Hello everyone, I am still new to the whole strength training thing. I recently decided I might want to go into power lifting. Anyways, I just hit my 6 month mark of training with weights. I set a new PR today for the deadlift which is 385 LB for my 1RM. 3 months ago, my PR was 295 LB. So over 3 months I have raised my deadlift 90 lb. Is that pretty good progress? I plan on hitting a 400 lb deadlift within the next two weeks. I know these are probably “noob gains” but I just want to know how you guys think I am doing. For some reference, I weigh 185lb, my current bench 1RM is 205 lb and my squat 1RM is 350lb. I included a video of me doing my PR today, let me know what you guys think of my 6 month progress. Thanks guys!
The video isn’t working but congratulations on the progress. Keep it up and aim for 500!
Video is dead.
Solid progress tho. Maybe best to limit the 1RM testing, tho it’s fun, especially as you get stronger the effort and recovery ability probably better spent building strength with rep work.
Thanks for the feedback guys, sorry I set the video to private not public, you should be able to see it now.
Hard to comment on form from the straight front angle( side angle may be more useful in that regard) but nothing bad jumps out. I think being in that limbo between poor form and really good form the best thing for you is to continually be trying to improve your form. Even little improvements add up to safer stronger lifts.
There are many Youtube vids around on deadlifting and they are worth a look. Different vids will give you different tips, cues and perspectives from which you can draw, adding what works for you to your own training. There’s so many specific topics you can look up when it comes to deadlift: Set-Up, Back Rounding, Grip, Explosiveness etc. Just take it slow and don’t apply 50 videos’ worth of info in one training session or you’ll get overwhelmed.
Here’s something to start you off:
Thanks for the tips and for the YouTube link, very helpful!
It’s good progress for sure. It may be noob gains, but it’s still gains nonetheless. The big thing is that once you get past the noob gains, stay disciplined and stay focused. There’s lots of little tweaks to find out what works best for you. Just to be clear, I’m not pointing out anything bad in this video. You might want to try adjusting feet out a little bit, foot positions (pointing straight ahead, pointing out at a 45, or somewhere in between), and cueing. The deadlift is a bitch because you’ll do great making gains for a while just because you’re learning to integrate muscles together for the pull. Then you’ll stick for a while until you figure out one small adjustment. Then that small adjustment will open up good progress for a while and then you’ll repeat. Make sure you’re leaving enough time in between to recover from max effort work/testing. Like… weeks potentially. If you can help it, don’t miss lifts. It’s better to walk out with a 10-lb PR than a 15-lb miss. Deadlifts are psychologically damaging when you miss even more so than squats or bench. There’s no loading phase of the lift to fight into the groove. You’re either there or you’re not. Get some sumo work in too. Even if you don’t want to pull at a meet sumo, Ed Coan and others will tell you to use the sumo to build your conventional and the conventional to build the sumo. These are things that you can easily learn, but it helps to have someone tell you on the front end. Either way… keep up the good work!
2 Likes
Thanks a bunch! I really appreciate your advice. I never thought about pulling sumo before, and I can see how the benefits would transfer over to conventional. Also thanks for bringing up my foot position, its something that I never really figured out if I was doing right. I just go narrow because thats what feels good, but I never though about angling my feet out a little bit. You are right, I think I may need to quit testing my max so much and do more rep work to build muscles and improve form.
1 Like
I’m not saying you should change your foot position or that you shouldn’t. I’m saying it’s another variable to play with. Jim Wendler has recommended foot spacing for conventional being where they would be if you landed from a set of monkey bars. Whatever you do, try small changes to see what you can get and how it feels. The key is that you can’t make huge changes all at once. You have to evolve your technique and form over time.
1 Like
Yeah very solid progress on the deads
1 Like
