How I added 100 lbs To my DL

[kite]

TweetHow I Added 100 lbs to My Deadlift in Six Months: A Chronicle of an Obsessive Compulsive Deadlifter
By Nathan J. Polencheck
For www.EliteFTS.com

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If you look up the term, “obsessive compulsive” on Dictionary.com, you’ll find this entry:

ob·ses·sive-com·pul·sive

–adjective

1. of or pertaining to a personality style characterized by perfectionism, indecision, conscientiousness, concern with detail, rigidity, and inhibition.

2. Psychiatry. of or pertaining to a neurosis characterized by persistent intrusion of unwanted thoughts (obsessions) or the performance of actions, as repeated hand-washing, that one is unable to stop (compulsions).

–noun

3. a person having such a personality style.

Now, knowing this definition, you know exactly what kind of weight lifter I am and exactly how I train, especially regarding the deadlift. I obsess over millimeters, angles, timing, leverages, the song on my mp3 player, and just about anything else that can affect my deadlift. I’m deeply analytical in nature. The amount of information I digest on a regular basis regarding the deadlift and training in general is absolutely ridiculous.

You might ask, “Why the obsession over the deadlift?” This has two simple answers. One, I’m not built for this lift. I have long legs, a short wingspan, and a short torso. The deadlift is especially challenging, and I love the challenge. Lifts that come easy to me don’t specifically appeal to me. Two, no other lift seems more primitive and brutal or more of a test of brute strength than the deadlift in my humble opinion. Combine those two with my self-competitive nature, and I’ve built an obsessive compulsive approach to becoming the best deadlifter I can possibly be. What this article will detail is how I took my 550 lb deadlift in June 2006 to hit 650 lbs in November of 2006. I will give you a month by month chronological journey into the training methods, ideas, and mindsets that drove and developed this progression. I will detail the form tweaks, accessory movements, equipment used, and whatever else I felt made this jump possible.

I’m not a competitive deadlifter. I’ve never stepped on a platform or been judged on a lift, but I’m extremely competitive with myself. I’m very hard on myself in the gym—mentally and physically. This article may, or may not, inspire your training, but at the very least, I hope it gives you some entertaining reading for a bit. I deadlift with a sumo stance so if you’re a conventional puller, many of the things I discuss may not apply to you at all.

I train my deadlift every Tuesday. I train my squat every Friday. I usually go ME on both every week. Accessory work is based around wide stance pulling and squatting. Each month will summarize my deadlift training methods and accessory work as well as what was running through my head at that time. My training would be considered high volume by most, but I won’t go into specific details and set breakdowns in this article.

Month one: June
My current best pull right now is 550 lbs, which I pulled back in December. I’ve been training my deadlift with various touch and go triples and elevated pulls. I recently pulled 500 lbs X 10 (touch and go) so now was a good time, I figured, to test my deadlift max.

I warmed up as usual and hit a 555 lb single. I think I could have doubled this, but my right hamstring/glute tie-in cramped up pretty bad here and I didn’t want to push it too hard. The ham/glute tie-in wasn’t feeling good at all. The next week I hit a 445 lbs X 5 elevated personal record (standing on 100 lb plates), but my hamstring was still really bothering me. Finally, I ended the month hoping for a new personal best but had to settle with 505 lbs X 6 since my hamstring didn’t like the 510 lbs I did after warm ups. This was a reps PR but done touch and go. I’m much better at reps than singles.

Accessory work this month: Wide stance sumo deadlifts (toes at plates), sumo stiff leg deadlifts, and incline glute ham raises. The wider stance sumo deadlift accessory work revealed how weak my hips are when they’re that wide. I make a big effort to always PR my accessory movements every time I do them. On squat days, I worked wide stance squats, parallel, boxed, and free.



Progress so far: 5 lbs

Progress evaluation: Aggravating. I have a slightly pulled hamstring, and I just hit a new PR. I’m happy I finally hit a few new personal records, but I feel a bit disgusted, as I’ve only gained five lbs on my pull since December.

Month two: July
My hamstring felt better, and I opened the month on a solid note with a 530 lbs X 6 effort (first two reps deloaded). Feeling that good, I felt like going for a new 1RM the next week, but it wasn’t meant to be and I ended up grinding out a tough 540 lb double. It was after this session that I got totally disgusted with my power off the floor and resigned myself to never do a “touch and go” rep again. All they do is help reversal strength, but they don’t address starting strength issues. It was also this session that made me realize my deadlifts follow a pattern. They are solid in performance one week and down the next. I closed the last two deadlift workouts of the month doing nothing but triples in the 445–475 lb range for three or four sets, deloading each rep to really work my start off the floor.

Accessory work this month: Same as last month. I still don’t really understand that specializing my accessory work will dramatically impact my power off the floor. I’m still pushing for PRs every time I do an accessory movement though.

Progress so far: 5 lbs

Progress evaluation: I actually feel very motivated right now. I’ve always known I’m weak off the floor, but I’ve never really admitted it to myself nor addressed it. Now that I’m finally looking at this issue straight in the face, I feel ready to really start making progress.

Month three: August
This was a big month. Training wise, it ended up being quite boring, but what it eventually led to was big. Every deadlift session consisted of lots of deloaded triples. Eventually, at the end of the month, I worked up to four sets with 500 lbs. By the end of the month, I was feeling quite a bit stronger off the floor and much more confident with deadlifting as a whole. My hamstring seemed to appreciate the lighter overall weight loads that I was working with as well.

Also, a friend of mine on FortifiedIron.com finally convinced me to invest in a pair of wide stance briefs for training. After hearing how fresh and healthy they keep the hips, I bit the bullet and invested in a pair. I planned to try them out when I got them in early September. I’ve never lifted with any gear so I was excited to see how they felt.

Accessory work this month: This month I buried my ego a little and introduced cable adduction and abduction to target my hips directly, as I have learned that strong hips are the key to the sumo deadlift. I should have picked up on this earlier, as my hips were always the sorest after pulling. However, it took yet another late night reading session to get me to try them. My first time doing the adduction/abduction movements made me realize how weak my hips are despite the really wide stance sumo pulls I’ve been doing, as I had to start really light on the stack to get an effective range of motion.

Progress so far: 5 lbs

Progress Evaluation: No progress for the second straight month in terms of my one rep max, but I feel my power off the floor is dramatically better. I’m anxious to start testing this new power.

Month four: September
This is where things got interesting. My brand new pair of briefs came in, and they took 90 minutes to get on the first time. After thinking that they were too small, I was finally able to figure out how to get them on in just a few minutes.

My first deadlift session of the month and my first session in briefs, I pulled a very tough 565 lb triple. I was ecstatic and went for 585 lbs but missed it at the bottom of my knees. I can’t really say that the briefs helped my power at all off the floor, but my hips felt very fresh and didn’t feel beat up at all like usual. The next week I attempted 585 lbs again, totally fresh, and got it after one of those 10 second grinder reps. I tried to go for a big PR again for the third straight week, but what was intended as a semi warm-up pull with 545 lbs ended up being a tough grinder set of four. I stopped there for the day and realized the pattern I had fallen into again—sucking one week and performing great the next. Why I didn’t learn this the first time around in July, I’m not sure. Also, around this time, I found a video of Marc Bartley on EFS’s exercises section where he demonstrated proper sumo pulling technique. I was floored, as up until then I had always just kind of squatted down to the bar (knees forward) and tried to squat/pull the bar up much like a typical conventional pull. Marc’s technique showed how you should try to open your hips and push your knees out parallel to the bar, not over. I ended up practicing this technique with a broomstick every night for the rest of the week.

My last workout of the month is probably one I will never forget. I had been chasing the idea of pulling 600 lbs every since I pulled 500 lbs for the first time in June of 2005. I tackled this week thinking that I would just do some good pulls at 90 percent and get a solid number of singles in. I employed Marc’s techniques (the ones mentioned above) in my warm ups and ended up totally annihilating my 510 lb warm up. Feeling incredibly strong with this new found pulling method, I decided to put 600 lbs on the bar without really thinking about what I was doing. I ended up pulling it for a triple, all reps deloaded. I was absolutely floored at how such a simple form tweak could raise my deadlift from 585 lbs X 1 to 600lbs X 3 in two short weeks. What a wakeup call.

Accessory work this month: I really hammered the adduction and abduction work hard twice a week this month. These movements ended up getting much stronger very quickly, and I believe they greatly influenced my deadlift strength. I introduced sumo rack good mornings, which seemed to really work my hips and glutes hard. I also started doing speed deadlifts every Friday as well. Waiting an entire week between deadlift sessions was just too long and it would help my bar speed and form. I still hit the wide stance low box squats hard. This is the first month where I really felt like all this extra accessory work was paying off. The PRs I set every day on them were not wasted.



Progress so far: 50 lbs

Progress Evaluation: I couldn’t be happier right now. Absolutely ecstatic with the 45 lb jump I’ve made this month.

Month five: October
This month I had a peaking cycle planned out that I hoped would end up in a 20 lb increase on my deadlift. I designed it for eight weeks but figured I would end up ditching it after four. I never did well with setting target numbers to hit every single week, but I needed to force myself to settle back into a groove after the 600 lb pull excitement. This also went against the idea that I suck every other week. One thing I wanted to try changing was my deadlift stance width. At this point, I did all my pulls with my toes roughly four inches from the plates. During one of my endless quests for deadlift knowledge, I picked up a tidbit of information. It said that longer legged sumo pullers should try to go as wide as possible as long as it’s still comfortable for them while still keeping them strong off the floor. I decided to start doing all my pulls with my toes closer and closer to the plates on the standard gym barbell that I always used. Each session I edged my toes another inch closer to the plates.

I started out the month with a few non-eventful workouts, as per my peaking cycle. I did 550 lbs X 1 on week one, 565 lbs X 2 on week two, and 585 lbs X 2 on week three. I got bored with the cycle on week four, as predicted, and did 535 lbs X 10 instead, all reps deloaded. I did notice that I felt much more powerful off the floor with my stance widened out quite a bit, and it didn’t hurt my lockout at all. I ended the month with a bang and pulled 605 lbs X 3 and 610 lbs X 1 in the same session.

Accessory work this month: In an effort to get my floor strength even stronger (even though I considered my strength off the floor pretty good at this point), this month I performed elevated deadlifts (standing on 45s) after I was done pulling from the floor. I was still hammering the glute ham raises (and was almost able to do unassisted lying glute ham raises), wide stance low box squats, and ad/abduction work as well.

Progress so far: 60 lbs

Progress Evaluation: Awesome. Can’t complain about a 10 lb PR jump.

Month six: November
If you’ve read this far, you know what I already pulled this month, but here’s how it went.

Now that I had officially ditched my peaking cycle plan, I decided to alternate my pulling weeks. On my “good” weeks, I pulled from the floor, and on my “sucky” weeks, I did elevated pulls standing on 45 lb plates to emphasize my starting strength. I opened the month with a 540 lb triple standing on the 45s. I was pleased.

At this time, I ordered a Texas deadlift bar from EFS mainly because I wanted to push my stance out even wider. I got the specs for the bar and realized that to match the “toes to plates” stance width on a Texas deadlift bar, I’d have to put clips on my gym’s generic barbell first before loading the plates. So that’s what I did. Since I was feeling extremely confident knowing that I pulled 610 lbs after doing a 605 lb triple just two weeks earlier, the next week I decided to go big. I ended up hitting 635 lbs for a double. Nice! The even wider stance (which matched what I would be able to use when I got my Texas deadlift bar) was perfect. The next week I had another big PR with 585 lbs for a double while standing on the 45s. This groove of alternating elevated with floor pulls every other week seemed to really be working. On a side note, the stance I was using at this point was the same as the stance I was using a few months ago for my ultra wide sumo pull accessory work. That gives you an idea as to how much my hip strength and flexibility had improved since then.

The last week of November had arrived, and this was the end of an obsessive compulsive deadlifter’s chronicle. I woke up that morning and weighed in at 216 lbs. I played with the thought that I just might be able to finally hit the elusive three times body weight deadlift if I was lucky. When I started doing my warm ups, I knew I would hit something big. I just about fell over backwards on my 545 lb warm up because it came up so fast. This caused me to think to myself, “What is another 100 lbs going to do?” I threw on 645 lbs and ripped it for a nice single. It felt a little easier than the 635 lbs from two weeks previous. Immediately after I locked 645 lbs, I thought, “650 lbs would be three times body weight.” This is how an obsessive compulsive deadlifter thinks. I ended up putting on the extra five lbs and performed a nice grinder that resulted in a lockout. It felt like it took thirty seconds from start to finish.

Accessory work this month: I was able to do unassisted lying glute ham raises for the first time this month without having to stop myself at the bottom of the rep to get a boost upwards. My hip strength was getting ridiculous on the cable adduction/abduction work, and I was getting stronger off the low box with all my wide stance box squat work. I introduced the incredible cable pull-through into my stable of assistance movements. I was incredibly weak with these at the start, but they got stronger every week that I performed them. As with every other month previously, I focused on setting a personal record on every assistance move every time I performed them. At this point, I was probably putting just as much mental and physical determination into my accessory work as I was into my actual deadlift.



End Progress: 100 lbs

Overall progress report

It was less than six months ago that I pulled 555 lbs for the first time. Now I’m 100 lbs stronger on my deadlift. Looking back, I owe it mostly to tweaking my form, brutalizing my accessory work every session, and recognizing that I can’t pull as heavy as I would like to every week.

In conclusion, here are some critical things that I learned from my progression. Some of them may seem blatantly obvious and commonsense, but commonsense is not so common after all.



1. Don’t shy away from your weak points. Address them and focus on them relentlessly.

2. Start your sumo stance narrow and gradually get wider to see where you’re most comfortable and strongest. If you try going too wide right away, you’ll probably be shot down by the lack of flexibility and strength in your hips at that time. Build up to it.

3. When setting up for a sumo pull, keep your knees pushed out parallel to the bar, butt back, hips opened, and lower back arched hard. Thanks Marc Bartley.

4. Accessory work is crucial. Don’t coast through the movements. If your accessories get stronger, so does your main lift. The mantra running through my head on just about every rep of every deadlift accessory movement I do is, “This will make your deadlift stronger.” It always keeps me motivated.

5. Recognize and understand how your body works and recovers. I can pull heavy every week without recovery issues, but for some reason, if I try to pull heavy from the floor two weeks in a row, that second week will be bad. Basing my routine around pulling from the floor every other week has been incredibly beneficial. Learning your groove is important.

6. Briefs are great for keeping your hips healthy and fresh. They may not really help or contribute to your lift much, but they will cut your recovery time down greatly.

Nathan J. Polencheck might be obsessive, but he’s getting stronger. Check out his other great article, “The Turning Point,” here.

Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit us at www.EliteFTS.com.

[6p6]

Tweetgood read kite, I need a boost my dead is stuck at 440 but I do it after squats because I prefer a full week of recovery. interesting though. I used to sumo a lot back in late high school early college but fast forward 10 years and im just trying to get by with bodybuilding!

[T-Man007]

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good read kite, I need a boost my dead is stuck at 440 but I do it after squats because I prefer a full week of recovery. interesting though. I used to sumo a lot back in late high school early college but fast forward 10 years and im just trying to get by with bodybuilding!

Oh man, that's tough to follow deads with squats. I bet the squats go up, right? Which is taking your power from deads. You ever do deads first to mix it up? That would probably push you up for sure, but then your squats would go down that day. lol

Kite - good read!

[kite]

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good read kite, I need a boost my dead is stuck at 440 but I do it after squats because I prefer a full week of recovery. interesting though. I used to sumo a lot back in late high school early college but fast forward 10 years and im just trying to get by with bodybuilding!

I usually do deads after squats too. I alternate with rack pulls and then the next week I'll pull a percentage off the floor, starting with 60% and going up to 80% or so for 6 singles over the course of 8 weeks and I've been doing fairly well with this. I'm prolly gonna give this article a try though once I'm done with this training cycle.

[FUZO]

TweetWITH ALL MY IMJURIES IVE HAD IN THE LAST 20 YRS I CANT DEAD LIFT I KNOW I HAVE A FEW LOWER BACK DISKS OUT.