I’ve pulled on a crummy Olympic bar, but that’s my only point of reference.
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I have been pulling with an apollon’s axle for over a year. You’re not going to screw up your back with a stiff bar, but you might accidentally get really strong.
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You can buy a deadlift bar or you could set your ego aside and set a challenge: eg. rep 330lbs at home! Then go to the gym and set a PR for fun…
It’s unlikely you trained and got 70lbs weaker at the deadlift (at youtr level). Plenty of the above could explain it and maybe other stufd but does it matter?
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Wow, I really thought people wouldn’t reply to this post. I want to thank all of you very much for helping me out on this subject and giving me different point of views on the issues i’m having with deadlifting with the stiff bar. I’m just going to have to throw the ego out of the door and practise technique with the stiff bar and use less weight what I’m used to lifting. I have never deadlifted with a stiff bar so getting used to it might take quite a while.
Again, thanks for all the replies, they have helped notice and learn from my mistakes. Back to the basics it seems!
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4 weeks ago, Max reps deadlift at 308
3 weeks ago, Heavy deadlift double
2 weeks ago, bench press Competition
Last week, off due to illness
This week, anxiety about training, drop in performance
It sounds like you’ve been pushing too hard. Some people don’t believe in “Overtraining,” but it sounds like you’re lifting heavier than what your body can recover from.
You need to drop the intensity. No barbells for a week! Eat 50 hard boiled eggs in addition to your normal meals over that week. You will feel way better. You want to be excited to lift, not worried about lifting.
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are you sure your garage is flat? maybe is slightly slanted and your going against it in an “uphill manner”.
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Yes, the garage is flat.
Definitely really good advice and wise words.
But honestly I need to get a grip on my mentality. I usually got a really focused and calm state of mind before going lifting to the gym (As I stated earlier). But after the week I had a flu my mind was messed up. The previous days I was stressing out about planning my workout for the next day and I have been feeling depressed. When I went lifting my mind wasn’t there, I wasn’t focused and I was stressed out and when the max effort lift came I didn’t approach it with fury, but instead feeling intimidated.
Seems because I took the week off because of the flu I became more comfortable and it messed with my mindset, I just need to try harder. Once I can’t physically go on with training I will take a deload week and rest.
Humans are wired to be lazy. I must get out of my comfort zone
The trick is to deload before this happens.
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I’m actually forgetting to mention it there, but I meant that as to training NOW. I train 3-4 weeks and then I take a deload week so I wouldn’t wreck my CNS. I train with Westside Barbell methods, max effort and dynamic effort. Right now I have been sick every now and then and I have been falling behind, but if I will be able to train succesfully for 3 or 4 weeks I’ll be having a deload week and return to my normal training cycles. Otherwise If I can’t reach the 3 weeks I’ll just stop where I fail and start from there again.
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I’m way late to the party but I have experienced the exact same thing with my deadlifts. I built a pretty damn good lifting platform at home and pull from a platform at my commercial gym. At home I use a Rogue Echo 2.0 bar and the gym has a variety of bars. The Rogue bar is stiffer and makes everything feel heavier. The gym has a deadlift bar that flexes like crazy and makes everything feel great.
Not long ago I pulled 430 in my basement and about blew an O-ring. I didn’t understand why it felt so horrible. I’d pulled 450 at the gym in the not too distant past. It sucked, but I moved on and kept lifting. Two weeks later I pulled 495 at the gym on the deadlift bar bumping my PR up by 40 pounds.
I promise you that my training with my bar and less weight still led to strength gains. I don’t think the body really cares what the number on the bar is. All it knows is how much stress it’s going through when you train. Keep training at home and the gym and remember that the weights at home will probably be lower on your bar. On the plus side that means you don’t have to buy as much weight for the home gym.
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You can rotate Max Effort exercises to avoid mental issues/ CNS fatigue too.
Week 1 Conventional dead
Week 2 Some kind of squat
Week 3 Defecit Dead or Sumo Dead or Rack Dead
Week 4 Some other kind of squat
That way, you’re lifting lifting limit weights every week. So you’re out of your comfort zone. But you only need to break each individual record once a month, so there is nothing to worry about. Mentally you’re “tricked” into being confident.
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So not really in the scope of the original question (and I’m not the foremost authority on Westside), but Im pretty sure you shouldn’t have 3 out of the last 4 weeks full deadlift for max effort. For DE days, yeah a squat variation followed by a deadlift variation around 80% total with accommodating resistance for 24 reps each based on Prilepin, but that doesn’t sound like what you’re doing.
Louie will even say that they almost never do full competition lifts because, and especially with deadlift, it’s too mentally damaging especially if you start missing lifts. Block pulls, deficits, rack pulls, and any manner of variation will help keep you fresher for longer. I’ve found it beneficial to alternate weeks for ME between a squat variation and a DL variation. The ME exercise should change every week and the DE lifts varied at 75%, 80%, and 85% and then swapped out as well for a different variation.
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Yeah, what he said!
Just when your body thinks it knows the answers, you change all the questions!
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Haha minor detail you left out there! You’re probably still getting over it.
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I do own The Westside Barbell Book Of Methods, but i only recently started reading it. I only have gone through some of the basics about speed strength and maximal effort training and such, I still have much to learn about the westside principles. I started lifting Westside this year four months ago, I have been doing the same squats and deadlifts since then. I never changed the main lifts in any way but intensity. As for assistance work after the main lifts I did those more “Isolating” assistance exercises (If we can call them such). For example for Deadlift I would do leg curls, hyperextensions and such, but They didn’t do much for me, but then I started doing 5x5 Romanian deadlifts and threw everything else out of the window. Then my deadlift skyrocketed from deadlifting barely 242lbs x 2 to easy 308lbs x 8 in 4 weeks. From the 242lbs forward I did only conventional deadlifts on max effort days and romanians or glute work for assistance. I only do squats for 12x2 among deadlifts 6x1 at dynamic effort days when I work on my speed strength. I know it is a bit dumb to do the same exercises while using methods where you should change them, but I was doing so much progress and getting ridiculously strong. And there is so much other stuff that adds up on that, the facts that unenhanced lifters should lift more frequently and work with the major movements instead of majoring the minors and the “you must do deadlifts to get better at deadlifts.”. I apologize, it’s just that my head is just messed up because of all the information, facts, methods and other stuff, there is just so much to take into consideration.
The motive behind deadlifting so often is because I want to pull 440lbs before i turn 17 in november.
It’s just a bit challenge for me to program with westside, but I LOVE their max effort and dynamic effort training. I just don’t know how to rotate the main exercises and which assistance exercises work my weak points. I don’t have access to bands, chains or the awesome posterior chain and squat machines around here, I have access to barbells, dumbbells, cables, leg press. You know, basic commercial gym stuff without the awesome machines they use in westside.
Thanks ALOT for the awesome replies again! I never could have Imagined this kind of positive community existing, it means really much for me.
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There was a time when Westside wasn’t using bands and chains, but you can also get a set of bands for relatively cheap and bring them with you to the gym.
As far as exercise variety, you’ve probably got everything you need, but you have to get imaginative. If they have a power rack and blocks, you definitely do. So let’s say you want to lay out six weeks of ME work for lower body.
Week 1: rack pull from just below your knees
Week 2: wide stance squat to a parallel box
Week 3: block pulls (about 2" blocks) or rack pull one pin lower
Week 4: Regular stance squat to a parallel box
Week 5: Deficit deadlift (no more than a 1" thick mat) or sumo block pulls (never a sumo rack pull per Louie)
Week 6: Narrow stance box squat
During that time, you’ll progress through two waves of DE work
Weeks 1-3: Wide stance box squat followed by rack pull (starting at 75% on week 1 and adding 5% on weeks 2 and 3)
Weeks 4-6: Regular stance box squat followed by sumo block pulls or a lower rack pull doing the same weight wave (75%- 85%)
As far as assistance work, I like to put one big assistance exercise for 3 sets of 8-12 ( RDL, good morning, barbell rows, etc.) and then several smaller ones for same rep scheme. The assistance work needs to be in hypertrophy rep ranges and needs to account for ~80% of your training volume on any given day. As this is all free advice, it’s worth at least twice what you’re pay for it. If nothing else, learn to be creative on your ME lifts though. If you keep doing the same lifts, you’re missing out on the biggest advantage of conjugate/concurrent method which is beating out the law of accommodation.
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Hello, I’m very sorry for not replying, I have been trying to deal with real life and mental issues lately so sorry about that.
Anyways… I have been rotating my exercises every training session and noticed I don’t feel as fatigued as I did before when I was doing the same movements every session. I noticed good improvement on bench press (about 13 pounds) in 2 weeks. I haven’t deadlifted yet though. (I managed to catch a flu after training for the 2 weeks and I’m still sick…) But the first week of training I did max effort wide stance low bar squats after 5 months of training squat only during dynamic days (12x2 light weight). 5 months ago i couldn’t even manage to hit 286 lbs when I was really focusing on squats, the year before (2015 14yo) I could hit 319x1 without a problem while overtrained, before i got myocarditis and couldn’t do any kind of exercise for 1 year and 2 months. Now 3 weeks ago I managed to squat 374 lbs low bar and I got a strong feeling I’m going for 396 soon.
I have been researching the conjugate method and I’m starting to understand it now, I want to thank you alot for the great advice you have given me, it is definitely worth twice the amount what I paid for!
Much respect for you, thank you very much alot for helping me out with this issue.
A very big thanks to others aswell! 