Training the Conventional Deadlift: Less is More… Until it Isn’t
As someone who has a relatively strong conventional deadlift and has trained a ton of conventional pullers of various limb lengths, baseline strengths, and training history’s, all to progress, I feel relatively strongly in my methods when it comes to this lift.
Now, as I do with most blog posts, I want to lay out explicitly that although a lot of these principles are rooted in science, a lot is also based off experience I have accumulated over the last 4 years. Anecdotal evidence, to me, is just as important as literature as if you are familiar with the scientific process and how most studies are formulated, it is not always conducive to the actual sport itself as conditions cannot be translated.
Okay, where was I? The conventional deadlift? Right.
I will be making the assumption you clicked on this link because you want to get stronger at it OR you want to help others get stronger at it. If neither, you might just be curious. Either way, I want this to represent a one-stop-shop for where to go, should you encounter certain issues with this particular lift.
Before I get into my methodology with it, I will present to you my progression in the lift and some things I noticed along the way, programming-wise.
I started deadlifting, albeit not seriously, in the summer of 2011. In a small commercial gym with a bar that weighed less than 45lbs, my father would place manual resistance on the bar as I performed what were more romanian style deadlifts.
Soon after, I began to load from the floor. At the age of 17 (summer of 2015), I pulled 300lbs, beltless, and double overhand.
Around this time, I was playing high school sports year round and the only periods of time where I would push strength would be between seasons (5 weeks or so, tops) and then in the summer time. At the end of high school (summer of 2016), I pulled 331lbs, leaving it at that for a good year until I came back to the movement seriously.
In the fall of 2017, I pulled 400lbs for the first time.
At the end of this school year, early 2018, is when I started powerlifting seriously.
From here, I will highlight my deadlift progression meet to meet, as well as what my programming was looking like at this time.
Meet #1 (Sept, 2018) - 205kg/452lbs (1x per week frequency, very high volume, Ex. 1x1, 6x6 backoff, solely percentage based)
Meet #2 (Nov, 2018) - 210kg/463lbs (2x per week frequency, very, very high volume, weekly AMRAPs on final sets, Ex. 1x1, 5x5 backoff w/ AMRAP on final set, solely RPE based)
Meet #3 (Apr, 2019) - 215kg/474lbs (Same as meet #2, minus the AMRAP sets)
Meet #4 (Aug, 2019) - 220kg/485lbs (Back to 1x frequency with an additional day being stiff legged volume, still high volume)
Meet #5 (Oct, 2020) - 235kg/518lbs (Same as meet #4, removed stiff leg volume, dropped volume down considerably but increased backoff rep count, Ex. 1x1, 2x7)
Meet #6 (Apr, 2021) - 232.5kg/512lbs (Coronavirus restricted, mainly did RDLs until it was warm enough to deadlift where I did a blend of meet #4 and meet #5)
Meet #7 (Jul, 2021) - 237.5kg/524lbs (1x frequency, heavy RDLs on another day as well as switched to mix grip)
Meet #8 (Mar, 2022) - 240kg/529lbs (Same as meet #7, except use “two top set method”, with percentage backoffs of a given top set number)
Meet #9 (Jul, 2022) - 242.5kg/535lbs (Same as meet #7 and #8, swap RDL with beltless stiff legged deads, double the overall back accessory work and train the DB RDL more seriously)
So, around 82lbs in that timespan, with the #9 number being with around 5kg/11lbs in the tank, all the while my bodyweight staying at 152-155lbs throughout this entire time.
As you can see, with just about everything, I made progress, and to be clear, you will too.
As long as you are lifting weights with somewhat of a periodization scheme, you will most likely get stronger, to an extent, then it starts to matter.
From meet #1-#4, I gained 33lbs on my competition deadlift, which worked out to be an 11 month span. From meet #7-#9, I only put on 11lbs.
You see, there is levels to this. The stronger you get, the more factors are at play.
Maybe deadlifting twice a week with very high volume worked when you were pulling south of 300lbs, but very rarely does it have the same effect when you are north of 500lbs. I found as I got stronger, the volume I would accumulate by heavier and heavier weights would cause so much fatigue to the point where any possible strength gain was not worth the endless amounts of fatigue it would generate and interfere with my squat and even my bench press. These are things you don’t need to consider as a beginner but flat-out matter as you become advanced.
The last piece I will remark about, when it comes to my own deadlift training, is sustainability. Again, as you get stronger, there is more and more variables that appear.
As I got stronger, my workouts became considerably longer. Warming up to 520lbs for a single, then doing 429lbs for 7, then doing 2 more sets of 7 @ 85% of that load, takes a while and requires longer and longer rest times. All this BEFORE a gauntlet of accessory work. Not to mention, without a deadlift jack, it takes time loading and unloading all of those plates! For me, this is about as sustainable as I can make it while still yielding progress. If I upped my volume, doubled my frequency, I would be able to handle that for maybe a week, possibly two, before beginning to crash and burn. So, my point here is what I do now, has been working and I am able to balance other aspects in my personal and professional life while still making constant progress, albeit at a slower rate, this is something I am okay with.
Now, the main part, enough about me.
With the conventional deadlift I have noticed the following:
Less volume than maybe you would think, is usually just as effective as more, without the fatigue debt that more volume creates.
If the athlete is built well for the lift, rep counts almost don’t matter, it is just a driver for intensity at that point and you can play around with certain “sweet spots”.
If the athlete is not built well for the lift, lower rep counts per set, but more total sets, allows the lifter to be in better positions and not drift into poor ones that higher rep counts tend to do for this demographic. Ex. 1x3 @ 6, 5x3 @ 85% of top set load.
Beltless work is sneakily an ace card to pull.
Traditional bodybuilding back work, seems to be very potent. Meaning, the more volume we can accrue through pull ups, pulldowns, machine and DB rowing, lat pushdowns, the more likely the athlete will be resilient to positions of flexion during the pull. In some cases, if the athlete is more towards the frail side, added muscle in the low, mid, and upper back region is more powerful than any deadlift periodization scheme. This scales less and less as the athlete fills out with muscle.
If a lifter has a very high conventional deadlift, relative to their squat, programming heavier pulls earlier in the week, and heavier squats later in the week, seems to allow both to progress without interference.
The most often positions I’ve seen an athlete fail a conventional deadlift is at the knee and inches from lockout.
Now that we have that laid out, what do I subscribe to when trying to raise someone’s 1rm on the conventional deadlift?
Start on the low end of frequency. Anyone who is a conventional deadlifter coming to me for the first time, will pull once a week to start off. I never, ever start with two, even if the athlete has favorable leverages. Why? We need a place to go if things are not working after exhausting every strategy we can, that, and things such as hand tearing, fatigue to the other lifts, is more pronounced with twice a week pulling.
Consider heavier beltless work. This is something I was skeptical with at first, and don’t use for certain individuals, but overall I think is a sneaky way to bring up your conventional if it is stalling out. The reason is not why you would initially think it would work either. Maybe not now, but for a while it was thought beltless training stimulates the core more, I hope by now you are informed, it does not. However, the activation the erector spinae (spinal erector) muscles are under during a conventional deadlift is quite high and when testing for beltless activation of certain series of muscles, some studies seem to suggest that activation is HIGHER when performing a beltless deadlift, than with a belt. So, it should make sense why we would want to train that area more intensive as it highly recruited during the pull. The limiting factor with these are certainly fear as some people are skeptical to go north of certain belted PRs, beltless, due to fear of injury. This is another issue in itself, but remains a pretty significant roadblock.
If an athlete is consistently missing (you should not be consistently missing by the way) in the same area, it is not as simple as doing more work in that segment. Meaning, if an athlete struggles at lockout, very, very, very rarely does doing a ton of block pulls fix this issue, or doing a ton of weighted barbell hip thrusts. Instead, I encourage you to view the starting position and everything BEFORE that segment and I will say, with confidence, 80% of the time you will find something off that is causing the issues you see in real time. The most common is the missed lockout, more lockout deal. The second most is, rounding off the floor, so I need more off-the-floor strength, so deficit deads (which, in my opinion, are very overrated). Occam’s razor sometimes works, this is usually not the case.
Play to the athlete’s strengths. Now, this one is hard to understand, because in this sport we are taught to only attack our weakpoints, the truth of the matter is where we are strongest, will always be where we are strongest, we simply just try to raise the floor, so to speak, where we are weakest in the chain. If you have a strong midback, and a weak lower back, I promise you, doing a million 45 degree low back extensions still won’t do a lot for you that higher rep stiff legged deadlifts will, even though you are ignoring your “weakness”.
However long the athletes arms are, try to make them as long as possible. For a very long time, I squeezed my shoulders together during the deadlift and would externally rotate my hands as to. “lock in”, my lats. Well, turns out when you have over 500lbs on the bar, you can squeeze as hard as you want, you will never be able to isometrically hold that position. That, and you effectively misleverage yourself by making your arms shorter than they actually are. I have had so much success getting people to protract their scaps and using tension from the bar to set their back position, instead of forcing it by retracting.
Consider grip. Grip is something that can really be a limiting factor for a lot of people’s conventional pulls and there a few avenues to explore. If the athlete is tearing their hands, hand care should be addressed as well as strategic use of straps. If the athlete cannot hold on to the bar, we must increase the length of time we hold each rep, each set. Other times, we need to change grip setup entirely. Often, grip becomes a mental issue, so the earlier I can get on top if it, the better.
Finally, I really am a big believer in pushing certain exercises for loading, more so than most. When we have accessory work, sometimes we breeze through it and it does just enough to keep us injury free, however, sometimes pushing that assistance-driven work, can lead to better gains, all variables being equal. The ones I have had the most success with are…
RDLs both DB and barbell. The stretch under load variable, with an emphasis on using the glutes to drive lockouts, have shown noticeable differences in my own athletes. I usually program top sets on these, along with several backoffs at a lighter weight, instead of “3x10 @7-8”.
Stiff legged deads. These are great for those who rely a lot on midback strength and who have a tough time hinging as the movement is solely hinge driven. I load these for top sets as well, fear however, is the limiting factor.
Lat Pulldowns. Stay with me here, I am not saying pushing the lat pulldown is going to put 50lbs on your deadlift, however, pushing it heavier with varying grips, has led to a lot of resiliency gains and my athletes are able to hold positions longer and deeper into their sets without fatiguing, we can lump in cable or chest supported rowing here as well.
Core work. Now, again, doing crunches does not bring your deadlift up but I have noticed a few things here. The biggest is anti-rotation work, such as pallof presses, seem to provide athletes with a more stable feeling. The core flexion work, I actually like to offset all the extension we do and it relieves low back pumps that some people are prone to.
On Team Hogan, we have multiple people over 400lbs, many over 500lbs, and a select few over 600lbs on conventional deadlifts, along with plenty south of 400. Needless to say, all of them have improved upon their baseline adhering to these principles, but above all else, the strongest conventional pullers are the most consistent, least injury-ridden, and give it time. If I would have given up hope after not pulling 500lbs in year 1, I probably never would have done it in my career as I knew my best lifts would not be at 18 or 20, they would be at 28 or 30. This goes with the sport in general, however.
To summarize, if you get jacked, push select assistance movements, stay injury free, and start on the low-end of frequency and volume, I will promise you, if you trust me, your conventional deadlift will go up. As easy as that sounds, I think we’d all be surprised how blissfully oblivious we can be, when we get caught up in the moment.
To Utopia,
Erik