Texas Method: Full Program, Percentages and Progression

Quick answer: The Texas Method is a three-day intermediate barbell program built on one weekly comparison. Monday is volume, 5x5 across at about 90 percent of your 5RM. Wednesday is a light recovery day at 80 percent of Monday. Friday is intensity, a single set of five for a new 5RM. Progress is measured Friday to Friday, not session to session.

Your novice linear progression died somewhere around the point where adding 2.5kg three times a week stopped being physically possible.

The Texas Method is the classic next step, and it is built on a single idea: you can still add weight every week, just not every workout. One heavy set on Friday, compared against last Friday's, decides whether the program is working.

That comparison is the entire program. Everything else exists to make it possible.

Who invented the Texas Method?

Two primary accounts exist and they do not fully agree. Most guides pick one and present it as settled. Here are both.

Glenn Pendlay's version. Writing for On Target Publications, Pendlay describes coaching the Wichita Falls weightlifting club around 2004 and 2005, when a lifter asked whether he could do a single work set if it was a new personal record for five reps. It worked, the rest of the team copied it, and Pendlay noticed the lifters gaming the system were progressing faster than those following the plan. He formalised it and wrote it up for the intermediate chapter of Practical Programming for Strength Training.

He did not name it. In his words: "When I received and read a copy of the book, that was the first I heard about the term Texas Method."

Mark Rippetoe's version. In his article on Starting Strength, Rippetoe explains the name simply: "We call the program The Texas Method, because we are in Texas and it is a Method." He traces the structure to Doug Hepburn's bench press workout by way of Bill Starr, and describes splitting Hepburn's combined volume and intensity across two days because "we couldn't recover from the combination."

Both are first-hand accounts from the people involved. The safe summary is that the program emerged from the Wichita Falls gyms in the mid 2000s, Pendlay's lifters produced the pattern, and Rippetoe and Kilgore named it in print.

What is the Texas Method weekly structure?

Three non-consecutive days. Rippetoe notes the specific days can shift, but the rest-day pattern matters.

Monday: Volume Day

"Across" means the same weight on all five sets, not a ramp. Rippetoe's worked example: a 345lb 5RM squat means 315 for five sets of five.

The bench press and overhead press alternate every other Monday. Remember that, because it matters more than it looks.

There is no volume day for deadlifts, because as Rippetoe puts it, "deadlifts are too hard to do for sets across." Assistance is limited to brief arm work.

Wednesday: Light Day

Wednesday is not a training day in any meaningful sense. It exists so Friday can happen.

Friday: Intensity Day

One set. Rippetoe allows landing within 2 percent of a true 5RM to preserve technique quality, and is blunt about misjudging it: "if [form] does [break down], you picked the wrong weight."

A note on percentages

Rippetoe prescribes off your 5RM. Pendlay prescribes off your 1RM, starting at 70 percent on Monday and 80 percent on Friday, adding 5lb a week under a 200lb squat and 10lb a week over 300lb.

Third-party spreadsheets often publish their own numbers. Those are implementation choices, not the published specification. If you need to convert between rep maxes, the one rep max calculator will get you close.

How does progression work?

Weekly, and measured on Friday only.

Rippetoe is explicit that this is the tradeoff: "your increases in load must be accomplished every week instead of every workout, three times per week. This means that progress is one-third the pace it was previously; it also means that it has the potential to occur for a longer period of time."

Coach Andy Baker, writing on Starting Strength, makes the measurement rule explicit: the metric is "the heavier loads that are used on the intensity day, not the loads used on the lighter volume days."

So Monday's 5x5 is a dial you turn to keep Friday moving. It is not the scoreboard.

Baker is also honest about the runway: "New 5RMs on a continual weekly basis are generally not possible for more than about 4-8 weeks."

He recommends running the Texas Method in blocks of roughly 12 to 18 weeks, about twice a year, with a less demanding heavy-light-medium program in between rather than attempting it year-round.

What do you do when Friday stalls?

You do not immediately reset. There is a published ladder, usually called running it out, and it keeps fives on volume day while intensity day sheds reps and adds weight:

1. 5RM until it stops, then
2. 2 sets of 3, worth roughly 3 to 6 more weeks, then
3. 2 to 3 sets of 2, worth a few weeks, then
4. 3 to 5 sets of 1, worth 3 to 4 weeks, ending in a heavy single that cannot be repeated the following week.

Baker stresses these switches should ideally happen before you miss, not after.

You only run it out once. After that you move to a rolling three-week wave on intensity day, cycling triples, doubles and singles and re-entering slightly heavier each cycle.

If a stall arrives earlier, the usual triage is to retry the same weight for up to three weeks, cut volume-day sets from 5x5 to 4x5 or 3x5, drop Monday to 80 to 85 percent of 5RM instead of 90, or reset 5 to 10 percent and build back. Check whether Wednesday has quietly crept up too. Our guide to the deload week covers planned backoffs.

How does it compare to Starting Strength and Madcow?

The sharpest structural difference is sets across versus ramping. Texas Method Monday is five sets at one weight. Madcow 5x5 climbs across five sets to a single top set, which makes it gentler week to week but more arithmetic to run.

To enter the Texas Method, Baker's rule is precise: take your last completed 3x5 from your novice program and use that weight as your first intensity-day 5RM. Completed, not attempted. If you finished with 305 for 4, 4 and 3, you do not get to use 305.

He recommends a soft landing of one to three weeks below your old maxes before chasing the first real record. If you are still deciding between novice programs, our comparison of Starting Strength and StrongLifts 5x5 covers the step before this one.

Does the research support the weekly structure?

Varying load within the week has decent support.

A 2002 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research compared linear periodisation against daily undulating periodisation over 12 weeks in 20 men, with volume and intensity equated. The undulating group trained at 8RM Monday, 6RM Wednesday and 4RM Friday, which is structurally close to a Texas Method week. Results significantly favoured the undulating group, and the authors concluded that "making program alterations on a daily basis was more effective in eliciting strength gains than doing so every 4 weeks."

A 2017 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine pooled 81 effects from 18 studies and found periodised training beat non-periodised training for one rep max strength, with an effect size of 0.43 (p below 0.001). Undulating models came out more favourable for strength.

The volume day has support too. A 2017 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine covering nine studies found a graded dose-response between weekly sets and strength gain, favouring medium and high weekly set counts for novice and intermediate lifters. The Texas Method squat runs 5 plus 2 plus 1, which is eight work sets a week.

And the light day earns its place. A 2019 study in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism tracked recovery in 12 well-trained men after four sets to failure at 80 percent of 1RM. Soreness took 48 to 72 hours to clear and squat velocity took 96 hours, but the authors noted recovery can happen within 24 to 48 hours when failure is avoided. That is exactly why Monday is 90 percent of a 5RM rather than a maximal effort.

Why does the Texas Method fail for so many people?

The Texas Method rarely fails because the percentages were wrong. It usually fails because the lifter lost the thread between Fridays.

The program asks you to answer one question every week: what did I do on this lift last intensity day? Miss that number and everything downstream is a guess, because Monday's load is 90 percent of your current 5RM, and your current 5RM is whatever happened last Friday.

Three things make that question harder than it sounds.

The presses alternate. Bench and press swap every other week. So your comparison point for the bench is not last Friday, it is two Fridays ago. Miss a session and it is three weeks back. Almost nobody holds this correctly from memory.

The stall ladder is a log lookup. Baker's instructions say it outright: refer back to your training log and find the last completed triples workout, or track backwards to your last successfully completed 3x5. Those are not training cues, they are database queries.

The 2 percent allowance is arithmetic on last week's number. You cannot apply it without last week's figure in front of you.

Static spreadsheets plan loads from a starting max. The Texas Method needs the opposite: a record of what actually happened, surfaced at the bar.

A simple starting plan

1. Find your last completed 3x5 from your novice program. That weight is your first intensity-day 5RM target.
2. Set Monday at 90 percent of it and run 5x5 across, resting as long as you need to finish all 25 reps.
3. Keep Wednesday genuinely light, 80 percent of Monday, two sets of five. Resist the urge to push it.
4. Spend two or three weeks below your old maxes before you attempt a real record on Friday.
5. Write the Friday top set down every week for every lift, and note which press you did. That column of numbers is the program.

Keeping the thread between Fridays

If you already log in a notes app, keep doing it. Typing Squat 5x5 @142.5 between sets is faster than any menu-driven app.

The problem is retrieval, not entry. Standing under the bar on Friday, you need one specific number from a session two or three weeks ago, and you are scrolling.

Gym Note Plus reads the plain text you already write and turns it into the history the program depends on:

• Your last session for that lift, on screen before you load the bar, however many weeks ago it was.
• Per-exercise trends, so the Friday top sets form a visible line instead of a scattered pile of notes.
• Separate histories per lift, which is what makes the alternating bench and press schedule survivable.

Paste a few weeks of your training notes into the free notes to workout translator and see what it builds.

The Texas Method is not a percentage scheme. It is a weekly comparison, and the lifter who cannot find last Friday's number is not running the program.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long should you do the Texas Method?

Expect 4 to 8 weeks of weekly 5RM records before that pace becomes impossible, after which you run out the rep ranges from fives to triples to doubles to singles. Andy Baker recommends running the Texas Method in 12 to 18 week blocks, roughly twice a year, rather than year-round, using a less demanding heavy-light-medium program between blocks.

What are the Texas Method drawbacks?

The Texas Method is demanding enough that Andy Baker describes it as "pretty much Pass/Fail" and advises recreational lifters over 35 to 40 to run a heavy-light-medium program instead. Sessions are long, recovery must be managed carefully, and the weekly personal record on Friday leaves little room for poor sleep or inconsistent eating.

What percentages does the Texas Method use?

Mark Rippetoe prescribes Monday volume at about 90 percent of your 5RM for 5x5 across, Wednesday at 80 percent of Monday's working weight, and Friday as a single set of five at a new 5RM. Glenn Pendlay's version works from the 1RM instead, starting near 70 percent on Monday and 80 percent on Friday.

What is the difference between the Texas Method and Starting Strength?

Starting Strength is a novice program that adds weight every session, three times a week, using 3x5 across. The Texas Method is an intermediate program that adds weight once a week, splitting volume and intensity across separate days. Rippetoe describes Texas Method progress as roughly one-third the pace, sustained over a much longer period.

What is the difference between the Texas Method and Madcow 5x5?

Both progress weekly across three sessions. The Texas Method uses 5x5 at one weight on Monday and a single 5RM set on Friday. Madcow 5x5 ramps across five sets to a top set, then takes a Friday triple that becomes the next Monday's five. Madcow advances about 2.5 percent weekly, gentler than chasing a fresh 5RM.

Final Takeaways

• Friday is the scoreboard. Volume day is a dial you adjust to keep the intensity day moving, not a number to chase.
• Monday is 5x5 across, not a ramp. Same weight on every set, at roughly 90 percent of your current 5RM.
• Enter on your last completed 3x5, not your last attempted one.
• Run out the rep ranges before you reset. Fives, then triples, then doubles, then singles, and only once.
• The presses alternate, so your bench comparison sits two weeks back. Write it down or lose the thread.
• If you are choosing an intermediate program, weigh it against Madcow 5x5 and linear progression before committing a block.