Making transition to intermediate deadlift, and tweaking back along the way

[nwoz]

Hi all,

I've been a fly on the wall for the forums for a while, and have also enjoyed learning from the books & Starting Strength podcast. Following the program, I've also been able to enjoy some pretty significant strength gains. But as my lifts have transitioned to more intermediate programming, I've hit some turbulence with my deadlift and was hoping to get some feedback on my programming.

My pulling programming was setup like this:

M (heavy): 1 set of 5 deadlift

W (light): 3x8 weighted chins

F (med): 3x5 barbell rows (small sidenote, I had been power cleaning, but injured my wrist doing so. I plan on getting back to those soon now that my wrist feels better, just haven't transitioned yet)

After listening to the "How to do the SS NLP" podcast by Ray & Nick (and thinking of the cycling rep range strategy mentioned in SSPP for TM), I planned on taking the heavy set of 5 deadlifts as far as I could, then transitioning to 2 sets of 3 and taking that up.

I completed a very difficult set of 5 at 480lbs, so decided it was time to go to 2 x 3's. The next week during the last rep of my first set of 3 at 485, I got sloppy and felt some significant back rounding. Didn't feel amazing, but didn't stop me from completing the second set of 3 with some better mental queues and focus. My lower back was pretty sore for the rest of the week, but didn't stop me from hitting any of my planned weights. However, the next deadlift workout I completed 3 sets at 490 without too much trouble, but almost immediately after I was done my lower back locked up. It felt absolutely miserable, and I knew my second set wasn't going to happen. I de-loaded the bar down to 315 and tried to pull 1 rep out of curiosity and that felt awful.

So the feedback I was hoping to receive is twofold: did my deadlift programming seemed legitimate and I just had a poor focus & back tweak vs poor programming from the get-go? And in terms of rehabbing my back, I haven't done any pulls except chins since the last deadlift workout (5 days ago) and have squatted as much as it feels like my back can handle - 315lbs at this point. Do I just re-introduce deadlifts at a light weight and progress that and my squat methodically until I'm back to previous numbers?

I'm 26, 6'1" and 230lbs. For squat, (pre-injury) my heaviest intensity day set of 5 at 445lbs. Press and deadlift programming I've added in more frequency and intensity, my heaviest sets of 5 on those have been 170lbs & 260lbs (finally catching back up after wrist injury), and my heaviest DL set of 5 was 480, as I mentioned before. I eat enough that our budget notices, sleep 6-8 hrs a night, and typically rest about 4 minutes between working sets of the big 4 lifts.

Thanks in advance

[pownaime]

Only resting 4 mins between a 3 rep high intensity HARD set of 485lbs+ deadlifts seems crazy. Typically as the weights get higher the rest periods become longer. I'd even go as far as to say resting 7-10minutes for your second set. I rest 5mins even after just finishing my last warm-up set before doing my 1x5

You should take the first twinge as something out of the ordinary, try to continue with other exercises, maybe switch to cable rows for just one session if the lower back is still really sore, and aim to take a small deload the next week with the 2x3s, likely to be at a lesser weight than you managed to do 5 reps with. This will allow some good recovery and for you to dial in form and hope to smash past your previous best within the next few weeks.

Probably worth mentioning in PPST3 there is talk about leaving longer than a week before deadlift sessions when you reach a certain point. (Monday week 1, Wednesday week 2 i think it was.) Something also to consider.

[Mark Rippetoe]

He's not doing the program anyway, so he might as well rest 30 seconds between sets.

[nwoz]

Only resting 4 mins between a 3 rep high intensity HARD set of 485lbs+ deadlifts seems crazy. Typically as the weights get higher the rest periods become longer. I'd even go as far as to say resting 7-10minutes for your second set. I rest 5mins even after just finishing my last warm-up set before doing my 1x5

You should take the first twinge as something out of the ordinary, try to continue with other exercises, maybe switch to cable rows for just one session if the lower back is still really sore, and aim to take a small deload the next week with the 2x3s, likely to be at a lesser weight than you managed to do 5 reps with. This will allow some good recovery and for you to dial in form and hope to smash past your previous best within the next few weeks.

Probably worth mentioning in PPST3 there is talk about leaving longer than a week before deadlift sessions when you reach a certain point. (Monday week 1, Wednesday week 2 i think it was.) Something also to consider.

He's not doing the program anyway, so he might as well rest 30 seconds between sets.

pownaime, thanks for the time. And that's a good point for the deadlift rest time, I probably should have erred on the side of more. I was initially able to complete the second set of 3 the first time I did it, which in the moment I assumed meant the rest was sufficient but thinking back now I wonder if that induced more fatigue than my body was ready for being previously adapted to 1 x 5.

And I definitely should have taken it easy after that workout, I agree with you there. Admittedly I was only a couple workouts from my first time deadlifting 5 plates, and I'm now regretting letting my ego get in the way of common sense.

The longer time between deadlift workouts is something I considered as well. I know there's a few ways to transition to intermediate programming, and the reason I didn't try more days between deadlift days is the intermediate programs in the grey book (HLM, TM, 4 day split) all still have deadlifting once a week. I figured if more intermediate programs still had that training frequency then I might as well keep with that idea until I move into one of those programs, but if there seems to be some validity to decreasing frequency for a little bit in the novice/intermediate transition I can give that a go once I sort the back tweak out.

[nwoz]

He's not doing the program anyway, so he might as well rest 30 seconds between sets.

Hey Rip, thanks for the thoughts. I read the blue book and grey book, and then ran the NLP for a little over 7 months. Over that time, bodyweight went up about 35 lbs, squat and deadlift up about 200 lbs, bench press about 100 lbs, and press about 80 lbs. I've read both the Clarification article and the 3 questions article (and listened to your recent podcasts about each as well). I know I'm eating plenty and getting in my protein, I'm sleeping well enough, and have been going up 5 lbs a workout for squat and deadlift. Rest-wise, when I started my NLP I was able to do something like 2 minutes because of how light the weights were, and I've increased that over time. I'm up to 4-5 minutes of rest now, and recognize that 10 minutes would be the most ideal situation for rest. However, I don't have that much time to spend in the gym, and have heard you and Nick talk about how ~10 minutes is ideal but there's incremental gains after 5 minutes or so. I got as much meat off the bone as I could in my situation with the NLP, and wanted to know if I was correctly applying the concepts you talk about through the various mediums. If I'm wrong and this is a poor way to transition into intermediate deadlift programming, I'd love to learn what concept I'm applying incorrectly. Thanks again.

[Schrodinger23]

I completed a very difficult set of 5 at 480lbs, so decided it was time to go to 2 x 3's. The next week during the last rep of my first set of 3 at 485, I got sloppy and felt some significant back rounding.

I tried something similar about a year and a half ago. When my 1x5 stalled out with weekly progress, I figured why not just break the set up into a set of 3, resting for a while and then a set of 2. This worked well as it allows weight to continue to be added to the bar. One day I felt great on all of the warmups and on the first set of 3. I decided to go for a set of 3 on the second set and hit it, no problem. It felt easy. The next week I figured it would be no problem to go up in weight by 5 pounds and feel out the second set. If the second rep on the last rep goes pretty easily, then I'll give the third rep a try. Boy, was I in for a surprise... I was only able to hit 2 reps on that first set and then a single for the second set.

There is a good reason that the program only calls for one set of 5, or five reps total on the deadlift. Just squeezing in that extra rep was way too much stress to recover from by the next week and it took a deload and then a month of working back to to where I was stupid to get things back on track.

After learning my lesson, I did run out the deadlift this way, doing a triple resting and then a double when a set of five wouldn't work anymore. It allowed me to progress around 50 pounds total before I started missing reps and end up down at a single at the end. I deloaded to around 20 pounds less than when the 1x5 stalled out and then ran it back up and was able to progress my 1x5 longer than before (maybe only about 40 pounds or so). I'm not sure if I had gained any strength from running out the deadlift with triples and doubles and then finally singles with heavier weights, or it it allowed me to learn how to grind when it feels like it is too heavy to move. Maybe a little bit of both. But, after doing this a couple of times it starts to feel like there are diminishing returns setting in and a change of programming will produce faster progress than this deloading and running it out down to singles.

[nwoz]

I tried something similar about a year and a half ago. When my 1x5 stalled out with weekly progress, I figured why not just break the set up into a set of 3, resting for a while and then a set of 2. This worked well as it allows weight to continue to be added to the bar. One day I felt great on all of the warmups and on the first set of 3. I decided to go for a set of 3 on the second set and hit it, no problem. It felt easy. The next week I figured it would be no problem to go up in weight by 5 pounds and feel out the second set. If the second rep on the last rep goes pretty easily, then I'll give the third rep a try. Boy, was I in for a surprise... I was only able to hit 2 reps on that first set and then a single for the second set.

There is a good reason that the program only calls for one set of 5, or five reps total on the deadlift. Just squeezing in that extra rep was way too much stress to recover from by the next week and it took a deload and then a month of working back to to where I was stupid to get things back on track.

After learning my lesson, I did run out the deadlift this way, doing a triple resting and then a double when a set of five wouldn't work anymore. It allowed me to progress around 50 pounds total before I started missing reps and end up down at a single at the end. I deloaded to around 20 pounds less than when the 1x5 stalled out and then ran it back up and was able to progress my 1x5 longer than before (maybe only about 40 pounds or so). I'm not sure if I had gained any strength from running out the deadlift with triples and doubles and then finally singles with heavier weights, or it it allowed me to learn how to grind when it feels like it is too heavy to move. Maybe a little bit of both. But, after doing this a couple of times it starts to feel like there are diminishing returns setting in and a change of programming will produce faster progress than this deloading and running it out down to singles.

Thanks for the thoughts and sharing your experience. I went back to the grey book to see if I was recalling anything incorrectly, or forgetting anything. The book supports this "running it out" methodology (after 1 set of 5 gets too hard, start getting the volume in with sets of triples, doubles, singles) with as called out for in the Texas Method section, but looking closer at the example programming I wonder if that was meant more specifically for squats. This is what the book says:

"Deadlifts will reset 5% and resume for sets of 5 until new 5RM PRs are set. About halfway through this second phase deadlifts will drop to triples, doubles, and ultimately singles." (Practical Programming, 3 Ed. pg 123)

It seems I wrongly assumed that the goal would be getting similar volume with multiple sets with the deadlift, like the squat, but looking at the example training log on pg 124-125, it appears that deadlift stays at simply 1 set, but decreases from a set of 5 to 1x triple, to 1x single.

Just curious if anyone else has had experience, either successful or not, progressing their deadlift in either of these methods?

[Schrodinger23]

Thanks for the thoughts and sharing your experience. I went back to the grey book to see if I was recalling anything incorrectly, or forgetting anything. The book supports this "running it out" methodology (after 1 set of 5 gets too hard, start getting the volume in with sets of triples, doubles, singles) with as called out for in the Texas Method section, but looking closer at the example programming I wonder if that was meant more specifically for squats. This is what the book says:

"Deadlifts will reset 5% and resume for sets of 5 until new 5RM PRs are set. About halfway through this second phase deadlifts will drop to triples, doubles, and ultimately singles." (Practical Programming, 3 Ed. pg 123)

It seems I wrongly assumed that the goal would be getting similar volume with multiple sets with the deadlift, like the squat, but looking at the example training log on pg 124-125, it appears that deadlift stays at simply 1 set, but decreases from a set of 5 to 1x triple, to 1x single.

Just curious if anyone else has had experience, either successful or not, progressing their deadlift in either of these methods?

If you go to the next section, they continue with that example where they ran it on to get to "Texas Method Phase III: Cycling Intensity Day". Where they have the lifter go through triple, then double, then single with 15 pound jump each week and then circle back around and make a 10 pound jump on the starting deadlift week with triples. I don't have any experience with the Texas Method on squats and deadlifts though. Way too stressful for me, it would kill me. I have been doing something similar on HLM though.


My NLP on the squat finished around 275 x 3 x 5, which is around when I switched to Heavy-Light-Medium (HLM). The change to weekly progress allowed me to get to around 350 x 3 x 5 on the squat. The suggested 10% deload on the medium day and 20% on the light day, then adding 5 lbs to the heavy day worked quite well for me throughout. When that stopped working, or became debilitating to the point where I just wanted to lay down for a couple of hours after each heavy squat day, I switched to adding weight only once every three weeks and it has been working well since then. Here is what is looks like on the heavy day:

Week 1: 350 x 3 x 5
Week 2: 360 x 4 x 3
Week 3: 370 x 5 x 2
Week 4: 355 x 3 x 5
Week 5: 365 x 4 x 3
Week 6: 375 x 5 x 2
Week 7: 360 x 3 x 5

...

The medium and light days stay fixed in weeks 2 and 3 and then get readjusted when a new 3x5 is hit on week 4, and so on.

I was thinking that the analogue on the deadlift that say stalls out at 450 x 1 x 5 for weekly progress might look like:

Week 1: 450 x 1 x 5
Week 2: 460 x 1 x 4 (or maybe just 3)
Week 3: 470 x 1 x 3 (or maybe just 2)
Week 4: 455 x 1 x 5

...

But I've heard it said a lot that often the deadlift stalls out at around this point because they are too stressful to recover from. Maybe running it out to a single, then deloading a slight bit and cycling through triples, doubles and then a single with around those suggested jumps in weight might be a better idea. My 1x5 on the deadlift feels like it will stall out pretty soon and I'm looking for the next transition, leaning towards something along these lines as it has worked well on the squats.

[Kazzin]

Week 1: 350 x 3 x 5
Week 2: 360 x 4 x 3
Week 3: 370 x 5 x 2
Week 4: 355 x 3 x 5
Week 5: 365 x 4 x 3
Week 6: 375 x 5 x 2
Week 7: 360 x 3 x 5

This is a bit confusing because you seem to be breaking with convention here.

Should be Weight x Reps x Sets

[Schrodinger23]

This is a bit confusing because you seem to be breaking with convention here.

Should be Weight x Reps x Sets

I’m using weight x sets x reps. I know that what you say is how the Starting Strength books are written, but it doesn’t feel natural to me. I have to slow down too when reading the texts as in the tables with examples, it seems to be weight x reps x sets, but when no weight is mentioned in discussions in the paragraphs it seems to switch to sets x reps. I prefer just sticking with sets x reps in any context.