Hehe…actually, deads last for over 52 years. The first five years of my lifelong training, I’d do deadlifts earlier in a workout (especially my first 18 months, when all my workouts were full-body/three times per week, which was universally standard protocol in that era for beginners).
I began doing deads exclusively last in any workout after about five years then have done them last for forty-seven years.
My experience may skew, since I began doing deads last only AFTER reaching my genetic mass limits (which, depending on consistency, appropriate progressive training, adequate nutrition, adequate rest, genetics again, and probably luck avoiding long unplanned layoffs due to injuries or illness, are reached after three to five consecutive years of drug-free bodybuilding).
Meaning, all the training/eating/resting I’ve been doing for the last forty-seven years are essentially for maintenance of the muscle I built in those first five years.
Anyway…by the end of those first five years, I’d progressed to my genetic strength ceilings of poundages for squats, shrugs, barbell rows, straightlegged deads (done for hamstrings), overhead presses, the back extensions, even weighted crunches.
So, even when not doing deadlifts, my lower back and grip gets plenty of at least indirect work from those, which maintains most of my lower back strength while deadlifts are not in my rotation.
Maintenance bodybuilding (as a noncompetitive bodybuilder) requires as much intensity and dedication as it does when initially building to genetic mass limits. Hard work is as necessary to keep muscle as it is to initially add it.
But maintenance hypertrophy training becomes a balancing act, especially as inevitable aging occurs. Avoiding new injury, working around old injuries or chronic problems like a job-incurred injury (I was a roofer/builder who incurred injuries), and the need for less volume/more recovery time has to be balanced with ensuring enough intensity/density/volume/frequency to prevent, or at least retard, atrophy.
What works for me is periodically easing up by omitting one of the two nervous-system-taxing exercises, squats and deadlifts, for about a month. I’ve always kept squats in my program (unless injured); while leg presses are just as effective for quad hypertrophy, and I’ve used them, I prefer squats.
Therefore, I’ll omit deads for about four weeks, usually every sixth month or so, just to allow my body more longer-term systemic recovery. As I mentioned, I’m still doing other heavy stuff which indirectly works my lower back, as well as always doing prone back extensions, so, the muscle gets worked plenty enough to maintain.
Also, even when I’m doing deadlifts, I do them only once in ten days. That is, on the five-day cycle I use, I include that set of deadlifts in every other lower back workout. I’ve found, at my level and for my genetics, especially after age 50 and of course now at my age of 67, performing a max set of 15 reps more than once in ten days is too taxing on my lower back.
After I’ve omitted deads for a month, I’ll resume doing them at about 50 - 60 pounds less the first time I rotate them back in. Muscle-nerve memory enables me to gradually return to my max poundage; at my age, I typically do that in a minimum of six weeks.
Remember, as I said, I’m all maintenance. I went as far as I genetically, drug-free could mass-wise in my first five years of training. So, my deadlift scheme is part of my goal to maintain as much as possible of what I built in those first five years, with no illusions about adding more mass (impossible anyway) nor even about adding poundage beyond the max I’ve been using.
As a post-script…as my experience demonstrates, lifelong bodybuilding is mostly maintenance bodybuilding. I know very well the impatience to build as much mass as possible as fast as possible – I began as a horribly skinny-fat, unathletic guy with less-than-average muscle-mass genetics. Looking at bodybuilding from that eager beginning perspective, the very-short-term is as far as we can usually see. However, if a guy plans on bodybuilding his entire life, then even if it takes him five years instead of three years to build his maximum muscle mass, he’ll have perhaps FIFTY or more years after when he’ll still be bodybuilding. The lesson being, “try to be patient - - as long as you’re consistent and keep progressively training, you will get there; and after you’re there, whether in three, four, or five years, you’ll have ten or more times that number of years ahead of you in bodybuilding anyway”. The often-repeated saying, “Bodybuilding is about the long-term” isn’t a mere cliche’ - - it’s a truth.
