Deadlift & Extended Rest

[GioFerrante]

I've been having an interesting experience with the deadlift, and was wondering if anyone else noticed this.

Recently I had to take about 4 weeks off training for a procedure I had. I noticed that when I went back to training, I had lost strength in the squat, press, and bench, but the opposite for the deadlift. Whereas I lost about 15% off my other lifts, I didn't lose a single pound from my deadlift. Last year, after a separate 4 week layoff I came back and pulled for a PR. Is there something about the deadlift that just loves extended rest for some reason? Perhaps due to the taxing recovery from the lift, or the fact that the movement pattern has less room for bar path error than the other 3 lifts, so you lose less neuromuscular efficiency in a layoff?

[Robert Santana]

Not surprised. You were likely undertraining the deadlift or overtraining the back squatting. Deadlift takes the longest recover as a general rule though.