What to do when deadlift once per week stalls?

[Schrodinger23]

42 year old male at a body weight of 240 lbs. Recovery is not so great, as I have chronic insomnia that two sleep studies and several other visits to sleep doctors have not been able to fix. But, I am eating the right amount of carbs and protein to support my training according to Coach Santana over on the nutrition thread though.

Been deadlifting just once per week since the end of NLP. I do Heavy-Light-Medium programming on the squat with 3x5 on all days and I deadlift 1 x 5 on the light squat day. On the other days I do chins and pullups for lighter pulling.

At bodyweight of 205 lbs my deadlift started to stall at 385 lbs for 1 x 5, so I increased my bodyweight after a little bit of reset.

At a bodyweight of 215 lbs my deadlift started to stall at 400 lbs for 1 x 5, so I increased my bodyweight after a reset.

At a bodyweight of 240 lbs my deadlift is at 430 lbs and I'm guessing it might stall around 445 lbs for 1 x 5 (around 1.87 times bodyweight just like before).

What is the next move? Is it better to add more volume on the deadlift on a different day in addition to my intensity day for a set of 5, or is that for younger guys that also have better recovery? Or, would it be better to alternate rack pulls and halting deadlifts?

[Schrodinger23]

Thought I put in my height, but forgot apparently. I’m 6’4”.

[Mark Rippetoe]

The First Three Questions | Mark Rippetoe

[Schrodinger23]

The First Three Questions | Mark Rippetoe

Thanks for the link to that article.

1. No rest between sets is necessary, since it is just one set of five. On a heavy set of squats I will rest about 8 minutes between sets.

2. I made one or two 10 pound jumps on the deadlift the first weeks of NLP, but it has only been 5 pound jumps since then.

3. You helped convince me in another thread back in September that I need to take my body weight up to 240lbs being 6’4”. I have been eating 240g of protein and 400 to 450g of carbs per day for the last few months in a calorie surplus driving up my weight steadily.

3. Sleep is something that I can’t do much about though. In the last sleep study they measured my sleep efficient as 78%. So I give myself 9 hours to sleep each night, but may only get 7 hours of sleep. I’ve spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out something to improve this, but have only made minor improvements at best.


I thought that most males aged 40 or less will have weekly progress stall on the deadlift in the mid to upper 400s anyways, which is where I will be. At that time what is a reasonable change in programming?

[Mark Rippetoe]

It's your call on the programming change. Get your test level checked.

[J. Killmond]

No rest between sets is necessary, since it is just one set of five.

"After the last warm-up single, the athlete will rest for 3-5 minutes. The trainee then begins with the first work set, . . . ." (The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40, p. 176)

Understood that there is only one deadlift work set, but if it is a PR weight, I want to come to the bar with the best chance of getting all the reps. Accordingly, I'll usually sit for 10 minutes before a deadlift work set.

[Nikola Blagojevic]

My deadlift started struggling around 430x5 and then stalled at 460x5 doing one heavy set of 5 a week. I tried a volume-intensity approach, with a backoff deadlift set after my heavy set and a lighter variant on another day of the week. It was not productive. Then I tried doing rack pulls, and that got me moving again. Now I'm alternating rack pulls and haltings and still making progress.

[Schrodinger23]

It's your call on the programming change. Get your test level checked.

Got testosterone levels checked in 2019, when I read that low levels can affect sleep. After the test general practitioner said they were fine. I never looked at the numbers specifically, so I figured I’d check, directly from the lab myself. Total testosterone was 392 ng/dL. Free testosterone was 76.1 pg/mL.

[Schrodinger23]

"After the last warm-up single, the athlete will rest for 3-5 minutes. The trainee then begins with the first work set, . . . ." (The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40, p. 176)

Understood that there is only one deadlift work set, but if it is a PR weight, I want to come to the bar with the best chance of getting all the reps. Accordingly, I'll usually sit for 10 minutes before a deadlift work set.

Very good point. Sorry, I was only talking about rest between work sets, not the warmup sets. I’ll usually wait 3 to 5 minutes between the last warmup and the actual work set. I try to take that time to get myself psyched up and maybe a little angry to be able to perform. I’ve found that waiting much longer than that it will give me time for doubts to come to mind.

[Wlodyd52]

I have always been a terrible sleeper, I have 3 kids and a busy life, stressful job, etc. so I've always just chalked it up to that. I'm 38 and recently got my test levels checked and I was at 310 or something like that. Within the "normal" range of 300-1200 according to my doctor. I went to a low-T clinic, met with the doc there, got some additional blood work done and go my free-T checked (5.4) and in short started on 180mg of test-cyp per week. The improvement in my quality of sleep and my general mood over the last few weeks cannot be understated, it's been life changing. But nothing else has changed except increasing my test levels and I'm sleeping harder than I ever have before and my training is benefitting nicely from it.