Alternating heavy DLs one week with power cleans the other

[Tom Lang]

Hi Andy,

Keeping this quick: We got sweet new oly bars and bumper plates at my gym so PCs are fun to do. Also, my deadlift sucks and I'm tired of fighting with it.

I pull on Fridays. How about this:

Week 1: Power Cleans (when fresh, no squats or anything beforehand) 5 x 2 or 5 x 3 on LP, then 2 - 3 sets of 5 DL

Week 2: "Heavy" DL doubles, triples, 5's.

Stats: 51, male, 200lbs. Recently squatted 300 for a triple. Can reliably DL 315 for 5, and always seem to stall out after managing 325 for 5, or 335 for 1, or what have you. Sick of it.

I do the typical 4-day split MT-ThF; Bench/presses on M and Th; squat/pulls on Tue and Friday. I do sled drags or the recently recommended un-powered treadmill sprints on Tuesdays and/or Fridays.

I may be kidding myself, but why not have fun with power cleans and see if the rotating DL rep ranges coax an improvement?

Thanks for looking!

Tom

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Won't hurt to try. I'd increase your DL volume a bit on those alternating weeks too. Like one top set of 1-5 reps then 2 x 5 as back off. That might also spur some progress.

[Tom Lang]

Cool. Thanks!

[Tom Lang]

Oh, hey, it occurs to me: is there a recommended percentage for the back-off sets? 90% or so? Seems like I've seen you recommend that somewhere.

Thanks again!

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Depends what that 90% estimated is based off of. That 10% recommendation is usually based off of a ~5RM. If you are basing it off of 1-3RMs then it has to be bigger