Best thing to do if you fail to lift your deadlift?

[sbhikes]

FYI I'm a little older than you all and I work out Monday and Thursday.

I am squatting less than body weight but closing in. I'm able to increase weight 2.5lbs every workout on squats (5lbs a week). I deadlift just a little over body weight. I'm starting to not be able to increase weight for deadlift every time. I've been adding 5lbs a week.

The day I deadlift I do it after squat and press. I'm pretty tired by the time I get there. Wrangling all the plates while loading/unloading the deadlift bar on the floor wears me out quite a bit, too, especially those big 45 pounders.

If I attempt to lift my work weight on deadlift and I fail to lift it, what is the best thing to do?

1. Take off some plates and lift 5x a lighter weight
2. Come back on Friday and try the same weight
2. a) I should do deadlift all by itself on Friday all the time
3. Don't do anything, just try the same weight next week

Help an old gal out. Remember, I don't recover like a young dude.

[Tom Campitelli]

How long are your workouts and how much rest do you take between your deadlift warm ups? If you are rushing things, taking an extra minute or two before your work set may be of use. For right now, I would vote for option 3 coupled with giving yourself more rest.

[sbhikes]

It takes me around 45 minutes or so on the day I do the deadlift. I do squats first, then the press--and I do 5 sets of 3 on the press so this takes longer than normal. I tend to rest about 4 minutes or so between work sets but no specific rest on warmups.

So what you are saying is that you can get stronger even if you deadlift heavy only every 2 weeks?

[Michele Knaub]

I agree with Tom.

Once you are moving bigger weights, you might find that you need to deadlift on its own day. That's what happened to me, but I was a bit further along.

[Tom Campitelli]

So what you are saying is that you can get stronger even if you deadlift heavy only every 2 weeks?

No. I am saying just try and get your set of 5 next week. Were you able to get any reps this week? If not, the problem likely lies not with your body, but with your will to pull the bar off the ground. Also, 45 minutes is moving reasonably quickly. Give yourself a little more time and see if that cures things.

[sbhikes]

I only got the warmup sets in. I could not lift the work set (150lbs). I tried twice and 2nd time got one inch. I reduced to 135 and got 4 reps. Then wondered if I should be doing that.

[Tom Campitelli]

I only got the warmup sets in. I could not lift the work set (150lbs). I tried twice and 2nd time got one inch. I reduced to 135 and got 4 reps. Then wondered if I should be doing that.

Yeah, absolutely. That was a good choice. You still got some deads in, even if they weren't at your target weight. What are your warmup weights and reps for the deads?

[sbhikes]

Oh okay, Thanks! I wasn't sure if it would mess up recovery if I got in some heavy ones just to get reps in. I use one of the spreadsheet calculators linked to in the wiki to calculate the warmups. They were 60 2x5, 90 1x3, 125 1x2. It doesn't feel very heavy until over 100. I ended up feeling pretty darn sore from the 135 I got in anyway. I should have done 5 reps. I probably could have done 5, but I had stopped to breathe for so long before the 5th one, then noticed I had only 5 minutes to get to my office, that I just psyched myself out completely.

[Tom Campitelli]

Your warmup scheme looks reasonable. You could probably drop the second set at 60 lbs, but nothing you are doing is off base. I would chalk it up to a bad day and needing more rest between sets and warmups.

[Justin Jordan]

Have you considered doing deads after benching rather than pressing? Those five odd sets of pressing might be making the difference.