In Fitness and in Health
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Not gonna lie, this was me circa 1992 leaving World’s Gym in Melbourne, Florida. Windows down in my 1979 Porsche 924 because the A/C was dead.
Looking back, I’m still not sure what was less healthy: smoking cigarettes after a workout or relying on that 924 engine to get me home.
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@Giles By way of credentials, I used to have a 260kg 1RM deadlift at ~90kg bodyweight. I've dropped the barbell training while the kids are little as it's just much faster to get in and out of the gym if you're doing stuff that doesn't require fiddling about with plates. But I've read the comments and this is what blew up my deadlift when I was into powerlifting-style training and got me from ~100kg to >240kg as a standard "yeah, I can lift that any day of the week" training weight.
- Hook grip. This is when you grip overhand with both hands, but put your thumb roughly parallel to the bar and wrap your fingers around them too. Yes, your thumbs fucking hurt while doing it, but it's a much stronger grip for deadlifting when you get the knack for it and your thumbs have built up a nice callus. (And calloused thumbs just make you feel hardcore.)
If you're using lifting straps though and aren't worried about grip training as a side-benefit of the deadlift, then those will be the most secure thing and ignore the hook grip because, like I say, it fucking sucks to do! If you're open to trying it, there are several good tutorials on YouTube.
These next two suggestions blew up all my lifts, not just deads:
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Switching to full body workouts, rather than squat-day, bench-day, and deadlift-day. Basically I'd start squat day with squats, then do Accessory Lift 1 from bench day, and Accessory Lift 2 from deadlift day, and so on and so forth for bench day and deadlift day. It might be personal, but I found that this meant the per-workout volume was relatively light for any particular muscle group on any given day, and I could hit all 3 exercises hard, every workout.
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Cycle Light/Medium/Heavy workouts too. For the main 3 lifts, squat, bench and deads, I'd also cycle L/M/H each time I hit the gym. So I'd do Light Squats / Medium Bench / Heavy Deads, then the next trio of workouts would be Medium Squats / Heavy Bench / Light Deads, then Heavy Squat / Light Bench / Medium Deads.
Light was working in the 10-12 rep range, Medium was working in the 6-8 rep range, and Heavy was working in the 3-5 rep range. In all cases choosing a weight that left a rep or 2 in reserve at the end of a set.
I'd increase weight for any particular day if my total reps across 3 working sets summed to the top end of the rep range. So 36 total reps for a Light day, 24 reps for Medium, and 15 for Heavy was the goal, and if I hit those, I'd up the weight on the next Light Squat (or whatever) day.
Combined with #2 above, I found this structure let me really progress with all my lifts.
I didn't bother with the L/M/H rota on accessories, just the main 3 lifts. Accessories were just done at a weight that was challenging for 8-12 reps and I'd increase weight once I hit 36 reps over 3 sets.
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You may not need as many warmup reps as you think. With time, I found that dropping reps from my warmup sets meant I was fresher for the working sets but I'd still managed to 'grease the groove' as they say. So if I was aiming for 3x5 at 240kg on deads, I'd warmup by doing 12 reps at 60kg, 8 at 100kg, 5 at 140kg, 3 at 180kg, then just 1 or 2 at 200kg, 1 at 220kg, and 1 at 230kg.
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A proper powerlifting belt is fucking awesome for bracing your core, but might be overkill. I didn't get one until I was deadlifting and squatting 180kg, but it was night and day afterwards. I got the one from SBD, but it's an expensive piece of kit.
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@Giles No worries! Kept me distracted from a painful business email I had to write for 25 minutes! I'm sure you'll hit your numbers in no time with a considered approach adapted to whatever you find works best for you.
