Pulling 240kg in April 2009
Video of a recent PR attempt after a few weeks of deadlift specific training
In my opinion there are very few feats of strength more impressive than a big deadlift. The deadlift uses virtually every muscle in the body and will make you a better athlete, no matter which sport you train for. Training for an impressive pull is also hard work and signifies that the person lifting has got dedication to their training, a tolerance to discomfort and is therefore worthy of some respect!
Unfortunately when you walk into most commercial gyms all you will see is guys doing curls and bench. On the odd occasion that someone attempts to deadlift it’s more often than not a set of horrid partial range stiff leg deadlifts while the trainee cranes his neck around to check out his own hammies in the mirror!
In this article I want to outline a few key points about deadlifting and offer up a couple of short deadlift training cycles that will push your deadlift numbers up, hopefully to the point that people in your gym stop and stare when you set up to pull.
What is Heavy?
At what point can you call yourself strong? At what point does your deadlift progress from puny to powerful? These are difficult questions to answer because you can’t just whack out a table of standards that applies to everyone. A big weight for one person is another person’s warm up and comparisons across bodyweight suffer because as you get heavier you are physics bound to become a proportionally worse deadlifter even though to an outsider the weights lifted by bigger guys are way more impressive than those lifted by smaller guys.
So what should you be aiming for in your deadlift training? The following are some very rough quick start guidelines, in reality the only one you ever need to follow is the last one.
