Lucas Goes to Texas!

After Friday's post, I re-thought my approach to my strength training for the next couple of weeks. Per Andrew's advice, I'm ditching the timed sets idea and using my general conditioning workouts to work on my speed and power.

So what am I doing instead? I'll be using the Texas Method. Each week is basically one day of 5x5, one day of 3x3 with 90% of your 5x5 weight, and one day of heavy singles, doubles or triples.

This should be good for 2 reasons:

1 - The heavy 5x5 three times a week was starting to take a bit of a toll physically. The Texas Method should give me a bit more rest and leave me fresh enough to work hard on conditioning.

2 - Maybe I'm just a pansy, but I feel that stalling is close or has arrived for my 3 main lifts: Squat, Press and Deadlift. Texas Method should help maintain progress, albiet at a slower pace than plain ol' linear progress would.

So that's that. Today (Monday) was the first heavy workout, Thursdays will be 5x5 and Saturdays will be 3x3.

And I promise, this is the last post about my own personal workout choices for a while. On Thursday it's back to our regularly-scheduled program.

Training 2-11-08

Squat
3 x 275
2 x 285

Push Press
3 x 165

Deadlift
2 x 345

Chinups
3 x 5 x 55

Dips
3 x 5 x 92.5

Comments: Finding weights for heavy triples. I was surprised how close the weights were to my 5x5 weights. Squats were ok, and I know I'll get stronger at Push Press as I get more practice with it. Leg and back strength weren't the problem on Deadlift; my grip gave out on the 3rd rep. Chinups were a close thing, but Dips felt strong and were a good note to end on.