Maximizing the deadlift

[PMDL]

Mark I was curious as to how you'd program for someone at the intermediate stage with an interest in improving the deadlift specifically.

I can't see the Texas Method working all that well for it, considering how the deadlift seems to fight back when it's exposed to higher volumes of heavy work (I know, I've tried hahaha), but hell maybe you've seen different.

I'm mainly curious as to whether you've had anything that's worked well for that goal, or have anything in mind that might be productive.

Main reason I ask is that the lift seems so all over the place....once you're past a point you just have to hope for the best and if you get lucky something you tried will be productive, haha

[Mark Rippetoe]

I used a deadlift program that did not involve deadlifting. For the reasons you describe, I found it impossible to make progress by using the full movement, so what we did was alternate the halting deadlift and the rack pull (described in detail in BBT) every other week, using cleans and snatches for light day every week. They were easier to recover from and responded to the same slow weekly progression that squats did. Starr gave us this program, and it worked well enough to get me to 633 on two occasions.

[craigrasm]

I used a deadlift program that did not involve deadlifting. For the reasons you describe, I found it impossible to make progress by using the full movement, so what we did was alternate the halting deadlift and the rack pull (described in detail in BBT) every other week, using cleans and snatches for light day every week. They were easier to recover from and responded to the same slow weekly progression that squats did. Starr gave us this program, and it worked well enough to get me to 633 on two occasions.

Rip-

Can you elaborate a bit of the specifics of how you used the halting dl and the rack pull in preparation for a meet. In particlular:

1. I think you mentioned in the new book that you like to use 5's on the rack dl, and you like to use 8's on haltings. Did you ever pull any singles or triples on either version in a training cycle for a meet?

2. Did you only use 1 work set on each movment for the duration of a cycle?

Thanks

[Mark Rippetoe]

Craig:

I looked up some of my old workouts just to be sure, and

1.) I never did anything but 5 x rack pulls or 8 x HDL, unless I missed a last rep, and

2.) I never did sets across, just one heavy work set after warmup. My records are sketchy from that time, but for an 8-week cycle I think I might have started with 3 sets across very early in the cycle for a couple of weeks only, but for various reasons I just let the one work set ride up to the end of the cycle.

[craigrasm]

Craig:

I looked up some of my old workouts just to be sure, and

1.) I never did anything but 5 x rack pulls or 8 x HDL, unless I missed a last rep, and

2.) I never did sets across, just one heavy work set after warmup. My records are sketchy from that time, but for an 8-week cycle I think I might have started with 3 sets across very early in the cycle for a couple of weeks only, but for various reasons I just let the one work set ride up to the end of the cycle.

Thanks for looking that up Rip.

Just to be clear, am I correct in assuming that you would go right to the meet having only done 5's on the rack pulls and 8's on the haltings in preparation for the deadlift? In other words, you did no regular deadlifts at all before the meet, correct?

I am curious about how you went about selecting your openers if you didn't do any regular deadlifting (to "gauge" things) prior to the meet. I would imagine that nothing felt "heavy" in your hands due to the all rack pulls.

Thanks

[Mark Rippetoe]

I could usually do a single DL with my 5RM rack pull. I opened about 17.5k down from that and only counted on two attempts. Really, I only deadlifted in the warmup room, DLs not being a particularly technical lift that needed a lot of weekly drill. But then again, I was not a particularly good lifter.