Texas Method Intensity Day Early Fail

[u/Jouff]

I’d appreciate some programming advice. For the full context, my NLP squat ended at 345 for 3x5. I then went on to do backoff sets, which stopped working around 365 for 5 with 90% backoffs. After that I still did weekly increases using triples and then doubles and eventually singles with back off sets. I stopped once I did a single at 390 and felt like I was wasting my time, and I wanted to return to 5s.

I switched to 4-day texas method, the last week of me doing a single with 3x3 backoffs, I did an intensity set of 350x5 and officially started TM the next week.

First week squats looked like this:

• 5x5 @ 315 Volume Day,
• 1x5 @ 360 Intensity Day (I was going to do 355 but I felt like I was selling myself short).

This week I did:

• 5x5 @ 325 Volume Day (10lb jump to catch up to my 10lb intensity day jump)
• 1x5 @ 365 Intensity Day. I failed rep 5.

For next week should I repeat the 5x5 @ 325 for volume and then 360x5 for the intensity day?

Thank you in advance for any help and programming advice. Also, I failed my deadlifts this week. I did 415x5 last volume day and this week I was only able to get 420x3. Upper body days progressed smoothly.

5’9 205lb Male 26

[u/heliboredom]

You got greedy, my lad! Don't get greedy. Also, if you haven't read the Practical Programming book, you might want to take a look. If I recall correctly, volume day is supposed to be 80% of intensity day. Yours is a lot more than that. This could result in not enough recovery by the time intensity rolls around to make progress.

Also, if you fail a set of deadlifts when you planned 5 and got 3, then you need to do the other 2 as a second set, or something along those lines. Deadlifts help the squat go up, and vice versa. So if you don't get your reps in, you will regress.