TM Recovery Day Scheduling

[mlentzner]

Rip,

How critical is the timing for the recovery day in TM? If I had to choose between doing in the day immediately after the volume day or the day preceding the intensity day, which would be better? The way I have things scheduled, that day in the middle always seems to get stepped on, and I would rather not miss the recovery.

Thanks in advance for your barbell wisdom,

Matt

[Mark Rippetoe]

Try it both ways and see which fits your schedule best, and which works best for you.

[JLascek]

I have had to do this, and I would only want the recovery day to follow the volume day. It certainly isn't optimal, but I would definitely want to be well rested for the intensity day.

This is when I was sprinkling Olympic lifts with the Texas Method though, so I would power snatch the day after the volume day. I wouldn't necessarily do the light squats. It just depended on the week.

[KSC]

I have encountered this problem more often than I would like with many trainees doing a TM model:

I think day after the volume day is better.

It is a good idea to lower the weight a bit on the light squats and probably whatever pressing exercise you are doing as well. So if you normally squat 2x5x315 for your light squat day on a Weds, then probably do like 2x5x295.

You most likely won't have a choice but to lower the weights for your pressing movement depending on how you have your workouts set up. If you follow the program as outlined in PP 2ed, then the weight is already lightened and so don't worry about it. I use a different model when I use TM and the "light" pressing exercise is always heavy presses and volume day is mostly heavy bench 5x5. In this case we usually lower the pressing weight by about 10%. Make sense?

If you are cleaning for your volume pulling then doing light cleans or even heavy snatches shouldn't be affected too much.

Get on schedule though. What could possibly be more important than your recovery day workout??