600 Deadlift from Years of 5/3/1 - What Now?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Jim Wendler 5/3/1 Coaching
1

Finally have hit a 600 deadlift! At 22 and 235lbs I’m fairly happy with this milestone. But I am not strong, my quest to become strong continues.

Now, I’ve been following 5/3/1 religiously since I was 19 and have had bumps in the road with my military career (deployments, field time, organized PT, ect.) but I am finally out. With this new PR I think it’s time to restructure how I do things. As far as the other 3 lifts, they’re still increasing and have been going up higher because I don’t over think accessories now and just do them, heavy.

My concern mostly is my deadlift. It seems now on my 5+ days I will pull anywhere from 5 to 8 at the most, then hit the minimum on my 3 and 1 days unless I take a week off before a PR attempt.

Instead of program hopping and becoming a worry-wat I am simply deadlfting every other week still following the 5/3/1 protocol. I’ll simply be doing 1-2 extra sets of accessories on the week I’m not deadlifting (GM’s, Hyper extensions, hamstring isolation).

I’ve known what works for me so far in the game, but now that I pull a lot more than I use to I need to take a step back, rethink things and get some insight from lifters who know much more than I. Getting this far without any bands, partials, deficits, ect. has always felt strange to me. I have friends who can’t deadlift 400 yet and focus too much on all the variations. Truth be told I never once did 5x10 for deadlifts, I knew it would be too much volume for me from the start. To this point it has been deadlifts with the 5/3/1 scheme, 5/3/1 squats and 5x5 after, deadlift accessories and food.

My question is this, should I go ahead and deadlift everyother week (I can squat heavy week after week no problem) or deadlift within the 5/3/1 scheme one week then the next do some sort of variation or light deadlifting (3x10 @ 60% for example)?

Thank you in advance!

2

Congrats on the 600 lbs. That’s a good lift.

Why not pull opposite stance for 12 or so weeks? Your max (and therefore TM) will be lower, so even though it is a weaker stance at the moment, it’ll still be less load on the body. Plus, focusing on opposite stance is a fairly common way to bring up your regular stance. I really would recommend doing that instead of DL every other week. The other option would be to reset, and use a lower training max. Personally, I’d go for opposite stance because that’s basically what you’ll be doing, plus opposite stance will probably bring up your weak points.

For what its worth, I’ve never used bands or partials for DL. I have used deficits a bit, but not much and not for a while. My best is 583 lbs at 225 lbs about a month ago. Mostly I’d pull conventional on my heavy days and sumo on the others.