Dead lift, programming, primary, can't, unable, squat

[DemonThrust]

I was reading this thread, and Rip had a pretty good idea for me because I can't squat (motorcycle accident limits mobility of one knee).

http://startingstrength.com/resource...ead.php?t=7393

Rip from 01-31-2008:
"An interesting situation, in many ways. If I were you, I'd just make deadlift my primary lift. I'd vary the reps and sets, and don't try to program it in a linear fashion like squats. Go to a weekly programming that has you PR every Monday and Friday on the different reps. It won't work as well as the squat, but it will be better than nothing."


I can deadlift because the knee is OK at higher angles. I'm unsure of how best to follow his advice on that. I'm just beginning, and on my 4th workout. I have the books (SS & PracProg), just unsure how best to program this. Any help?

Thanks!
Matt

[nisora33]

I was reading this thread, and Rip had a pretty good idea for me because I can't squat (motorcycle accident limits mobility of one knee).

http://startingstrength.com/resource...ead.php?t=7393

Rip from 01-31-2008:
"An interesting situation, in many ways. If I were you, I'd just make deadlift my primary lift. I'd vary the reps and sets, and don't try to program it in a linear fashion like squats. Go to a weekly programming that has you PR every Monday and Friday on the different reps. It won't work as well as the squat, but it will be better than nothing."


I can deadlift because the knee is OK at higher angles. I'm unsure of how best to follow his advice on that. I'm just beginning, and on my 4th workout. I have the books (done with SS, I'm halfway through PracProg), just unsure how best to program this. Any help?

Thanks!
Matt

Use the Texas Method percentages for each of the three days that you'll be deadlifting. My advice, given the surly nature of the beast that is the deadlift, would be to cut the sets back on the volume day to only three. I've actually used the deadlift as my primary lift when I was in a pinch, and I found that even with having varied the intensities across the week, the five sets of five on Monday combined with the one heavy set of 3 or 5 reps on Friday just really tended to beat me up within a very short period. Shoulders, upper back, mid-back, lower back and grip all went to shit really quickly. You may even find it necessary, as the weight gets really heavy over the course of several weeks, to reduce the Monday "volume" workout to a meager two sets.

Something else you might want to consider is that on the days when you're scheduled to press, doing deadlifts prior to pressing will really fuck up your ability to stablize your trunk. It wouldn't hurt to press first on those days. At any rate, SS as prescribed by Rip has you deadlifting last thing of the day anyway, so this should not affect your deadlift all that negatively.

-Stacey

[DemonThrust]

Thank you, I'll go read all I can about that. Much appreciated!!! I hadn't read the intermediate material yet, I'll go see what I can figure out.

Best,
Matt

[nisora33]

Just a word on progress.

I'm not sure how much mileage you'll get out of training the deadlift this way. I only used this approach for a couple of months and saw steady progress for most of that time. You'll need to keep a watch out for signs of overtraining and also deload when necessary. When you've exhausted your progress training this way, I'm sure you can find someone on the board who's done a deadlift specialization routine and can give you advice on how to program once you get to that point.

One method might be to pick three different deadlift variations and work one of them each day of the week. Monday might be Romanian deads for your volume work, Wednesday might have you doing weighted hip extensions (this would count as "light" work since the weight you'll be handling we'll be significantly less as compared to your volume and intensity days), and Friday might have you doing just one set of plain old vanilla deadlifts for a triple. If that proved to be too much to recover from, you could maybe alternate rack pulls with plain old deadlifts on the Friday "intensity" day, so that you'd only be doing each one twice a month.

I don't know, just some ideas. We'll be here when you get to that point, so keep us updated on your progress.

-S.

[PMDL]

Man you need to read my journal.

It all boils down to lots and lots of pulling, good mornings, and back raises.

[nisora33]

Man you need to read my journal.

It all boils down to lots and lots of pulling, good mornings, and back raises.

Minus the squat work that you're doing, how would you, if you had your druthers, go about spreading around all that pulling, the good mornings and back raises over three days for a guy like our OP here?

[PMDL]

Minus the squat work that you're doing, how would you, if you had your druthers, go about spreading around all that pulling, the good mornings and back raises over three days for a guy like our OP here?

Heavy, Light, Medium, and pick your exercises by relative loading.

Any pulling from the floor or variations like Westside ME work, do that on Monday.

Do cleans or speed-pulls on Wednesday for light stuff.

Friday, do SLDLs and/or GMs as a medium session.

Use back raises as assistance on all three days, for higher reps.

[nisora33]

Heavy, Light, Medium, and pick your exercises by relative loading.

Any pulling from the floor or variations like Westside ME work, do that on Monday.

Do cleans or speed-pulls on Wednesday for light stuff.

Friday, do SLDLs and/or GMs as a medium session.

Use back raises as assistance on all three days, for higher reps.

Makes sense. I'm familiar with some of the specialization routines of the old-timers, some of which I remember being structured similarly. Is all this assuming some degree of advancement past novice phase, or something he could jump right into now? The reason I ask is the extra work provided by the back raises seems, in my limited experience, like a lot to stack on top of the other work, including whatever pressing he might be doing and depending on whether he'll be doing chins and pull-ups as you've been doing.

-S.

[PMDL]

It doesn't have to be a whole lot of work on the back raises, honestly. And if it's too much, just drop them.

[DemonThrust]

Thanks again for the information. PMDL, I found your blog via your profile, I'll go check it out. Nisora33, thanks for the info, I'll be sure to do my DL last, I would have screwed that up had you not mentioned it.

I'm just starting out on all this, completely novice. I'm going through Rip's vids and books trying to get my form down. I have a long way to go. I don't want to get injured (#1 goal), so I'm reading all I can trying to figure out the best way for me to go about this.

There has to be a pretty good answer about what to start with, and how to program a system to get strong without squatting. Making the DL primary seems a great idea, I'm not sure if or when to add the other exercises you mentioned, as I don't have the experience to answer.

I'm really grateful for all you wrote!!!!