Spleen

6'3, 20 years old, ~230 BW, been training for about a year and a half
Squat: 380 x 3 x 5
Bench: 195 x 3 x 5

Deadlift: 415 x 1 x 5
Press: 137.5 x 3 x 5

I recently watched this video, where you tell a 25 year old lifter who's 6'4 and 215 that he should be deadlifting 675 by the end of the year. Given my stats, I can't imagine my situation is much different than his.

I understand that because I'm taller, I need to carry a heavier body weight to compensate for longer muscle bellies, and that also means I have a higher strength potential. I understand that I need to eat 5,000+ calories a day with 250+ grams of protein, get plenty of sleep, etc in order to do this.

I still, however, cannot fathom being able to pull, say, 635 lbs for a single by the end of 2023. I get that I have a high strength potential and all, but I mean, seriously? Going from a 450 deadlift to a 635 deadlift over a 7 month span without the help of anabolic steroids just seems ludicrous. I find it very hard to believe that I can get to such a high number in only a 7 month span where there are people like, say, Chase Lindley who pull 730 after 10+ years of training. How can I be within 100 lbs on the deadlift of someone like that just because of the fact that I'm 1-2 inches taller than him? It just doesn't make sense to me. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just having a hard time grasping onto such an insane amount of progress in that time frame.

I just restarted my NLP after a long layoff while being sick, so I'm taking the first few weeks a bit slow.

So my question is, how should I expect this kind of progress by the end of 2023? Should I just run the NLP until I'm deadlifting 545x5? Even with my understanding of strength potential and its relation to height and body weight, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around such huge numbers, and I'm hoping you can help me understand this clearer.

Mark Rippetoe

You're missing the part about weighing 285.

aschaul10

Quick question with regards to skipping lifts. Working through the NLP and am supposed to lift today, however for the first time in a while I pitched fast pitch softball in a tournament this weekend and am pretty sore in the shoulders, glutes, etc. and all around pretty stiff. My lifts have been pretty heavy (for me) the last few weeks, and I worry that if I lift today I will not be able to make my weight jumps and may fail due to the soreness and fatigue from the weekend.

In a situation like this, am I better off trying to push through my lift today, or skipping a day to get to feeling 100% before I lift again?

Mark Rippetoe

As I have pointed out several thousand times, your subjective perception of how you feel is irrelevant, because it is unreliable. If you don't want to train today, don't train, but if you can't train when you're tired and sore, you're going to have a very short career under the bar.

VNV

It is ironic that the Prime Directive (~ your feelings are irrelevant) is not in the book (I think).

Mark Rippetoe

May have to add a section.