifting and you're cleaning,

but when you're cleaning, you're deadlifting it off the floor, you know? So you're getting frequent exposure to that too, but then you're alternating the bench with the press. So you may not be benching that much. You may not be pressing that much, but those lifts are also not as complex as a squat or a deadlift or a power clean or a jerk, you know? Right. So you don't be benching that much. You may not be pressing that much, but those lifts are also not as complex as a squat or deadlift or power clean or jerk, you know? Right. So you don't need that exposure. So if you look at weightlifters, right, their sport are the lifts, you know, the clean and jerk and the snatch.

So they end up doing it quite frequently. Where they kind of fuck up is they start thinking that that's developing strength in the lift. And they don't call it strength in the lift, of course, because they won't use the word strength. But, you know, they're being measured on their strength. The guy who wins the meet lifts the heaviest weight. But the thing that they do have right about this is they do it frequently. But the thing is that, you know, the frequency is not the only thing driving that. There's, you know, strength component too, and we can talk about that another time. But anyways, the thing I'm getting at here is when are we having somebody squat a light day? Typically, if they are a late novice or early intermediate, this is somebody who has been training less than

a year still. And we're using that on a lift that's highly complex, right? The squat's highly complex. So even though for that late novice, early intermediate, you know, that middle day squat might not be that heavy. They still need the practice. And they're also tired from the first day, so that lightweight will feel heavy, or we can make it feel heavy by doing it off pins from the bottom up, doing it off a box with a pause, or doing it with a pause without the box. There's different things we can do, right? But the point behind that frequency, I think, at least the way I view it, is to keep the lifter practicing a lift that is very prone to technical inefficiencies at that stage in his training. So, you know, that's what I see there. And that's the reason that we tend to do that

with the squat. But we don't have somebody deadlift three times where we can do a light deadlift in the middle. And that's the reason. The deadlift tends to be less complex than the squat. You might be pulling three times a week, but you're not going to do the deadlift three times a week. Although, with my T-Rex arm motherfuckers, I have them do five sets of five deadlifts three times a week with lightweight if they get real stubborn, you know. And obviously, it doesn't stay that way. This is a separate thing that just kind of popped in my head, but the reason I do that is, okay, they're doing 75 deadlifts a week.

They're going to get better at deadlifting, and these guys with short arms have to reach way down. They have a hard time getting that fucking initial pull off the floor down, and what I found is just tons and tons of deadlifting fixes that. So frequency can be applied to any lift that's technically shitty. You just have to manage the load and the stress so that you could not, so you don't kill yourself doing that three times a week, obviously. But the thing I really want to hammer there is the frequency variable is most important when it comes to addressing technical issues, okay. The load variable is the most important when it comes to expressing strength. And in the long term, when it comes to

getting bigger and stronger, the sets and the reps, that's your stress variable. That's that's that's how you develop that's this, they say that the general consensus is that strength is developed by the amount of work that you put in at those higher training volumes with those moderately heavy weights, right? So your sets of five, you know, I would say your triples are in there too, although some people say, oh, that's all neuromuscular. I call bullshit, you know, do a workout of lots of triples that is not all neuromuscular, but your volume, which is basically

some sort of expression of your sets and reps. And people do that different ways. It's a little times reps, or sets times reps times load. And some people just refer to it as the number of reps and the total number of reps. So but anyways, when we're talking about volume, we're talking about your sets and reps, okay. And that is where you build up what they call work capacity. And your volume is supposed to drive your strength on that absolutely heavy lift. So back to our heavy, light, medium model, right? Let's say that we're doing five sets of five for

your heavy day. And then we're doing 80% of that for your light day for two sets of five. And then your medium day might be 90% of that for three sets of five or something like that. You know, I'm just throwing numbers out, right? All that is designed to do is to go up and wait, right? But are you going to do those same sets and reps for like, you know, 52 weeks of the year? Probably not, you know, eventually those five sets of five might turn into one set of five and three lighter sets of five, right? And why does that happen? Because the weight gets heavier. And that first set, when you're the most fresh, as that gets heavier, eventually you can't do more than one set because now you're approaching your 5RM, right? Wherever that may be. So then that's where you have to make

programming decisions and use, you know, coaching experience and coaching judgment to make those decisions. So when I start to watch somebody, and I rarely use five sets of five anymore with people, I've kind of learned that outside, on squats, that is, I do on the other lifts, squats, deadlifts, if I'm using that, they're light deadlifts for the guy described earlier, you know, but I don't typically deadlift more than a set of five. Same here for males, three for females. But anyways, I rarely use five sets of five squats anymore because I just find them to trash the back so much that most people can't deadlift effectively because of it. and wait to the bar twice a week, and then that kind of exhausts, and now we're at a point where, okay, we got a couple routes we can go. Depending on the person, we're going to use the perfect ideal situation, you know, 19-year-old kid, lives with mom, you know, goes to school,

the community college, works part-time, sleeps all the time, and gets all his food provided for him. You know, he's almost like competitive athlete right you know that guy i might do heavy light and then heavier okay and there's a program on the internet that follows that template called the texas method right and that's that's basically the general model of the texas method on the squat and the pressing motions. You do a heavy day, a light day, and a heavier day. So the template here kind of follows what your training is going to look like over different timelines as you progress, right? So that heavy day, if you do Texas as templated, it's five sets of five at about somewhere between 85 and 90% for most people, although very strong

lifters might get lower than that. But you know, come back to that, because I know some of you are thinking, so they're listening, well, if they're stronger, why is it getting less? If you get stronger, you know, the answer is more always, you know, a little bit is good, more is better, right? No, actually, no. And that's what we're hammering here today that less becomes more over time. But, you know, somewhere between 85 and 90%, probably in the higher end for the pressing motions, and then on the lower end for the squat. Oh, you know, there's exceptions we'll talk about, right. So that'll be 85 to 90% of your heavier day, which is a single all out set of

five or fiveM, right? Right. So typically that first day, your five sets of five at 85% to 90%, that's your volume day, is what we call it. So remember I talked about this earlier. Yeah, I was about to say. That volume- Yeah, so your heavier day too, most people refer to that as like intensity day. Yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that heavy day is your volume day, right? And this is what I mentioned earlier, that volume day is supposed to drive PRs. And keep this in the back of your mind, because this basically represents what your training will look like in some way, shape, or form for the rest of your training career. It just may not happen in a week. So this is kind of the start of it, right? So you're basically doing five sets of five to drive up your five rep max on

Friday. If you're that 18-year-old kid who just came off the novice linear progression, you're going to do a light day in between for a couple sets of five with a pause or something, because at that point, we've identified where your weak points are. You didn't have weak points before. Your whole body was weak, so you did a basic novice linear progression to strengthen your whole body. By the end of it, we've seen technical inefficiencies that we cannot correct by cueing and repeating the workouts and resetting. We've seen things that, okay, this is a weak point and it makes sense because he's been training for six to nine months and he's becoming an intermediate. So now that light day, we might have you stop on a box and pause. Or if you have problems pushing through the sticking point, I might have you start from the bottom up off pins just above parallel where the sticking point starts and start each rep from the bottom up, you know?

But if I'm doing that, you'll do one set of five because it's a bit stressful, you know? Yeah. Or, you know, you might just pause without a box. You know, there's lots of different squat variants you can use. you know, you might just pause without a box. You know, there's lots of different squat variants you can use. When I get my weird and the new one that I started doing, when I get my guys with the weird anthropometry, you fuckers that have long legs and short torsos and are basically, you know, your torsos are parallel to the floor at the bottom. Right. The thing that you fuckers like to do, and I know those of you listening have experienced this because every single one of

you assholes does it. Upper back rounds out of the hole and then you just get stuck you know knees knees shoot back knees shoot back upper back rounds out of the hole and uh your quadriceps don't really grow very much because you're basically hinging the whole fucking thing and that's just a function of your body dimensions what i've been doing here at the gym is and you know traditionally i try to get these fuckers to front squat because the front squat makes you more vertical which these guys they still look like they're doing a back squat when they're front squatting right um the thing is when the bar's sitting there on your shoulders in front of you you can't round your back you're gonna drop the fucking thing you know so it forces you to engage those muscles that are failing at the bottom right uh i have a kabuki bar

here a transformer bar i have this one guy he's putting it on goblet setting and he's putting his he did this himself i didn't prescribe this i don't like this idea but it's getting the job done for him he put his heels on three three-quarter inch rubber mats in addition to setting it on the goblet setting and lowering the sleeves to the lowest position. For those of you not familiar, the transformer bar has two things you can modify. You can modify the camber so that the bar is either more in front of you or more behind you. But then you can also lower the sleeves that the plates go on vertically. So there's like four different settings vertically that you can lower them. So you can adjust the load distribution

horizontally and vertically. This motherfucker made it as hard as possible. He put it as far forward as he could and then as far down as he could because his anthropometry is that fucked. But you know what? I've been watching this guy for seven years. And when the squat gets heavy, his upper back rounds. And I try to have him front squat, but then he has wrist mobility problems. And his lats hurt, and I couldn't get it heavy enough to do anything, right? We did snatch grip deadlifts.

That didn't really help either. And that helps some guys with that. When I bought that fucking Kabuki bar and he did that weird ass modification, he stopped rounding his back at the bottom of the squat. So anyhow, that's just a side story and a little shameless plug for Kabuki. The fucking thing is the best safety squat bar in the business. I got to try one out. Yeah, I'm very intrigued by it. It's unique for sure. It addresses a lot of things. You know, it feels like a low bar squat, unlike the other ones.

They're mostly more high bar. And then the Mars bar is too much of a hinge. This one, if you set it to low bar, it feels like the squat that you and I do, which is pretty cool. That's why I bought it. So I was at Rogue and Rogue bought out Kabuki and they made their own version of the bar. So you can get the Ohio, which is Rogue or the Oregon, which is the traditional Kabuki bar. But I was in there and I'm like, oh, let me try this fucker out. So I set it to low bar. I did a squat and I'm like, holy shit, this thing feels damn fucking close. I barely noticed, you know, obviously my hands are in front of me. So the balance is probably easier for somebody who

hasn't been squatting, you know, but, uh, I bought one of me. I went home, I sold my, uh, elite FTS yoke SS bar, sold that immediately. And then I bought the Kabuki bar and I'm probably gonna have to buy a second one because my old timers are all fucking using it now, you know? Yeah. Right. Right. And, uh, the thing is thing is, so I knew I was going to use it for that, but then the guy I just told you about addressed his issue, and I forgot about him. I forgot, well, I didn't forget about him. He's a good friend of mine. I see him all the time, but I forgot that I couldn't run up front squats with this guy because it hurt. So we put that thing on the goblet squat setting with the sleeves all the way down, and then he added the mats, you know, what, an inch and a half almost?

Yeah, right. No, 2.25 inches under his fucking – Oh, you said three mats. Yeah, right. Okay. Three mats, yeah, 2.25 inches under his weightlifting shoes, which is already three-quarter inch. And, dude, I've watched him squat heavy the last two months,

and he has not rounded his upper back like that again, you know? Amen, whatever gets you there. I don't think I'd use rubber mats on somebody if i was you know programming and coaching but if he wants to do that you know he's been lifting a long time i'm not going to stop him he's putting the safety bars in if he trips it's going to fucking get caught you know yeah um that's the kind of stuff yeah to your point that's the kind of stuff you do after years of training when like you you've exhausted all other yeah i mean it's ripped set it many times you know if the guy's school an advanced lifter squatting 600 pounds i'm not gonna fucking tell him what to do unless he asked for it of course you know yeah exactly um so let's yeah let's go back so that so we're talking about

identifying weak points and that's where the light day becomes useful in that early intermediate phase, right? Yeah. And we're on Texas method, so go on. Yeah, so I was going to say, so on Texas method, one way that you can draw a bridge from Texas method to heavy light medium, which is really the way I look at heavy light medium, is it's just a general term for programs that are organized in the way that you described, where you have a volume day, maybe a light day, and an intensity day. And where the emphasis is on driving up the weight on intensity day, and the volume day just serves to make that happen.

So Texas Method is a heavy, light, medium program, but it's a specific version of it, right? Heavy, light, medium is really just more of like a model. I shouldn't even say it's a program. It's not a program. It's just more like a model of organizing training. But one way you can map that on, I like this analogy, is you can think of Texas Method

as heavy, light, medium stress, right? So the volume day, five sets of five, that's your heavy stress day, or you could say high stress day, right? So the volume day, five sets of five, that's your heavy stress day, or you could say high stress day, right? It's the most stressful thing you're going to do on the squat at least. And then your light day is light, obviously. So it's light, lower stress. And then your intensity day, the heaviest day, the most weight on the bar, that's actually your medium stress day because yes, it's very heavy, but it's also, you're only doing one set or maybe you're doing two sets of three. You're not doing very many reps. So it's actually the actual stress that you're imparting on yourself is lower than it is on the volume day. It's the volume day that trashes people, especially on Texas method. So it's, you know, you're doing, this has been talked about

before. I don't know that I've talked about it here. I know I've heard Rip talk about it, but you can get yourself real fucking sore and beat up doing hundreds of air squats, you know, but that doesn't mean it's getting you stronger, you know? Right. So, you know, volume tends to be more stressful than intensity in my experience. My volume squats, if I don't fucking eat a lot of food, wipes me out, you know? Wipes me out. We'll talk about how I have mine programmed at the end here, you know, as we lead into this. But that's, you know, that's a good way to put it. I guess if you looked at it in terms of tonnage, which we don't do and we don't want you doing, but for illustrative purposes, your highest tonnage is going to be that volume day most likely without doing any math, you know?

Right. You know, that's one way to kind of put it, right? Because you're doing a moderately heavy weight for several sets and uh that means you know at the very least there's several things going on but you have more eccentric loading so 25 reps eccentrically loading your hamstrings your adductors your glutes and all those other muscles uh is a lot of stress versus five reps with a heavier weight, but less eccentric loading, right? And eccentric loading is what gets you fucking sore, right? So you got that, you got more repetitive use of the joints, you got that. So it makes sense. If you're doing

more repetition, you're, you know, applying more stress, but to what point, right? Are you going to do a set of 25 or 35 and expect your set of five to go up? No, you got to draw the line somewhere, right? It's got to be in that same general ballpark of the adaptation you're seeking, which in this case, it's strength, right? So if you want a bigger 5RM, you have to train fives because you need to be specific with how you train. I think when I was in my master's, they called it the SED principle, specific adaptation to imposed demands, right? Right. So if I want bigger fives,

then I'm going to use fives to drive fives. You know, if I want bigger triples, I'll probably use triples to drive triples. I mean, obviously they're going to be lighter triples, but I'm going to be tired enough to where they'll feel fucking heavy, you know, and there shouldn't be enough sets of them, right? Yeah. So that's why we do that, right? But then eventually that kind of peters off, you know, and you do 430 for five, 435 for five, 440 for five. Or let's say you're a woman, you're doing 135 for five, 140 for five, 145 for five. Some women are much stronger than this, but, you know, I'm thinking of, you know, my small to medium sized people out there that aren't lifting these massive numbers unless they're very gifted, which we love when that happens. It's pretty cool to watch, you know. But, you know, typically a guy might go in there and squat in the threes or fours for a set of five, right? It's not

unusual for a medium-sized guy to pull that off as long as he's willing to gain weight, recover, and eat, right? And if he's young. So, okay, so it peters off. So then the next thing we do is, okay, well, this is your first real exposure to raw strength training. There's not much neuromuscular stuff going on. You're not just getting better at coordinating movement, recruiting your motor units. Now you are building muscle mass and you're dealing with some seriously heavy mechanical stress. So shit has changed. So now we're not just going to stay at fives like we did with the novice. The novice is learning how to lift. He needs lots of reps to get better at the movement, to iron out technical efficiencies. And he's not at a point yet where he could maximize motor unit recruitment. The mid-intermediate, who's now exhausting his early

intermediate gains, is at a point now where he can use his body in that way. The reps are becoming more reproducible. He's managing the stress better. And now he's ready to go heavier. So what do we do next? I personally, I drop the light day when we exhaust fives. I don't see a point anymore, but you don't have to. You don't have to, but I do. That's the first thing I do. And then I go to triples. So instead of one set of five, I'll have the guy do two sets of three. And remember, when we're dealing with women, that volume might be higher. I might have a woman do two sets of five or three sets of three. It just depends. I'm just throwing numbers out.

I haven't programmed Texas method for a female in a long time. Actually, I rarely program Texas method because it for most people on the squat, you know, it's a good example to talk about, uh, illustrate the concept, but yeah, we'll do it a little differently. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the squat on tech, you know, I think anybody can benefit from Texas method for upper body or even deadlift because deadlifts really heavy, light, medium, it's not actually Texas method. Right. Right. But, uh, you classic texas method for bench press or press is excellent for most people and i think it's completely appropriate texas method for squat 18 to 25 year old men that are living at mom's house drinking a gallon of milk a day because they because they need to drink that

not because they're being jerk offs and just getting fat you know like those guys are going to benefit you know um but everybody else guys are going to benefit, you know? But everybody else should not be squatting like that. It's probably not a good idea. But anyway, so we're at triples now, right? So now we might do, you know, six sets of three on Monday. So see how impractical this is? Six sets of three on Monday, and then you'll do a couple triples on Friday. So you're still getting those five absolutely heavy, high intensity reps at the end of the week. And then we'll add to that.

That usually doesn't last too long, especially for men. For women, that can last quite a while. I've done seven triples for some women. Now, let me ask you this. This is interesting. So typically when I'm doing this, I will, on the intensity day, I will taper the reps down. So we'll go from set of five to two sets of three to doubles. Occasionally, if somebody has an interest, we'll run out singles just for fun, really. But I'll taper it down to doubles, right? And so we'll do something like one set of five, two sets of three, two sets of two, maybe even three sets of two, depending on how heavy it is. two sets of two, maybe even three sets of two, depending on how heavy it is. But I'm usually keeping that volume day as sets of five. But you said right there that you might even go triples there on the volume day. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I've done that. A lot of people keep it as sets of

five. I don't like to mix rep ranges. That's just me. Okay. Yeah. So when you do that though, are you going to go, you said six sets of three there, but would you go like eight sets of three so that you're getting 24 total work reps, which is pretty much the same as 25 if you're doing five sets of five? No, now we're touching on a bigger concept. And the thing that everybody listening to this has to realize is there's an inverse relationship between volume and intensity. So as the intensity of your exercise increases, the total volume has to decrease. And this is probably the earliest place where you're going to see this if you're just a purely a strength athlete, right? So not only is the weight getting heavier, and we're dropping the reps on the intensity day. So now you're doing heavy triples,

right? Heavy triples are fucking stressful and in a different way than, you know, doing 10 sets of 10, which is like the other end of the spectrum, right? We're not even talking about that, but, you know, just imagine 10 sets of 10, that's going to wear you out, right? So two triples, you know, it's stressful from an neuromuscular standpoint. So you kind of feel that fatigue, you know, you can't really push very hard after that, you know? Right. And, you know, taxes your joints, connective tissues, and muscles. So my line of thinking when I do that is that if you're doing a triple, a heavy triple, or two heavy triples, right, we're getting closer and closer to your max, your one rep max, the heaviest weight you could lift, which means we got to start dialing

down the fatigue the rest of the week, you know? Yeah. Like, I don't want you doing 25 reps that are stressful because now we're closer to 1RM. That gap between your intensity day and the absolute maximum weight you can lift has narrowed. So now I'm starting to think, okay, I need him a little less tired because it's fucking heavy and I want those triples to keep moving and I want them to go for as long as they can. So I'm going to go from 25 reps to 18 reps. And, you know, I've done 21 too, but, you know, 18 seems to work just fine. And we're doing triples, you know, and then your thing is that since that day has gotten heavier too, keep in mind, and I've talked about this with high reps and why we don't like high reps for barbell lifts for most people, unless you're stupid like me and want to do that sometimes. But, you know,

when you're doing high reps, sets of eight and 10, every rep after about number five is an opportunity to fuck things up because now you've introduced endurance into it, right? Well, I think the same thing happens when you start doing limit sets of five and you're doing five sets of them. And then you're at a point now, okay, if you've reached a point where your intensity day is down to triples, that means those five sets of five are taking longer, they're harder, and there's a good chance you're at a point now, okay, if you've reached a point where your intensity day is down to triples, that means those five sets of five are taking longer, they're harder, and there's a good chance you're not reproducing five clean reps in a row. Yeah, definitely. Yep. So that's what I think about it too. You've got a fatigued lifter who's been adding to those five sets of

five for weeks and weeks and weeks, and now there's a good chance that he's doing three good reps and two sloppy reps that are deep, but his back's rounding, you know so it's funny i actually it's funny you mentioned that um i never really thought about it in those terms but i actually kind of ended up in that situation years ago when i ran through texas texas method my second time i hit a five i peaked out on that at a set of five at 390 and i i at the time i didn't realize that most coaches were, were lowering the percentage of the volume day as the top set on intensity day went up. So I was still doing 90, 90% for my volume. So I did 350, yeah, 350 for five sets of five. And, uh, yeah, same thing. That exact situation happened to me because I'd have,

you know, a few good reps and then two sloppy ones. And I developed some pretty bad knee slide in that process. And it gave me patellar tendonitis, which I've talked about before. But, uh, what, what I ended up doing is I ended up having to, because of tendonitis got so bad, I ended up having to take the weight down on my squat quite a bit and rebuild it. And just with absolutely zero knee slide whatsoever, because it was the only way I could squat without pain. And, uh, but what I found is in that process of rebuilding the squat is once it got slightly heavy again, once it got back into, like, I took it down to like 275 and then I brought it back into the 300s and got back into the 300s and I started having those problems again. So I said,

okay, no sketchy reps. And I ended up doing a bunch of sets of three for that reason, right? It was a technique problem. So it was interesting. Yeah. So you ended up there too. So I ended up there by accident. You know, I hadn't really thought it through in that way, but they just sort of, you know, just by troubleshooting. So I want to point out a couple things though here is that in these iterations we're talking about remember the goal that we're always focused on is every change that we make we're always focused on that intensity day going up right the weight of the bar needs to go up on intensity day that's why I don't give a shit if you're doing five sets of five on volume day it doesn't matter and this this is the thing that we run into this is a common question we run into is like, what do I do if I'm not, if I miss reps on my volume day?

And it's like, you shouldn't be missing reps on volume day. If you are, you're lifting too heavy or you are, your technique is breaking down. You need to, you need to either lower the weight to closer to 85, maybe even 80% if you're pretty strong, or you need to modify the rep range so that you're getting all your reps. That's right. And because it doesn't matter. I do like to track PRs on volume day because eventually you'll hit a point in your training where intensity day doesn't always go up, and it becomes harder and harder to make it go up because it's harder to reproduce a great set because it just it's it's harder to

reproduce a a great set of five when it's just really really up there and so you want to see that your if your volume day is moving up steadily over time you know that your your your strength is probably going up even if you haven't been able to manifest it on intensity day but that's right but but but nobody cares about your volume day pr no it's something you write down in your journal is like is a tracker but but the actual pr is the intensity day pr so don't get don't get lost in the the woods of all this other shit it's just remember that's what's so if that's going up and whatever you're doing is making that go up that's fine don't don't fuck with it when it stops going up then you start making a change to these other other days and it's kind of the same thing with

heavy light medium that first set of fives what matters on your five sets of five you know right because eventually you make the other sets lighter and there's things you do there but um we'll come back to that um yeah so yeah so you know i go to triples and then at the end um see i like i'm more with Dr. Bradford on this. You remember at your seminar, I think she says it at all of them. I don't know if she teaches a programming lecture anymore, but she says, go from fives to triples to singles because if you go from fives to fours, well, she didn't even say that because fours don't exist. She actually says if you go from triples to doubles, it's not that big of a difference, you know, so you don't get that psychological relief, you know, like, okay, I'm adding five pounds, but I'm only doing one less rep, and I barely got the last rep last week. You see what I mean?

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like going from triples to singles personally. So, you know, a typical male lifter that runs Texas Method and is down to triples might do that for two weeks, maybe three, and then we're down to singles. So now two triples becomes do that for two weeks, maybe three, and then we're down to singles. So now two triples becomes five singles. And then on the volume day, six triples might turn into five doubles or seven doubles, you know, something like that, five to seven doubles. And now we're keeping the stimulus similar and we're also stressing the lifter out less, right? Because again, if we're down to five singles, eventually only one of those singles is going to go up, and that's your one RM, you know?

Yeah, right. And I guess I come at this from the experience as a powerlifting coach, you know? I'm not a world-famous powerlifting coach by any means, but I've coached enough lifters for powerlifting and strengthlifting meets to understand the process of expressing that maximal strength, right? If you could do five singles, it's not a max. You're doing singles, right? So now the way that I handle Texas Method is I'm looking at, okay, I almost look at it as what we call a taper in lifting me. I'm like, I've got to get this person to max out.

So that means that five singles will probably turn into two or three singles, and then he's probably going to max out. Those seven doubles turn into five doubles turn into three doubles, right? Right. And everything is designed to give that lifter his first exposure to a 1RM. And why am I doing that? Rip would not agree with this because he hates maxing in the gym. He thinks it's stupid that it should only be done at meets. And there's guys that believe that, you know, I happen to enjoy it. And I also

have noticed that contrary to popular belief, I don't think that it's that risky for somebody to do if they're serious, if they're a serious strength trainee and have exposed themselves to lower rep ranges and heavier weights, because the volume is really where a lot of the fucking injuries happen in my experience if you're getting injured doing a heavy double or single you're either on drugs or you have horrible technique and you're maxing out that's that's that's been my experience now i'm sure it's happened with healthy drug free lifters i'm sure it's happened of course you know you're maxing out but i think for most people and when we're talking about in statistical terms the mode of strength

and people in the middle of the bell curve your average person it's just it's not that absolutely heavy to where you should be worried about it now if you know if you're a six yeah if you're a six 700 pound squad or 500 pound squad or you know then you might have something to worry about like you may need not need to max you know but if you're you know somewhere in that three to five hundred range it's fun you know it's fun to enjoy it. And I think you're probably fine. And it's a, it's a skill too. It's, it's a, it's a skill to, to cleanly execute a single because you don't get any other cuts, you know, kisses at the pig, right? If you're doing a five RM, you can have a sketchy rep or two in there that you fix,

right? And that's a And that's a big part of where I always tell people, like when I'm coaching them, part of the whole process of feedback and me giving them cues and making adjustments is so that they can get to a point where they can do it themselves, right? So that they can get to a point where they're like, oh, I was a little bit on my toes that rep. Okay, I know what happened. I can diagnose it. I know how to fix it. Rep three is perfect, right? That's where I want them to get to. And when you're doing a 5RM, that can happen. When you're doing a single, you only got one shot. So there's a higher degree of technical execution that's required.

And that's a skill. The other thing is you have to manage your mind, right? When you're hitting singles, this weight is much, much heavier than anything else you've done in your training. And there's a psychological effect, as we talked about a few episodes ago, especially when you're doing a squat had just having that much weight on your back. When you unrack that, it's just, it's fucking scary. And so you have to learn how to manage your mind for one rep and focus and execute the way you know how to, and that's, and that's a skill, you know, some people just freak out. Um, and, and,

and their one and their one RM, or I'm sorry, not their one RM, but their single looks wildly different from a set of five. Exactly. And so I think if you want to do that, you have to practice it. If you're going to do a meet in particular, you have to practice singles. At least when you're first doing it. Nothing teaches you how to push as hard as you can better than a single, you know? Yeah, right. And, or not a single, a one RM, you know, experiencing that.

And let's keep in mind here, who is Texas Method for? Texas Method is for the young, serious, competitive strength athlete. Somebody who has ran a linear progression, is no longer a novice, and has decided that they are going to specialize in powerlifting or strengthlifting. They want to max out, you know? Right. It is not for the casual recreational strength training that has a job, life, kids, etc., that are wearing them out in addition to the lifting. You should not be doing that unless it's for upper body. And let me be clear, you should not be doing Texas Method on the squat if you have a busy, demanding lifestyle or you're over 25 and or you're over 25, right? If you're under 25 with a busy, demanding lifestyle, you should also not program the squat using the Texas Method template because that's what it is, a template, right?

So, yeah, so, you know, the assumptions behind what we just outlined was that the person is training for raw maximal strength. behind what we just outlined was that the person is training for raw maximal strength. Now, if the person is not, you know, they're still valued working up singles, you just kind of go about it a different way, you're not going to, you know, do two heavy, stressful fucking days of squatting a week, it's just probably not going to happen. You know, that's where the traditional heavy, light, medium goes, you know, where you're doing several sets three times a week, and the weight undulates. Like I said earlier, you got a heavy day, a light day and a medium day, then eventually that light day comes out as you become more experienced. Most people squat twice a week for quite some time. But then what happens next, right? Well, you're following the same template. I'm thinking of a guy just trained now from novice

to mid late intermediate. He got to that point where he would tell me something's, knees are aching or something, you know, knees are aching, hips are aching, it's getting hard. So I went, I mean, for him, I was down to two sets of squats once a week, one set of deadlifts once a week. And then we went to a light heavy week, a heavy week and a light week. And you can imagine what the next iteration is going to be, you know, right? He's going to go from a heavy week to a light week to a medium week. So now it's stretched out over three weeks. And that's kind of where I'm at with the squat. With the deadlift, I have a deadlift, which is heavy. I have a halting deadlift, which is light. And then I have a rack pull, which is heavier. And then I have a halting again,

which is light. So I deadlift every four weeks now, you know? Yeah, right, right. And eventually that deadlift and rack pull will alternate to the point where I'm deadlift every four weeks now, you know? And eventually, that deadlift and rack pull will alternate to the point where I'm deadlifting every other month, you know? So one month, it'll build up to a heavy deadlift. The next month, it'll build up to a heavy rack pull. I'm still doing pulls, and there are various percentages of what that heavy stressful pull is, the PR attempt. But, you know, that stress recovery adaptation, that heavy, light, medium, whatever you want to call it, that undulated periodization, it's happening over a four-week period instead of a five-day period. You see what I mean? Or a seven-day period.

And this applies to all the lifts. You know, there was an article I read a while back that was called, there's only one type of periodization. So if you really think about everything we've just taught you, you're always progressing linearly because even on a one month block, right? You know, so I'm on a one month split, right? That's essentially what I'm on. I'm adding weight to my deadlift every month, five pounds a month, new PR every month, right? That's right. If I was doing it every two months, new PR every two months, right? So it's a linear progression, right? Over a one, two, three month period, right?

Right. Undulating the load, right? So have a heavy week, a light week, a medium week, or a heavy week, a less heavy week, a moderate week, a light week, you know, however you want to skin it. So now we have linear every month, we have undulating every week. And then, you know, there's a whole conjugate thing, right? You can change exercises. You know, I might do a pause squat one week. I might squat off the pins one week, you know, et cetera, right? So it's always linear. It's always conjugated and it's always undulating. It just depends over what timeline. Exactly. And, you know, this is the essence of programming here is that all of these things are planned to create that PR. You expect to go up five pounds, whatever your timeline is, your horizon for doing that. That's what

programming is. It's creating a plan to add five pounds. That's right. That's pretty much it. That's pretty much it. And there's a lot of ways to do it. And this is the frustrating thing for a lot of people. When you get to this intermediate stage, um, like you said, Texas method, that's a valid way to do it, but valid for the right person. Okay. Most of you probably don't fit that criteria. Um, I want to talk quickly about what, what I would do instead, but before I say that, um, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of different ways to skin the cat in terms of the nuts and bolts, the little, the small details, but the, the big picture is always the same, right? We're planning increases over time. It's just the timeline horizon that's

changing. That's it. You know, so always keep your eye on the prize. If you do that and you focus on that, you're going to be okay. Cause there's actually, you can, you can fuck this up to a, you know, some, you can fuck this up a little bit and you're still going to be fine. Right. And you'll be old. You'll run into some roadblocks that you might not have run into if you had better programming, but you'll, you'll have, you'll solve them and you'll learn something in the process. So it's okay. You know, that's, it's actually, there's a, there's a fair amount of, uh, room for error here. If you keep your eye on the prize of adding weight to the bar, it's when you get distracted by all the bullshit on the volume days and, and over, you know, over manipulating that stuff that you get lost, right. When you stop trying to add weight to the

bar. Yeah. So really quick though, I want to, because I know we're getting over an hour here, but, uh, I want to quickly talk about, okay, so what would we do for a weekly heavy, light, medium progression? But for somebody that's not, you know, let's say they're, let's say it's a male or female that's somewhere between the ages of 30 and 50, right? So they're, they're, you know, they're a good training age. They're not old. They're not old people yet, but they are not young either. What would a heavy, light, medium program look like for them? So I was just thinking that. The guy that I was talking about earlier who was on the biweekly split, even before he got to that point, his volume on the squat was like two sets of five, I think.

Two, three sets of five. We got him down to two sets of five. And that was two sets of five on Monday and then one set of five on Friday. Now it's two sets of five one week, one set of five the next week. The next week, yeah. He just turned 50. So you just kind of segued into an important point that I wanted to hit before we end off. And that's that we've talked about, you know, this programming approach applies the same. The timeline is what changes. That's what

we just hit on. The second part about that is there is an inverse relationship between volume and intensity, and that applies at the micro level where, okay, over the course of a month or two months or three months, you have to pull back sets and reps to keep the intensity, the load going up. The same applies in the macro level, right? The stronger you get, you know, going from a 300-pound squatter to a 400-pound squatter, the less volume you're going to need, not more, because that volume that you're using at three sets of five at 355 is a very different stress than five sets of five at 255. You see what I mean? And if you get to a 500 squat, your volume might be two or three sets because you're doing

405 or more, right? So keep that, like right now, my volume on the squat, four sets of five, I think I'm at about 85%, but you know, my best set of five is 405. I already know that's going to turn into three sets in the next training block. But when I arrived at four sets, three sets wasn't enough. However, if I'm squatting 420 or 425 for a set of five at the end of this run, there's a good chance that, you know, I'm probably going to max out close to 500. And the next time I run this, I'm not going to need four sets of five. And how do I know this? Because I've seen this with other people. Yep. That's true. Right. Um, you know, I talk about all the time I work, I tend to work with older people. Um, they're not old people. They're not like seniors. Right. Um, there's, there's a couple in there, but, uh, but you know, mostly people in there like their fifties

and, uh, yeah, that's, that's something that happens, right. Is that we take, I take that volume down on the volume days because that tends to beat people up, especially when they're older. It tends to beat up the joints a lot. And so, yeah, so a volume, a good starting point for a volume day for an early intermediate, which, you know, means that kind of by definition, you're not going to be, you're not going to be squatting a lot on your intensity day. Four sets of five. I don't goting a lot on your intensity day. Uh, four sets of five. I don't go five sets of five. I'm like you, I had four sets of fives, usually my starting point for that. But yeah, as they get stronger, three sets of five. And I, you know, I haven't really

gone down on a volume day. I haven't gone down to sets of two sets of five, but I generally start changing rep ranges like you do. So I might go like four sets of four or three sets of four or three sets of three, something like that. Right. Um, usually I tend to go threes, but, uh, yeah, it's the same idea, right? The, the, the volume's just not that high. And I think also when you're, when you think about older people, they tend to, they just respond more to the intensity, to the, to the heavy stuff than they do to the volume stuff. Younger people just tend to get a little bit more out of that volume work. Absolutely. Um, so, so that's one thing now on the, on deadlift. Uh, Oh yeah. So the other thing I would say about the squat, by the way, is that it's, it's, it's the, the next change I make is two squats per week. I'd usually have, I'd usually drop that third squat, that middle, middle of the week light squat out, unless I'm specifically having somebody do Texas method or unless they really need the

practice. Because there's another element of this and that's training time. And usually while we're doing all this, I also, I'm needing to add more volume to their upper body and simply doing three slots of pressing, you know, bench, press, bench, or press, bench, press, is not enough anymore. I need to add another slot, but I don't want to make their workouts longer. Warming up for the squat takes a while. It takes a lot of time. And so on the midweek, if I drop that squat out, that opens up a lot of time to do a fourth pressing slot, right? So I could have them do on that day, let's say they're still doing a simple press bench press alternating kind of scheme on their upper body work well on that midweek day i would start them off doing whatever they're normally going to do for their upper body work right so there's no squat

so we're going to start with an upper body lift let's say it's the bench press okay cool right after the bench press let's throw in some more upper body i might have them do a press after that that's lighter, and it's usually probably like a variant, like a seated press or something. Because they've already benched, so they're going to be tired, so it's got to be lighter. There we go. There's a fourth pressing slot, and for a lot of people,

that's enough extra volume on the upper body lifts to get them going again. And it's not going to eat up a ton of time because you didn't squat. So even if you're doing a light squat and you're only doing two sets of five or whatever, you still got to warm up for the thing. And it takes, you know, 10, 15 minutes to get through all that. Yeah, absolutely. What I've, you know, I've said this before in other episodes when it comes to, there's two things I want to hit on from that. First, when it comes to older lifters, it's like advanced lifters. I train an old guy the way I train myself.

It's very similar. I don't quite go to four sets like you said, but they're doing two to three sets, and then they're doing one heavy set, and it's spread out across seven days. So volume week, intensity week. I've only taken one old guy to a three-week split, and now he's finally like where he needs a four to six week split like just back tweaks and you know um yeah and uh you could i mean the guy for reference he's his dead lifts over five and he's definitely squatted over four for reps for five reps you know yeah yeah and he's silver sixty you know strong guy yeah strong mother strong and uh you know we're working through a back tweak now, you know? Strong guy. Yeah, strong motherfucker. Strong motherfucker. And, you know, we're working through a back tweak now, but, you know, I look at that stuff too, right?

You know, when you have somebody that far along the adaptation curve, like he's a serious strength athlete, he competes, you know? When you have somebody that far along the adaptation curve, you know, you got to listen for, okay, knees hurt, back hurts, et cetera. And if, you know, at this point. You got to make a change. At this point, they've been working with one of us, technical inefficiency is not the limiting factor. You're not going to technique your way out of pain in that case, right? So it's coming down to training, right? So when I start hearing that kind of stuff, then I start pulling back stress, right? Or if they've tweaked a back, because that's something that just kind of comes, right? But as I've said, strong back heals faster

than a weak back. If you've tweaked your back before i'm sorry you're gonna tweak it again you know lifting is not going to stop your back from tweaking it's going to make it happen less make it less severe and make the recovery faster but it's not going to stop a shitty back from continuing to be shitty it's just going to make it less shitty but uh anyways you know guy got a back tweak we're going to finish working through that, but we've already agreed. He's going on a five- to six-week cycle now, you know, but he's been lifting for like, I don't know, six, seven years. You know, I inherited him from somebody else, and I want to say, yeah, probably six, seven years this guy's been lifting, and he's been with me for, I want to say, what, four? Something like that? Four years. And he's been with me for, I want to say what, four, something like that, four years.

And he's over 60, you know? So, you know, you got the slower recovery time from being over 60. And then you have the advanced training status. So he's probably going to be on a four to six week split from here on out. And he's probably only going to pull from the floor once a month, you know? And these were the things that we discussed. The other cool thing about this guy is he's benched 350, you know? Which, you know, on its face, that's already pretty cool. But what I've noticed is when I get these guys with extreme benches, and, you know, 350 for a young guy is not considered an extreme bench, sadly, you know, says the guy whose bench is 310, you know, only bench 310. But, you know, it's not, it's not, you know, I've coached bench is 310, you know, only bench 310. But, you know,

it's not, it's not, you know, I've, I've coached a guy who benched 475, mutual friend of ours. And what I've noticed is the bench also eventually behaves like the squat, you know, maybe not as much, but, you know, when you're benching twice your body weight or you're benching in the mid 300s or higher is where i tend to see it uh you know that that amount of just the volume has to come down same thing as you start shoulders and elbows start letting you know those yeah yeah for sure and uh you know it all follows it the reason that most of us never get to that point on a bench press or a press is because it's not that fucking heavy right yeah exactly yeah things really change you know when you get up into those high levels.

We got to talk to Will Morris about that because that motherfucker benched 405 at like 175 pounds. Yeah. Yeah, it's not fair. He's got arms like, who's that guy that played the Witcher? Oh, Superman guy, right? Yeah, Superman. Henry Cavill. Henry Cavill.

He's got super short T-Rex arms. Yeah. But no, I'm not hating. That's a strong squat bench. It's like almost a triple bodyweight bench. That's ridiculous. Not quite, but over double. He's over double bodyweight bench.

But he's 5'4", so he's a dense 175. So guys who are 5'9", you're not doing that. That's equivalent to you being 220. Yep, exactly. So yeah, there's a lot more we could talk about in like little details, but hopefully that illustrates the concept of like what happens when you're moving from the novice phase into some sort of advanced novice phase where you're running things out and then you get to a weekly intermediate program.

You know, I want to, yeah, just something funny just popped in my head, and it's, you know, it's just something I want to point out because it is relevant. So, you know, I just mentioned that with the bench. I saw the same thing, you know, when I ran all that hypertrophy shit last year, I saw the same shit happen with bicep curls. It got to a point where tendonitis right and then basically heavy week light week two to three sets down from three exercises to one exercise you know yeah and it the thing kept going up my arms kept getting bigger

but i had to apply those same concepts i'm like okay my tendons hurt why do they hurt my form's good you know i went down the list and then did the same shit um most of you will never have that problem i was fucking around but i it was interesting to see that this small single you know by joint you know small like less compound exercise right that you know doesn't have any axial loading to it right you're not loading the spine it responded the same way eventually i had to do a lot less which is in direct conflict with what bodybuilders tell you that you need more volume you need more volume volume volume volume and it's like no dude when i'm curling 50 pound dumbbells that fucking wrecks my damn elbows you know i can't do three sets with that i have some thoughts on that by the way because i've been i've been running some guys through hypertrophy, quote, unquote, unquote, unquote, stuff for the last year. And I've

learned some things about that. But we can save that for another time. Sure. But yeah, there you go. SRA for hypertrophy. SRA for hypertrophy. Yeah. No, it's a thing. It's just this thing, right? This stuff is universally applicable. And, you know, don't there was a time where we were arguing about this in the strength community of like, you know, SRA and fitness fatigue. And I don't know if people people don't really seem to care about that much anymore. it's a mental model for how to plan this stuff. It gets fuzzy. When you look at the details over, you know, the more advanced you get the actual window of like what stress and what's recovery. I don't fucking know. Nobody does. Nobody else does either, but, but it's a, it's still a useful concept for planning out. The point is you're going to have, you're going to have stresses that drive, uh, that, that, that cause adaptation to occur if the recovery is sufficient. And the other thing too is, you know, this tends to get lost in all programming discussions, is that the assumption

here is you're eating enough food, right? So if you don't eat enough food, you will not adapt, you will not get bigger. You know, I have to have this conversation with people sometimes a lot. You have to eat enough food to grow. Damn it. Yeah, we're talking about all this programming shit. We're assuming that you're eating enough food. Yeah, nothing matters. None of that matters.

Absolutely none of that matters if you won't eat enough food. If you are running Texas Method, you know, most of you are not, but let's say you fall into that category. Your BMI better be at least 30. Yeah. I'm sorry. You better have achieved the obese BMI if you're running Texas Method. Absolutely. Because you're not going to do it in the normal weight category. You're probably not going to do it in the overweight category, maybe in the high overweight,

but you better be high overweight and just slightly obese according to BMI. Your fat percentage won't be as crazy as you think it's going to be, but your body mass index, weight for height, it better be like probably 29 to 31. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, look, I'm a small guy. I'm not a small frame, 5'8". Absolutely, I had to get up to, I think I hit 30 when I topped out there.

That sounds about right, yeah. But yeah, no, so all of this is completely irrelevant if you just won't eat enough. You're going to run into a giant brick wall. That's right. And you're never going to get to these points that we're talking about because you're not eating enough food. Yeah, and remember too that BMI of 30,

don't you fucking get there eating a bunch of fat, okay? You're going to have to chomp down a lot of carbs and protein, and it's a high volume of food. So I want to have to chomp down a lot of carbs and protein, and it's a high volume of food. So I want to be clear on that because a lot of lifting coaches, you know, Rip included, but he says he's not a nutritionist. All the time he says that. Focus on calories. Well, human beings are fucking lazy. You can eat 5,000 calories and not get enough protein and carbs. It's very easy to eat 5,000 calories and eat donuts, and you're going to get a shitload of fat, a decent amount of carbs, and no protein. So, no, you have to eat as in eat.

You're chewing all day, rice, pasta, potatoes, meat, lots of meat, eggs, you know, things that you have to chew that will get you very full. And then you're going to have to eat some more if you're the skinny guy, right? So when you're eating a high-quality diet, it's a lot of eating. But, yeah, no, nothing that we said means diddly squat. If you're not eating enough, you're not getting a decent amount of sleep. Yep. Yep. I skipped a workout yesterday because I didn't sleep much on the weekend.

I got it today, and I got four sets of five on the close grip bench instead of three last week. I got three, and then I missed it. Got two sets of four for the last two this week. I got five, five, four, five, five. Didn't rest long enough, apparently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, with my squat today,

it really, that fifth rep shouldn't have been a question. It only was because, you know, I've had three straight nights in a row of working super late. So it adds up, man. It adds up. This is why I can't do Texas Method.

My lifestyle is not conducive whatsoever. Fuck no. And I'm 35 now. I was 27 when I ran that Texas Method. I never fucking ran it. I ran it for upper body. Yeah. I think there's probably better ways to do it.

Um, but it works. It works. Nothing wrong with it. Um, well, we're taught, we should just,

we need to be clear on this. When we say Texas method, we really mean on the squat. Yeah. We really mean on the squat. That's true. That's true. Fucking brutal,

man. Um, yeah, you know, we'll probably have to do another show at some point about upper body stuff because it's its own beast. Um, and it, and you know, the, the, for, for the vast majority of people, these super high intensities, these

super high poundages, they just don't exist for most people. And you end up having to do more volume relative to like what you would do on a squat. I'm not talking about high volume in general. I'm just saying like more volume, you know, you're going to be doing a lot more, or at least I've seen more success running people through doing a lot more four by fives type stuff than I do, you know, like just doing some single sets of five and, uh, you're not going to do two sets of five on bench and drive up PR unless you're benching over 400. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So most people that are, that are doing this, you know, they're benching 225 on their intensity day and they're trying to get, you know, their volume

day is going to be 185 to 205, somewhere around there. So yeah, so we'll, we'll do, we'll do another show maybe about that sometime. So hopefully this is helpful, you know, hopefully demystifies programming a little bit, you know, this is why you hire a coach to help you work through this. And, uh, as coaches, we all have sort of like, uh, they're not templates, but they're sort of like models that we use that we know work and that we can, there's sort of like frameworks that we can start somebody with and we can, we can modify along the way, just like we talked about in this episode. So, um, you know, if you have, if you struggle with this, hire a coach for a while,

it doesn't have to be forever, but, um, you can learn, you can learn a lot of things about how to manipulate your own training and then do it for yourself later. That's right. That's right. All right. You want to tell us where they can find you? You can find me at weightsandplates.com or on Instagram at the underscore Robert underscore Santana, or you can find the gym here in Phoenix. We are just South of the airport near South mountain. We offer private training and open gym with a training session, of course,

because nobody's coming in here doing silly bullshit. And you can find the gyms page at weights, double underscore and plates. Bam. There you go. You can find me on Instagram at marmalade underscore cream, or you can send any coaching questions you have to me, jonesbarbellclubatgmail.com. All right. Talk to y'all again in a couple of weeks. Thank you.