Lighter squats on DL days, pros and cons

[SquareOne]

I am wondering about the pros and cons of doing lighter squats on my DL day, at least for a while, to emphasize DLs.

I'm 62 y.o., male, 215 lbs., on novice LP which is probably ending now because my deadlift has stalled.

I've been doing Sun/Thurs., both squatting and deadlifting twice a week, going up 5 lbs. each session. But the deadlift has stalled over the past couple weeks at 380 lbs. - I haven't yet done one set of 5 or two sets of three at that weight, last time I did something like one set of 2, two sets of one, and a backoff. That kind of thing has been for several sessions at the same weight, so I figure it's time to switch deadlifts to one day a week. The squat is getting a lot harder at 230 but hasn't exactly stalled yet.

For some reason reaching 405 on the deadlift has become a major psychological goal (maybe not heavy for you but it seems huge to me) and, yes, I'm a little impatient for that, so my instinct is to favor the DL right now, and switching to once a week of course it will take longer. Also, the squats are getting a little intense for me at this weight, and it would be "nice" not to have the physical and mental intensity of heavy squats and DLs on the same day, at least for now.

(I realize that most SS programming seems to favor a full intensity day, and I can see reasons for that, so I'm thinking of doing the lighter squat on DL day until I hit 405 on the DL, and then transitioning back to a single intensity day. Hopefully that doesn't seem too dumb a concept. I know being impatient for 405 is an arbitrary ego-type goal, but I figure what the heck.)

So, my questions are:
1) Pros and cons of not having heavy squats and DLs on same day, at least temporarily to favor the deadlift.
2) Light days seem usually to mean less weight, but I have done the following once or twice, and for some reason like the idea: on "light" squat day do the same weight I did on heavy day, but only one or two sets. Another variation of this I might like is going up 5 lbs. from last session, but only doing one set. Part of my instinct on this is that it keeps me used to the heavy weight, even if for fewer sets. I think I detrain very quickly, which I understand older people are prone to do, and am afraid of that. (After a two week vacation my DL went down from 355 to not being able to do one set of 5 at 315! It took many weeks to get back.) So: pros and cons of backing off on # of sets rather than weight on the "light" squat day, not sacrificing weight but sacrificing volume?

[Matt James]

I am wondering about the pros and cons of doing lighter squats on my DL day, at least for a while, to emphasize DLs.

I'm 62 y.o., male, 215 lbs., on novice LP which is probably ending now because my deadlift has stalled.

I've been doing Sun/Thurs., both squatting and deadlifting twice a week, going up 5 lbs. each session. But the deadlift has stalled over the past couple weeks at 380 lbs. - I haven't yet done one set of 5 or two sets of three at that weight, last time I did something like one set of 2, two sets of one, and a backoff. That kind of thing has been for several sessions at the same weight, so I figure it's time to switch deadlifts to one day a week. The squat is getting a lot harder at 230 but hasn't exactly stalled yet.

For some reason reaching 405 on the deadlift has become a major psychological goal (maybe not heavy for you but it seems huge to me) and, yes, I'm a little impatient for that, so my instinct is to favor the DL right now, and switching to once a week of course it will take longer. Also, the squats are getting a little intense for me at this weight, and it would be "nice" not to have the physical and mental intensity of heavy squats and DLs on the same day, at least for now.

(I realize that most SS programming seems to favor a full intensity day, and I can see reasons for that, so I'm thinking of doing the lighter squat on DL day until I hit 405 on the DL, and then transitioning back to a single intensity day. Hopefully that doesn't seem too dumb a concept. I know being impatient for 405 is an arbitrary ego-type goal, but I figure what the heck.)

So, my questions are:
1) Pros and cons of not having heavy squats and DLs on same day, at least temporarily to favor the deadlift.
2) Light days seem usually to mean less weight, but I have done the following once or twice, and for some reason like the idea: on "light" squat day do the same weight I did on heavy day, but only one or two sets. Another variation of this I might like is going up 5 lbs. from last session, but only doing one set. Part of my instinct on this is that it keeps me used to the heavy weight, even if for fewer sets. I think I detrain very quickly, which I understand older people are prone to do, and am afraid of that. (After a two week vacation my DL went down from 355 to not being able to do one set of 5 at 315! It took many weeks to get back.) So: pros and cons of backing off on # of sets rather than weight on the "light" squat day, not sacrificing weight but sacrificing volume?

Not a coach, so take this for what it's worth:

A couple things stand out to me, here. One, yes you need to switch to deadlifting once a week. At the late stages of my LP I was doing 2 days rest between workouts and only deadlifting heavy every 4th workout. Given your S-Th schedule, deadlifting once a week would be the first thing to try, because you're probably not able to recover from pulling those weights in that time frame. (Even if you were doing M-W-F I would still guess that once a week of heavy DLs would be adequate at this point in your programming). Second, your squats aren't really heavy enough yet to benefit from a light day, and even if they were, it's debatable whether a light day would be useful on your schedule. I'd bet money that your squats will continue to progress more smoothly once you're only deadlifting once a week. You should be able to add weight to your squats for quite a while before you need to think about changing up your programming.

[SquareOne]

...your squats aren't really heavy enough yet to benefit from a light day, and even if they were, it's debatable whether a light day would be useful on your schedule. I'd bet money that your squats will continue to progress more smoothly once you're only deadlifting once a week. You should be able to add weight to your squats for quite a while before you need to think about changing up your programming.

Thanks Matt James for the reply. I see exactly what you're saying. Basically, I was making two changes at once without trying just one change first; what I should do is go to deadlifts once a week but keep the LP on squats and only modify that if the deadlifts really suffer or it doesn't work out in some other way. As I've read numerous times on this forum, you just don't know until you try.

For the record, I was doing deadlifts once a week and even tried every ten days or so before my vacation - I said I'm at novice LP, but I have no idea if I'm still a novice and this current LP only came after that layoff after which I had to back off significantly in weight but found that I could zoom up 5 lbs a session up to and beyond the weight I was doing before vacation. I have to go back and look at the books, but I understand that might be a common occurrence, LP after layoffs - and might even be an intermediate programming tool (?).

I did not like the 10-day break between deadlifts at all. That might partially be impatience, but I also felt I might have been detraining, and I hope I can do the once a week for a while.

(Luckily I do have access to an excellent coach who got me started, and although going for more actual sessions is not in the budget he's great about answering questions and I may email him - I do like posting here now and then though because it's fun and you can get differing points of view, and there's always the chance of a cutting comment from Rip.)