Even with a dead stop, you have built up energy from the negative that you don’t have on the first rep. It’s really that simple.
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I normally touch and go, but this month I’ve starting going dead stop. Not only is the first rep of each set harder than the following reps, but dead stop is MUCH harder than touch and go. I’d love to know why too.
A video of the lift would be beneficial. Alot of times the first rep of the set is harder due to improper hip height in relation to the bar. On the second rep your hips should be in the optimal position for starting.
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I think for a lot of us, our position sucks. When you just bend down to grab the bar and do your first rep, you don’t get into a good position. When you do the negative from that first rep, you automatically find the right position - so you start your next rep from the right spot.
It may be worth focusing on lowering yourself to the bar, then pulling all the slack out, for that first rep. I know you’re thinking maybe you’re not aggressive enough, but you may actually need to slow down (the set up) to speed up.
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Wdym by pull the slack
You’re not comparing apples with apples for one thing. What you can do on one day and what you can do on another are not that same.
Secondly, comparing rep ranges across weights is guesstimation at best. Unless you’re saying the first rep on your 300 x 9 felt harder than your second and third (which may be the case, but not what you said) that’s a nonsense comparison.
Now, to answer your question with my experience on when sometimes the first rep feels harder, there are two common reasons, with one you weren’t far off with your ‘timid’ idea.
If you initiate the pull with 90% effort, it might not move, you know you can move the weight, so you increase effort and ramp up to 100% and the weight starts moving.
Now during the rep and descent your body knows it has to give 100% and, remembering what 100% feels like, you give 100% on the second rep.
I notice this sometimes on deadlift but most commonly on push press. I will, more often than I would like to admit, miss the first rep on a heavy push press set, simply because I was thinking too much about my shoulders and didnt use enough leg drive or brace my abs hard enough. After I fail that first rep I ‘try harder’, with better bracing and drive and surprise surprise I can do a tripple literally 10 seconds after failing a rep.
The second option, more common with deadlift than anything else is, as @TrainForPain said, set-up. Say you set-up for your pull with the bar an inch too far forward, you might not notice it during your set up, but you sure as hell feel it when you get pulled forward in the rep and really have to muscle it up. Then, having locked out and centralised, on the descent your positioning is better and you down the weight in the correct position to initiate the next rep. This will make the world of difference on a deadlift rep.
Either could be what’s happening to you. It sound like you feel like its probably the first, though I see the second more often.
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I’m old, man, you can’t use Internet acronyms with me. I’ll tackle this one by context, though…
In any case, you’re better off checking a YouTube video on how to deadlift. I like all of Brian Alsruhe’s stuff. I’m not strong enough, nor have I ever coached, to give you real technical tips.