[0:00]500 pounds on the deadlift was a big, scary weight for me for a really long time. And most men in the gym never even get to a 500 pound deadlift. Nowadays, I can walk in the gym and I can deadlift 500 pounds for 12 plus reps on any given day. And doing that, I've never felt so capable and so strong in my life. And I've actually been able to work my way up to a 300 kilo deadlift or 661 pounds at around 92 kilos body weight, which is around like 200, 210 pounds. In this video, I want to save you 10 plus years of research, trial and error, experimentation, and I will just tell you step-by-step how to get to a 500 pound deadlift as quickly as possible. And by the end of watching this video, you will have all of the information you need to make 500 pounds a warm up weight in the gym and you'll be able to do it any day. And if you stay to the end of the video, I will give you a free deadlift program. There's actually two programs, so you have two options to choose from. And if you would prefer me to just work with you one-to-one directly to figure out the best deadlift programing for you, click the top link in the description. You can hire me as your personal strength coach and we'll work that out together. So, let me get straight into the guide and not waste any of your time. So, my deadlift journey then. So I was actually a decent deadlifter naturally. I got to a five plate deadlift relatively fast within my first couple years of lifting. I hit 405 within about a year of lifting and then I think I hit five plates within two years. But then I got stuck at five plates for years, I think literally like three, four, five years and I tried it like 10 plus times and I kept failing it. There's a picture here where I actually built up to hitting five plates and then over the next few months, I actually went backwards and started to fail it, which is probably what a lot of you guys do in your training right now. You get up to like a peak weight where you feel quite strong, but you can never capture that for much of the year, it's just like a one-off kind of fluke and then you can't really hit it like for the remainder of the year. So yeah, now I can rep five plates, 500 pounds for 12 plus reps. I've done it for 12 plus reps multiple times. I could do that on any day. I've been able to deadlift 300 kilos, 661, and all of the things that I'm going to share with you in this video obviously helped me to get there. And if I would have known some of these things back then, I think I could have got to 300 kilos like way, way sooner and definitely 500 pounds would have been an easy milestone to get to. I think a lot of you guys are just making quite a few mistakes. So obviously, deadlifting way too hard, way too heavy, running the generic intermediate training programs. You're limiting yourself to deadlifting once per week because the deadlifting you do is so hard and so heavy. Because you only deadlift once a week, your technique probably isn't the best either, it feels quite inconsistent from week to week. And a lot of you are just doing way too much work on the lower back. Like you try to deadlift, then you try to do heavy like bent over barbell rows, RDLs, stiff leg deadlifts, good mornings, all that kind of stuff. You're just fried all the time and you can't recover, adapt and get stronger on the deadlift. So, let me tell you what to do instead. So, let's start with deadlift frequency. So I have coached 500 plus guys, probably close to 1000 at this point. I've coached multiple six and seven plate deadlifters. And across the board, I have seen that two times per week deadlifting seems to be the sweet spot for most guys. Now, if you're coming from that typical intermediate background where you're on something like 5x5 or 531 and mostly you deadlift one time per week, I would recommend that you gradually transition into twice per week, but you start with one regular deadlift and one Romanian deadlift, okay? So right now, if you're deadlifting once a week for like a 5x5, maybe you want to break that up into two slots. So on your primary deadlift day, maybe you do some kind of top set and then two or three back offs, top set can be like RPE 5-9. I'll go over that in the intensity slide. Back offs in the 60 to 70% range. Then the Romanian deadlifts, I generally program those for reps of like five to eight. Just maybe even one to three sets just to kind of bridge the gap between the exposures and keep you ticking over. Because the problem with only deadlifting once a week like how you do right now, it's really, really hard to do enough deadlifting to get really good at the movement. What happens is you do your one deadlift and then when you have that gap until you have to wait until next week, you kind of detrain, things get a little bit rusty, the adaptations start to die down. And then you don't have that stimulus built up in order for you to perform in the next deadlift session. So for most of you, you're going to need twice a week. So yeah, start with this setup of once a week deadlift, once a week RDL. Then gradually move into something a bit more specific. So that might be something like a regular deadlift and then a close variation like a pause deadlift, deficit deadlift, deadlift with a mini band or something like that. I'll give you some examples in the next few slides, but if you take anything from this frequency slide, most of you guys are going to perform best in the deadlift doing it two times per week, okay, not once. So, how about the intensity then of your deadlifts? Oh, it's actually volume next. My bad. So, deadlift volume. So, for most of you guys, you can get away with relatively low volumes on the deadlift. I want you to still be doing it twice a week, but the volume doesn't need to be crazy high. So, for most of you, I think somewhere around five to 10 working sets per week on the deadlift is going to be sufficient. Now, if you're starting at only five sets, that could look like your primary day being one top set and two backdowns and then the secondary day could just be two sets of Romanian deadlifts. And for most of you that's going to be enough. Obviously we're going to add in a bunch of accessories, so we're going to be doing some rows, some pulldowns, some hamstring work and stuff like that. But for the actual deadlift volume, the pulling from the floor, only five to 10 sets. That might sound lower than you expect, but if it's good quality volume, we've got enough work at peak intensity, so enough top sets in there, it's going to be sufficient for you to get stronger. And if you take anything from this slide on volume, I want you to view your training volume as stress, okay? Now, I always use the analogy of imagine you went to the doctor to treat some condition that you were having. The way that that doctor is going to prescribe you medicine is he's going to start you on the minimum effective dose of that medicine. He wants to give you the dose that is going to give you the benefits of healing your illness without all of those negative side effects. That's exactly the same as your training in the gym. We want to do just enough volume that we can accumulate sufficient stimulus to get stronger, but we don't want to do so much volume that we accumulate the negative effect of fatigue that masks our performance. So you just want to find the minimum amount of deadlifting that you can do to get stronger. So start with five sets a week. If you perform well and you're getting stronger and you're able to add weight to the bar in line with the target RPEs, don't add any more. Five sets is perfectly fine. If you stop getting stronger and you feel like you're well recovered, you don't feel beat up, you don't feel sore, then consider bumping it up to six, maybe seven plus sets, okay? Now, as for the intensity, and this is probably the most important part of this presentation that I really want you to pay attention to. Most of you are deadlifting way, way too hard, way too heavy, okay? Heavier training or harder training is not better training. You just need to find an appropriate dose of stimulus that gets you strong, like I just mentioned, okay? This was my secondary deadlift day here, this left hand picture. I think that's about 165 or 170 kilos. Now, bear in mind at this time, my one rep max was 300 kilos, and my secondary day, I was only doing about 165 to 170 kilos, which is like what, 55, 60% of my 1RM. Now, why was I doing it that light? Because I determined that that weight was enough stimulus for my primary heavy day here to get stronger. And in this same training block, I pulled 280 kilos for a double. Now, if I can get stronger doing my secondary day at 165 kilos, why would I do my secondary day at 220 kilos or above? There's no benefit. I've determined that this is enough stimulus and I don't I don't get the fatigue of using a heavier weight on the bar. This is just stress. We don't care what weight is on the bar. We care how much stress we are experiencing from that exercise. If it's too much stress, you are not going to recover, adapt and get stronger. If it's not enough stress, same scenario, you won't get stronger. We just need to find the middle dose of stress that allows us to adapt and get stronger. So, for most of you, that is going to look like doing some heavy top sets at about an RPE 5-8 for most of your training block. Meaning, you are leaving around two to five reps in reserve on your top heaviest sets, that would be this set here that I'm doing with 280 kilos. Now, I want the average intensity, so the bulk of your training volume, instead of being a really hard 5x5 close to failure, I want that to be somewhere in the region of 60 to 75% of your estimated one rep max. Now, that kind of volume intensity combination, so we're going to be doing sets of four to six reps in the 60 to 75% range and avoiding failure. That combination will have you leaving five to 10 plus reps left in the tank. And you might be thinking, that's too light, that's not going to get me stronger. Again, it doesn't matter what the weight is on the bar. It cares that the dose of stress gets you stronger. Is it sufficient amount of stimulus to get you stronger? Because if it is, it doesn't matter what the weight is on the bar. So I'd highly recommend that you dial your intensity down into this range. I would even start at 60% and then bump it up according to your response. No failure training. I say this in every video, but on the deadlift especially, you do not need to train to failure to get strong. I've pulled 300 kilos multiple times. I never, ever trained anywhere near failure in any of those training blocks. In fact, the first time that I pulled 300 kilos, the heaviest set I pulled prior to that was 250 kilos for a triple, which was around an RPE 6 or 7. All of my lifters, none of them train to failure on the deadlift. They might do slightly higher intensities than me, but they don't train to failure. There's literally no reason to. Like you can try and give an argument in the comments if you disagree with me, but the only logical argument you could give is that failure training, yes, it comes with a little bit more stimulus, a slight bit more, but a ton more fatigue. So it's just not worth the trade-off, it's not a smart idea. Like why wouldn't you just leave a rep or two in the tank, save on that massive degree of fatigue and still get a really good dose of stimulus, it just doesn't make any sense to me. Um, so yeah, stop training to failure would be my number one advice in this whole presentation. Now, deadlift technique. So, once we've got the actual programing variables in place, and for the deadlift to be honest, it is quite simple the programing. So we are going to deadlift twice per week for most people, starting with a deadlift and a Romanian deadlift, then moving to something more specific once you need the practice. The volume, five to 10 sets per week is going to be sufficient for most of you watching this, plus accessories, which I'm going to go into a bit more depth in a second. The intensity, some top sets at RPE 5-8, which is going to be about 80 to 85% of a one rep max or slightly above. Volume work, sets of four to six in the 60 to 75% range and avoiding failure. So that is your overarching program at the end of this presentation, I'll give you some example programs to go and steal. Once you've got that in place, make sure that you are locking in your technique because that is going to massively contribute to your performance on the deadlift. So, first things first, I would highly recommend that you go and watch the five-step deadlift setup from starting strength. Alan Thrall has a great video on this. Highly recommend that you go and watch that. Really, really simple. If you can nail down those five steps, your deadlift is going to be so repeatable, so efficient week to week. And you will just understand the process of efficient deadlifting so, so quickly. Another one of my personal cues that I will add in is that if you want to find the perfect start position with the hips at the correct height, simply line your knees up with the inside pits of your elbows. So you can see in this picture here, this point here, my knee is flush or aligned with the inside pit of my elbow. That tells me my hips are at the correct height and they are not going to shoot up. My hips and my knees are going to extend at the same time because my hips are at the correct height, okay? So this is a nice little cue that you can use. Another thing that a lot of lifters need to learn on the deadlift is the slack pull. Because too many of you intermediate guys are just yanking on the bar, it's taking the slack out of you and you will notice that when you break the bar off the floor, it's kind of moving you around. Like and it'll turn into a two-part motion where your hips are like shooting back and it turns into like a good morning type pattern. So, in order to pull slack, it's very, very simple and you can see the bar is bending here. Basically pulling slack just means bending that bar upwards as much as you can without the plates leaving the floor. So here, this would be an illustration of the slack being taken out of the bar. That bar is kind of limp or slack when it's on the floor. You basically just want to pull upwards on that bar without the plates leaving the floor and you should be in this position right here. You should be so tight, it should feel like the the weight is literally like quivering ready to come off the floor. You're putting like 90% of your force into the bar. Then you just need to put the remaining 10% in by pushing your feet down into the floor and lifting the bar. That's it. That's as simple as slack pull is. You don't need any like complex discussions on slack pull and stuff because you'll see loads of videos on YouTube about slack pull. Literally, just bend the bar up as much as you can without it leaving the floor and then push your feet into the floor to lift the bar. That's as simple as it is. Now, finally on technique sumo versus conventional. So we've got both here. I don't do the sumo deadlift very often, as you can see my technique doesn't look brilliant. This is more of like a frog stance deadlift. But you will see very, very complex videos on sumo versus conventional, and the influencer or the coach is going to break down like anthropometry, like your limb length, the biomechanics, your hip anatomy, all these different things. I would just simplify it for you right here, which one feels strongest to you and which one can you do for more volume and more uh, more workload basically. Which, which stance allows you to do the requisite deadlift workload that gets you strong long-term? Like, which one can you do the most work on without feeling as beat up? It's that simple. For me, it's conventional. I've tried sumo a few times, doesn't feel that comfortable for me, it beats up my hips, uh, just doesn't feel great. So I do conventional. So yeah, just ask yourself those questions. You don't need to like measuring your femur and and looking at your hips. Are they introverted or all these different things? Just determine the one you can do for the most workload. Now, in terms of accessories and this is where a lot of guys will mess up, because they will follow my deadlift recommendations that I've just given in the previous slides, like two times a week, dialing the intensity down, stuff like that. But then they will do way too many accessories and they will beat up their lower back and they'll interfere with their deadlift progression. So, first things first, when it comes to the actual deadlift, target your weak points. Don't just do random accessories that you just saw online like rack pulls or deficit deadlifts or something like that. Really have an objective look, what do you struggle with in the deadlift? For most of you guys, like you watching this video, your start position probably is not great. Okay? So for you, I would probably program a pause deadlift where you pause the bar one inch off the floor for one second. So literally you break the bar off the floor, you pause in that position for a one count and then you complete the rest of the rep. That's going to reinforce good positioning because it's very hard to pull a heavy deadlift in a bad position. You will automatically feel that you are out of balance or you're not in an efficient position. You will correct and then you will start to self-organize and improve your technique naturally. So have a reason for adding the accessories in. Don't just add them in randomly because you saw it on YouTube or it looks cool or something like that. So, my personal favorites, Romanian deadlift, I think is really, really good for bridging you from once a week deadlifting to twice. Plus it's really, really good because it allows you to get in some volume at lighter weights, it teaches the hip hinge pattern. So I think those can be really useful. Pause, like I said, is really, really good for reinforcing good start position. I actually like really like deadlifts with mini bands and I seem to have really good training blocks every single time that I add these in. Now, I don't think bands and chains are particularly useful for raw lifters trying to get um, trying to get stronger. But I do think there are some benefits to the deadlift with a mini band. Most notably, um, I seem to kind of observe when I did them that they encouraged me to pull more quickly and more explosively. Just because when I was pulling, that band is kind of pulling down on the bar and it's kind of trying to pull you into uh, spinal flexion. And when that happened, it kind of cued my brain to pull harder and also to extend my upper back so I didn't get pulled into a bunch of thoracic flexion. So I like deadlifts with mini bands to be honest, just like a red mini band like this one here. And yeah, they seem to do really good things for my deadlift. Then finally, just more regular deadlifting. So if you don't have any glaring technique weaknesses, I would literally just do the conventional deadlift two times a week. Maybe your first day is a bit heavier and then the second day is a bit more volume focused or maybe it's just a little bit of a lighter variant to get in some volume. Now, in terms of the bodybuilding accessories, these are the ones that I like to choose to cover all bases. Now, pro tip, I recommend that you do all of your back work chest supported because we want to spare the lower back for your deadlifting. So I would choose one wide overhand grip row where we are pulling with more abduction, so the elbow is more flared out. Um, and we're going to be pulling in this plane. This is going to target more of the upper back, more of the traps, the rhomboids and things like that. Then a narrow or neutral grip row where we are pulling like this position. Pulling more towards the hip, more shoulder extension. This is going to train more of the lats. Then we're going to do a wide grip pulldown where the elbows are flared in this position. This is going to target again, more of the upper fibers of the lats. Then a narrow grip neutral grip pulldown like this where the arm is closer to the body again. Again, this is going to target more of the lower fibers of the lats. Then I would choose one to two bicep movements. Um, I like doing one when the shoulder is in more flexion like a preacher curl. One where the shoulder is in more extension like an incline dumbbell curl. Then I would do at least one hamstring isolation like a seated or a lying hamstring curl. I prefer seated. Um, but yeah, these are the ones that I would choose to cover your bases. I would recommend that you train all of these movements for about two or three sets of four to 10 reps in the RPE 8 to 10 range. Most of it, I would just do an RPE 9, leaving one rep in reserve. The arm work, I'd probably just go all the way to failure. You want to try and beat the logbook on this stuff and just add as much weight as you can each week so that we can maximize hypertrophy, okay? Now, to end out this video, I have some deadlift pro tips for you. So, these come from my own personal experience over 10 plus years of training. Going from a like empty bar deadlift basically up to high 600 pounds. I've coached hundreds of lifters to get really good strong in the deadlift as well.
[23:33]And these things I've just noticed have worked. Thing number one is to keep the lower back fresh. Too many of you guys, like I said, you are trying to deadlift, then do your Romanians, then do bent over barbell rows, then really heavy weighted pull-ups, then you're doing other hinges and other lower back heavy work. And it's just too much on the lower back and that's why you can't recover, that's why your back is tweaked all the time. That's why you wake up in the morning and your lower back feels terrible, you feel like a 70 year old man. So just as a default, just cut out all of the non chest supported back work. So stop doing bent over barbell rows and stuff like that. Pull ups you can probably get away with if your form is good and you're not one of those guys who's like swinging back and forth and stuff like that. But generally, just do your back work chest supported. There's no reason not to really. You can do the deadlift stuff to strengthen the lower back and then just do the bodybuilding accessories chest supported, so that we maximize the growth of the back. Because you need to get a big thick back if you want a big deadlift. Like my back here, this is when I was a 300 kilo deadlifter. I would say my back was pretty thick, pretty wide. It was one of my strongest body parts. And that's because I did a lot of deadlifting, I did a lot of deadlift volume. I was able to because my lower back was fresh. And then I just did a bunch of bodybuilding accessories really, really hard, chest supported. Now, this applies to your squat training as well, by the way. Don't be trying to do too much squatting, especially if you're a guy who's got long femurs, longer legs and you bend over a lot when you squat. You probably want to do some of your leg work on machines like a hack squat or a leg press or something like that, so you can spare the lower back. Now, another component of this is resilience training. So things like this, like the Jefferson curl. So, if you are a guy who keeps tweaking your back or you are scared to injure your back when you deadlift and that is holding back your deadlift progress. We need to train those positions that you feel vulnerable in. So if you constantly tweak your lower back when you're uh back flexes in the deadlift like mine did. Then train that position, build some resilience, build some tolerance in that position, get stronger at spinal flexion, because the stronger you get there, the more resilient you get in that position. The less likely you are to be hurt when you're exposed to that position. It'll just make you a bit more durable so that you can do more deadlifting over time and therefore get stronger, okay?
[26:42]Now, if you take one thing from this whole presentation, lighter is often better for deadlifts, IMO, okay? I have never really seen a lifter go too light in the deadlift to the point where they can't make progress.
[27:00]And my best deadlift blocks came when I was just using really, really light weights. I was doing my primary day for a top triple, it was like RPE 5, 6 and 7 for the most part, sometimes RPE 8. I did volume work for sets of four in the 60% range and then my secondary day was really, really light. I did some light sixes with a mini band or I did some Romanian deadlifts or I just did a light conventional deadlift for sets of five. You basically want to find that minimum effective dose like I mentioned earlier, the least amount of weight that you can get away with to get stronger. Then when it stops working and it's not enough stimulus, just increase it a little bit. It's that simple. And just to put that into perspective, when I was at my strongest and I was very close to a 700 pound deadlift, I was doing my volume work on my primary day between 405 and 455 for sets of four. So 180 to 200 kilos for sets of four reps. Now, I can probably pull 405, four plates for maybe like 30 plus reps on a good day. And I was doing that for sets of four. Now, you might ask yourself like, why, that's way too light. But is it too light? If it's getting me stronger, how can we say that that weight on the bar is too light? It's not because by definition it's getting me stronger, so by definition, it is sufficiently heavy to get me stronger. You just have this idea in your head that you have to train heavy and you have to train hard to get stronger, but you don't and your body doesn't care what weight is on the bar. It cares what stress it experiences. So I am going to give you two free deadlift programs to close out this video. They encompass all of these factors that I've shared with you in the video. And instead of you having to go and experiment and try and pull all this together, I'm just going to give you two example programs that you can just go and steal, okay? So this free deadlift program, so version A, this is for those of you who usually deadlift once a week or you have kind of limited experience deadlifting twice a week, okay? So, very simply, Tuesday is going to be your primary deadlift day. This is going to be either a conventional or a sumo deadlift, the one that you feel strongest at. You are going to start the training block with a double, so a top set of two reps at RPE 5. So a weight that you can do for two reps with approximately five reps left in the tank. Each week, you are going to bump that RPE up and try to add weight. So you're going to go RPE 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then you're going to go into the next block and maybe you use singles for the next block, okay?
[30:30]After you do that top set, you are going to do three sets of four reps at 60% of your estimated one rep max. So do this set, log it, then you're going to need to use an online RPE calculator to give you an estimated one rep max and then you take 60% of that number, okay? My clients, they have a spreadsheet that has this function built in, it works out like the percentages and stuff for them. So if you're interested in that top link in the description, okay? Then on Friday, you're going to do your secondary deadlift. Now, your secondary deadlift is going to be a Romanian deadlift and you are going to do two sets of five to seven reps at RPE 7-8.
[31:22]Now, this is a relatively high intensity. However, because this is so low intensity, I think you can easily get away with this. Now, all you need to do on this day, you need to go in and you need to pick a weight where you can fall in this rep target and this RPE target. So you need to be aiming for five to seven reps with two to three reps left in reserve and then your goal is to just add weight and get to the top of that rep target, okay? Two sets of seven. Once you hit two sets of seven with a particular weight, you will reset down to two sets of five and build your way back up with a little bit more weight, okay? Now, for the accessories, like I mentioned in the previous slide, you are going to cover all of these movements, so a Y grip row, neutral, pull downs, hamstring curls, bicep exercises. In these rep ranges, these RPEs, I've given you everything. So literally just plug this in and go follow this program, okay?
[32:39]Now, version B, this is for those of you who have a little bit of experience deadlifting twice a week already. And you have seen that you do well on twice a week. So you're going to use this program.
[32:56]Now, the Tuesday session, the primary deadlift day is exactly the same. If you feel like you're well adapted, you can add a set here to make this four sets of four, or you can push this percentage up a little bit, maybe to 63 or 65%. The main difference is the Friday secondary session, okay? So this one, instead of a Romanian deadlift, we are going to do a pause deadlift. Now, this pause deadlift, you simply pause one inch off the floor, so as soon as the bar leaves the floor, you're going to pause for a full second and then complete the rest of the rep and repeat. You are going to do one set of four at RPE 6, meaning a set of four with about four reps left in reserve. You can slowly nudge this RPE up through the training block. Don't do it as quickly as the primary day. So maybe you go RPE 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5 or something like that. Once you've done this top set, you are going to then take 16% of the weight off the bar for three sets of six on a regular deadlift, okay? You don't need to pause these back off sets. The accessories are exactly the same. And like I said, the intent behind these accessories is I want you to push them very, very hard. RPE 9-10. That does not mean a 9-10 difficulty or how it feels. It means one rep in reserve or an RPE 10 is zero reps in reserve, okay? So really, really hard sets. Now, I really hope this presentation helped you. I hope you can use some of this information, steal the free programs. But if you get to the end and you're still a bit confused or you don't want to like go and research all this stuff more and integrate it into your program and figure out where to put the squats and the bench press and stuff like that. I can do it all for you. So if you click the top link in the description, we hop on a call. Basically, what we will do is I will assess your current training program. We will walk through what you are struggling with, why your deadlift isn't making progress. We will then map out your goals, determine how strong you'd like to get in the deadlift. We can figure out together if I can help you to get there. I will then explain to you how we will do that and how my coaching works. Just very quick summary, you get on a individualized training program that I put together based on your past training data. I give you one week of training at a time. You check in with me personally via WhatsApp every time you train and I then make small adjustments to the training plan. Updating each week, making small improvements, okay? Until we get closer to what works. In between each block of training, we're going to do a block review together so that we can make minor adjustments to improve your progress. I will also personally review your deadlift technique via video analysis. I also have an assistant coach who will be looking at your deadlift from an injury rehab perspective. There's full nutrition coaching. There's a community of very, very strong guys that you will be surrounded by and a bunch of other things. Basically, I'm just giving you everything that I have learned over the years to get you as strong as possible, okay? So if you have any further questions, post them in the comment section down below. Make sure you subscribe for future strength training videos. I really hope this one helped you and until next time, I will catch you in the next video.
