The Texas Method

The Texas Method is a 3 day full body strength building routine that consists of free weight compound exercises like the Squat, Deadlift and Bench Press. The exercises may vary depending on your goals, but the Texas Method is always split into one heavy, one recovery and one PR day - like this:

• Monday:  5×5 Squats, 5x5 Bench, 1x5 Deadlifts
• Wednesday: 2x5 light Squats, 3x5 Press, 3x12 Pull-ups
• Friday: 1x5 Squats, 1x5 Bench, 5x3 Power Cleans

Unlike StrongLifts 5x5, you're not adding weight every workout with the Texas Method. Your goal is to add 5lb every week and break your past PR on Friday. Wednesday's workout is light because it's meant to speed up recovery.

The Texas Method is a program for intermediate lifters - guys who can at least Squat 225lb and Deadlift 285lb. It's not a very popular training program inside the StrongLifts Community though, most SL Members switch to Madcow, not the Texas Method, after StrongLifts 5x5 for reasons I'll explain in a moment.

Origins of The Texas Method. According to Olympic Coach Glenn Pendlay, the Texas Method originated in Mark Rippetoe's gym in Wichita Falls, Texas. Pendlay who has a master in Exercise Physiology with a concentration in endocrinology was coaching his competitive weightlifters using programs similar to StrongLifts 5x5 with multiple Squats sets of 5 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The problem was that while this approached worked well for beginners, the workouts became too challenging and hard to complete once Pendlay's lifters reached certain strength levels. So since they were trying to get out of the training, Glenn Pendlay came up with the following deal, paraphrasing:

If you hit a 1x5 personal record on Friday, you don't need to do 5 sets total, you can just stick to 1 set on Friday and go home.

Pendlay's lifters liked the idea and took this even a step further - to ensure that they would hit a PR on Friday, they began tweaking Wednesday's workout: they started doing less work to improve recovery and show up fresh on Friday.

This was the start of the Texas Method alsa known as the WFW method (because it was used by the WFW Olympic weightlifting team). In fact, the first lifter to use the Texas Method was Pan-American medalist Donny Shankle.

The Texas Method vs. Madcow. The similarities between the Texas Method and Madcow are obvious. Yet like I said above, the Texas Method isn't very popular inside the StrongLifts Community, most StrongLifts Members choose Madcow. The reason is that with Madcow you just fill in the numbers in the spreadsheet. There's less freedom to change things, and thus less room to mess things up.

Madcow is also easier than the Texas Method because it splits the heavy 5x5 day over 2 days - instead of Squatting 5x5 on Monday you'll only Squat 1x5 with Madcow and then Squat 1x3 followed by a 1x8 backoff set on Friday.

Not saying the Texas Method doesn't work - SL Member Harisson ("Maslow", 25y, USA) used the Texas Method after StrongLifts 5x5 to increase his Squat to 375lb and his Deadlift to 405lb. SL Member Simon G. (31y, UK) also used the Texas Method to boost his Squat from 402lb to 501lb post StrongLifts 5x5. Etc.

But pay attention to the age of these StrongLifts Members: they're under 40y old. I strongly believe that for guys in their 40s, like SL Member James G. (42y, USA) who Deadlifts 520lb and who did Madcow for several months post SL5x5, will experience recovery issues from the 5x5 sets across of Texas Method.

For all these reasons I recommend Madcow over the Texas Method. Even if you don't want to do Madcow, I'd still recommend 5/3/1 over the Texas Method.

If You Do The Texas Method Anyway. The first big mistake that everyone is always making with the Texas Method is starting too heavy. Better to start too light than too heavy, whatever the program, remember that.

The 2nd mistake you have to avoid is going all-out on Friday. Take it from one of my ex-private clients, StrongLifts Member Vlad (39y, Denmark), who Deadlifts 550lb. Here's what he had to say about the Texas Method:

I think there's some misunderstanding about how to set up Texas correctly, which partly stems from the fact that in many recourses on the internet people read that on Fri one should set a new 5RM, 3RM, 2RM or 1RM. So when starting the program, people do some weight for 5x5 on Mon and then try to set a true 5-to-1 RM PR in the first week on Fri, then another PR next Fri, and after a couple more weeks: you get overtrained, stall and the program becomes bad.

What you should do is to start in the first week on Mon with 80-85% of your old 5x5 PR, and on Fri - add 5% to the Mon's weight and do that weight for 1x5, and that's it - you do not set PR the first week.

In the second week on Mon, you increase the weight by 2.5% and do 5x5. Again, on Fri you add 5% to the Mon's weight and do 1x5. In the following weeks, you just repeat the above procedure.

With this method you will be setting new 1x5 PR after 4 to 6 weeks, not in the first workout. When you stall with 5RM, you simply switch to 3RM, then 2RM and finally 1RM. Then you start alternating between 5RM, 3RM, 2RM and 1RM, and one should be able to progress for at least 6 months like that (Rip says 1 year at least).

-StrongLifts Member Vlad, 39y, Denmark, 550lb Deadlift.

So don't think of it as breaking new territory on the Friday workout, but rather focus on doing better than last Friday. I strongly recommend you to get used to being happy with a PR of only 2,5lb. If you repeat that for 4 weeks, that's 10lb gain on your Squat in 1 month or 60lb gain in 6 months. Always think long-term.

More Information About The Texas Method. Chapter 7 of Mark Rippetoe's book "Practical Programming for Strength Training" will show you everything you need to know about the Texas Method. Coach Glenn Pendlay himself wrote the programming chapters so you'll be reading it from the original source.

Click here to grab your copy of Practical Programming for Strength Training

(I'm an affiliate for Mark Rippetoe so I'll earn a commission for every sale).