Misleading title but I really didn’t know how to start.
At the weight of 76-77kg, this week I pulled 186kg, which is 4-6kgs away from 2.5x bodyweight - was my goal since I started training deadlifts one year and a half ago.
Deads have always been my best lift, as normal for a beginner, but I really do have a good build for them - short stocky-ish torso with a fairly strong back, long arms.
Even if they don’t drive me into the ground in terms of recovery, I’ve discovered that they improved much better and much quicker when training them with a reduced amount of volume and moderate intensity - in the last two months, during the accumulatiom/volume/Leader phase, this meant doing them once a week with 5/3/1 percentages, hitting a PR set each week (usually in the 10-12 reps) and following with 2 heavier triples (at +5% increments).
In the first intensification week of this cycle (Anchor) I simply hit the top set for 8 reps, then worked up in triples, doubles and singles until I hit the 186kg.
Since my original goal for this cycle was to hit 180kg and I did better right in the first week, I want to pull back the next two weeks with deads, job is done and I’d rather aim for 190-192kg at the end of the next cycle to be conservative.
Now, enter the squat. The same build that helps me in the deads is a pain in the ass for squats, because I also have a very long femur, especially compared to my short torso. It doesn’t help either that I’ve started doing squats only in the last 2-3 months, I previously only trained in front squats and had to switch them up with back squats due to a wrist issue (that is getting fixed next week).
The heaviest squat I did when I tested somewhat of a 1RM months ago was of 130kg, which is just above 1.5bw. Not unexpected, since I lack time under the bar, so not complaining.
I’ve been tinkering with squats since then and have yet to find my optimal setup, but I think I’m getting close, so much that I recently pulled back my TM down to 90kg, it allows me to push the PR sets with good form, technique, and follow up with 3-5 sets of 5 (FSL) where I can do pauses, focusing on keep proper posture and push the bar speed.
I’m not doing any high intensity work for now, I simply moved from more volume in the Leader phase to less volume in the Anchor phase by cutting assistance stuff in half, it doesn’t really make sense now to push triples and doubles and singles in the squats imho.
After this long premise, here’s what I had in mind and wanted to know if it makes any sense: I’m ok with being stronger in the deadlift than the squat, it is what it is and I have no powerlifting aspirations or anything.
My short term goal (let’s say, by end of the year or so) is to hit a 2xbw squat, that would be about 155-160kg at my current weight. I’d be perfectly fine if deads stayed at about 2.5bw in the meanwhile, but don’t want deads to drop from that amount. Ending the year with a 2bw squat and 2.5bw dead would be perfect.
What I was thinking is: after the next cycle, when I’ll hit (hopefully) 190-192kg in the deads, change the deads so that they’re trained once every two weeks instead of once a week.
In the week when I don’t train deads, put an extra squat day (something light-ish, like a 5x5FSL), followed by volume/hypertrophy work for the posterior chain.
The idea, not sure if this makes sense tho, would be to get more work for the squats, bring them up while keeping the posterior chain strong and the deads trained every 2 weeks. Getting stronger on the squats should also improve the deads or at least make sure they don’t drop, since squats seem to have more transfer in the deads than the opposite.
I’d also expect the deads to impact more and more on recovery while I progress so moving them to once every two weeks instead of once a week sounds like a sensible idea regardless of my squat numbers.