Deadlift/bench press for a triple + back off

[tomschelfaut]

hello,

After years of fucking around i decided to pick up strength training again. Everything is going steady so far, except for my bench and deadlift. My DL went to 142,5 (kg) x 5 pretty smoothly, but when i attempted 145 my grip suddenly became an issue. With double overhand i couldn't hold on for more than 3 reps..

I decided not to reset because of my grip, so the next week i tried 147,5, could only do two reps, both because of grip and just a bad day in general..

Today I went for 147,5 again, got to 3 reps, hook gripping my last rep. It was really hard but i felt like i could do more, so I did 3 heavier singles at 150, all with hookgrip (to get used to it).

Would it be a good idea to continue like this, a triple + 3 singles at 2,5kg more? Or will this be too much to continue on? I just don't want to reset now because that would put me back at 135 or something, which is too easy for 5 and it'll take ages to get back to 150+ at 2,5 kg increases a week... .

Maybe important: i do powercleans on my first and last training days, once working up to a single, the other session 5x3@80% of the single. Can I continue doing this or is it too much? I just really like power cleans and I want to get better.. best single so far is 85kg.

With my bench it's a similar story, smooth until about 85x5, got really hard from there, couldn't make 5 reps on my first set at 88,5kg, so i did 3 sets of 3 then. I've been microloading bench (1kg/session) since 80kg, adding back off sets of either 5@90% or 8@80% of worksets. Is it a good idea to continue with 3x3 and back off sets?

Some further info: still very much a novice, SQ (high bar) 3x5@115, BP 3x3@90 and OHP 3x5@52,5 (all in kg) - age 33, male, 188cm, 88,5 kg, eat between 3600 and 3800 kcals a day.

[Robert Santana]

1) Do you use chalk? You should be hook gripping with chalk at this point.

2) So your pulling scheme is:

Clean: 1 x 1
Deadlift 1 x 5
Clean 5 x 3

Is that correct?

3) How many bench press resets?

4) Height and Weight?

[tomschelfaut]

1) yes i chalk up before the work set

2) yes, but i do a bunch of warmup sets before the power clean single, triples, doubles and a few singles working up. After the single i take off 15 kg and work back up to a single.. i got this idea from the forum here..

3) I've had one bench reset..

4) I'm 6'1, 197lbs

[Robert Santana]

Push your body weight up to 220 and see what that does. I don't mean overnight either, just start gaining weight. Make one more run at the bench press and if that does not work move to intermediate. Lastly, I'd recommend the following split:

Deadlift 1 x 5
Cleans: 10 x 1
Cleans: 5 x 3

I'm not sure how long this will work for you because you'll likely need something a little heavier as your deadlift increases but this should work for now. Hook grip + good chalk should fix your grip problem. Make sure you are keeping your chalk in an airtight container too that stuff is known to dry out. Buying a different brand or fresh block has fixed the issue with many lifters I've worked with.

[tomschelfaut]

Thanls so much for the help! I'll have to eat quite a bit more then! (At 3700kcal now). I don't really know what you mean by "something a little heavier'... are you referring to the cleans? And I should deload my DL after all then right? If I'm going back to 1x5?

[Robert Santana]

Yes you should deload the deadlift and by heavier I mean a "slow pull" or a heavier clean if you can build up to one. The RFD tends to be the limiting factor on cleans and eventually deadlift variants are necessary for those of us who aren't explosive enough to keep building a clean without specializing on olympic weightlifting.

[tomschelfaut]

Okay thanks for clarifying! I'll organise the clean days as you suggested. Just in case, what kind of progression/programming do you recommend for the clean once this stops working? Just so I know for future reference... I really like doing cleans and I'd rather progress further on those instead of deadlift variations... Or maybe I could combine both like this:

- day 1: cleans
- day 2: deadlift
- day 3: deadlift variation

?

[Robert Santana]

You are welcome. I'd go with:

Day 1: Deadlift (Heavy)
Day 2: Power Clean or Cleans (Light)
Day 3: Deadlift variant (Medium)

[tomschelfaut]

One last question, for my current deadlift deload, do I deload from 150kg (which I did for a few singles) or from a lower weight? And once I've deloaded, do I progress with 10lbs weekly or 5lbs? I had been doing 5lbs weekling since I got to 125kg or so...

[Robert Santana]

If you tripled 147.5 kg, then I'd drop down to ~125-130 kg, go up by 5 kg the couple of times then back to 2.5 kg.