Why doesn't anyone do medium deadlifts?

[Tim K]

In all the various intermediate programs out there, particulary HLM but I guess Texas Method would fit this as well, I never see anyone programming medium intensity/volume deadlifts. Even when people talk about how DL volume needs to increase beyond one top set of five each week, it's always stiff leg, RDL, rack pulls, deficit deadlifts, paused deadlifts, etc. Why is it so rare to find someone programming medium-intensity deadlifts for extra pulling volume? I've done this myself when running HLM and it seemed to work pretty well. The extra reps at lower intensity was good form practice too. This type of thing is a staple of squat programming so why not deads?

[Michael Wolf]

I do, FWIW.

[Eric Larousse]

Garage gym warrior(Andys' newest program)is set up that way

[omaniphil]

Why not choose a secondary deadlift movement that overloads all the muscles that the the squat doesn't hit...but spares the hip & knee extensors fatigue?

What do you have in mind there? RDL's? That can't be though - the first time I did RDLs my hamstrings died from DOMs the next day, and those are hip extensors, right?

[Tim K]

Why not choose a secondary deadlift movement that overloads all the muscles that the the squat doesn't hit...but spares the hip & knee extensors fatigue?

My favorite secondary pull is probably a very wide grip snatch grip dead. Massive overload for upper back, rear delts, etc...but not all that fatiguing for the primary movers.

Well why not just take the glutes and hamstrings out of the equation all together and do heavy rows and shrugs if the goal is more back overload? Seems like the medium deadlifts are more specific and therefore have more carryover to the main lift. Keep in mind I'm thinking in terms of an intermediate program with no specific weaknesses in the main lift that need to be addressed.

[kanahan]

If I remember correctly PP (or maybe it was on Andy's forum) advises to do one or more back off sets once you can't do 5 reps on your top set anymore. That's what I do anyway.

[Chebass88]

This is helpful information. The snatch grip deadlift is an interesting proposition. I've been using rows as a back-builder, but am not sure whether they have a positive impact on my deadlift. I can handle decent weight in them, but as a completely subjective lift - WGAF? It would be interesting to see how SGDLs can fit into my programming after squats. I would probably start very conservative (a couple of sets of 8-12 at ~50% SGDL 1RM), so make sure the main deadlift session wasn't negatively impacted.

Secondly, on deadlift day, do you think it is better to do backoff sets of the conventional deadlift (~80% of working sets), or would snatch grips be better? The goal is to deadlift more weight and have a massive back.

[Tim K]

And contrary to the thread title, I think lots (most?) of us on these boards beyond intermediate have had dead sessions like you've described.

That may well be the case if you look at the training logs, I'm just talking about the "official" program templates in PPST, Andy's HLM article series, etc.

On HLM I squat, bench, and deadlift heavy on the same day so after my top set of five I'm pretty useless for anything else. And my workouts are already long, I don't want to extend them further with backoff sets with (most likely, for me) shitty form.

[Tim K]

Wait, are you asking why none of the SS templates program medium deadlifts?

Not SS per se but the intermediate templates in PPST, etc.

[manveer]

Honestly, I would just swap them out for Pendlay Rows.