please critique my deadlift routine

AnabolicAnimal

New Member
well after not doing deadlifts for some time(hirneated a disk last year) i've been gradualy increaseing the weight and i feel fine so far. my workouts usually go as follows: usually start with 5mins on the bike to get myself a little wamred up, then on to some streching(quad,hamstring, lower back) then i'll do 135x15, 135x15 again, then 225x10, 315x10, 365x6, 405x6-8, 405x6-8again. i'm only working with my heaviest set 2x really and the other ones are not taken to failure. my main question is what would the proper weight jumps be for deadlifts. am i wasteing my energy/time useing 225x10 and 315x10? are those lighter weights not taken till failure "warming up" my joints for the heavyest set to come? the bottome line question for me is: useing a max weight of 405x6-8 what should prevoius sets look like with regards to weight and reps? any help is always appericated.
 
The weight jumps look fine, but I would recommend doing less reps on your warmup sets. I'll do 135 for 10, then 225 for 5, 315 for 4, 405 for 3 or 4, then move on to my heaviest sets, which were 3 x 490 x 6 last week. The first two sets I probably could get 7 for sure but the last one was pretty much to failure. You might want to throw in a set of a few reps with 365 before jumping all the way from 315 to 405, especially considering the injury. I think doing high reps on all your warmup sets is wasting energy, especially for something like deadlifts. For the most part, keep the warmup sets at or below the desired number of reps for your heavy sets. Plus, all your doing is getting your body used to handling weight, so doing a lot of reps seems unnecessary. I started warming up this way for compound movements about a year ago after reading some articles about it by Chad Waterbury and others, and it's worked great for me. If you go to his site you can read the article. I am just as warmed up after doing this, compared to doing a lot of light reps, and have more energy for the heavy sets.
 
i agree with primo on the warmups and lighter sets. do lower reps because an excercise like deads WILL deplete your energies and make you lose reps by the time you get to the heavier sets. i would even do 5-6 reps only on the very first set with 135lbs. this way you do a set with 135, a set with 225 and a set with 315 for a total of 15-18 reps vs your 50 reps warmup; simply overkill, imo. this, combined with the bike warmup and stretching ought to be good enough to prep the joints for the heavy sets without sapping your strength levels. if you need to hit 365, do so but only for a double or triple to 'feel' the weight rather than get a workout with that weight. with your energy saved like this, you can do an extra set, and probably some extra reps as well, with 405.
 
yes

You may want to do 1-2 light sets of hypers and 1-2 light stes of ab work
first to warmup your "core" muscles and get some blood flowing down thier.I do this whenever my back is hurting and it helps a great deal.Just dont go anywhere near failure on hypers or abs cuz then you wont have the strenght you need.
 
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