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Barbell So I've Started Deadlifting

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@Sean M, that's not my understanding of how it's written. I believe you're supposed to lift Mon/Tue/Wed/Thu/Fri the first week, take off Sat/Sun, lift Mon the next week - and now you're up to 6 sessions, so Tuesday becomes your 80%. Then you lift Wed/Thu/Fri/Mon/Tue/Wed for your next six days, and Thursday of the following week is your 85% day. And so on. As you've described what you're doing, you're lifting 6 days out of 7, not 5 days out of 7.

-S-
My bad, I misread it and ran it wrong my first time! :confused:

It's confusing because the table has the weight jumps on day 7, 14, etc. which I took as "once a week", e.g. 5+1 heavier+1 rest for 6 weeks, then a week leading up to a new 1RM. But counting it up I only did 36 sessions through the 92% session, instead of 92% being day 42 as the program.

I can now see that it is really saying "Train 5 days in every 7; every 7th day, increase the weight for that session, then resume sessions at 75% until day 14." So it should really take 9 weeks (I like the idea of weekends off, or if I have to miss a day during the week because of life, I can pick it up (literally!) on the weekend).

Well...I wonder how much more I could've gained if I had actually done the 45 sessions instead of 36! (45 extra lifts) Guess we'll find out this time when I do it correctly :D
 
In my case I'm more interested in attaining and maintaining a certain strength level rather than pushing the weight up higher and higher. 280lbs may even be a bit higher than I need. For judo I need to be able to move another competitor, and I don't expect to meet many as heavy as that.
 
In my case I'm more interested in attaining and maintaining a certain strength level rather than pushing the weight up higher and higher. 280lbs may even be a bit higher than I need. For judo I need to be able to move another competitor, and I don't expect to meet many as heavy as that.
You cannot imagine how much stronger you will feel - and be! - when you’ve deadlifted heavier. Make your “certain strength level” meet the SFL standard, and stop there if you wish.

-S-
 
For judo I need to be able to move another competitor, and I don't expect to meet many as heavy as that.

This gets into that whole transferability of barbell strength and how strong is strong enough. A person qualifies as an "awkward object" so lifting a 200 lbs. human is not the same as lifting a 200 lbs. deadlift.

Have you considered learning how to do the clean pull? This will allow you to work on explosive strength which, I would imagine, would benefit your sport.
 
280lbs may even be a bit higher than I need. For judo I need to be able to move another competitor, and I don't expect to meet many as heavy as that.
IIRC you're quite tall and weight north of 200lbs, right? That would make you either a half-heavyweight (90-100Kg) or heavyweight (100+Kg). Logically your opponents will weigh 90Kg/200lbs or more.
Lifting 280 or even 300lbs on a perfectly balanced bar is entirely different than lifting a 200+lbs "meatbag". It's much more difficult even if it's ~100lbs less weight.
Can you pick up a big 250lbs sandbag and shoulder it for 3-5reps? If yes, you're probably "strong enough" to move other people around.

From my own experience I can say that 2x bodyweight really is a turning point. Going from 1x BW to 2x BW made me feel so much stronger. I can't really put this in numbers, but everything in life and the gym became easier.
Recently I went from 2.1x BW to 2.46x BW and subjectively that made no difference other than I could deadlift more.
I think it's the same for many people and comes from a huge body of anectdotal evidence that 2x BW is a good goal to aim for.


I know that judo is a lot different than wrestling and doesn't require that much max strength, but just to give you an example what kind of strength is needed to really move other people around.
Below is a vid of Alexander Karelin and his signature throw. All of his opponents weighed 225+lbs.
You get different information about his barbell lifts, but somewhere Pavel said that Karelin was able to zercher deadlift 440lbs for reps. And we all know that the zercher DL is much more difficult than a regular one.
It still doesn't look "easy" for him.
 
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Get yourself as strong as you can be without stepping over into a strength specialization. Continue to practice your sport. If you find that being strong enough to throw your opponents around the arena is something you don't care for, I'll give you your money back.
 
I know that judo is a lot different than wrestling and doesn't require that much max strength, but just to give you an example what kind of strength is needed to really move other people around.

Judo has the jacket so you can tug a bit on it and if the guy doesn't take a step in that direction he'll topple over. There isn't anything quite like this in wrestling, and this is what makes judo more technique and less strength driven. The problem is that when you get two guys who know the unbalancing tricks, the winner can only win by embroiling his opponent in a very tricky and confusing mess of moves and take advantage of a momentary lapse. It takes strength, endurance and speed for this, but the worst thing is that it takes lots of thoughtful, strategic training under coaches who are very experienced.

I fight in the over 100kg category.
 
For those of you who are looking for "strong enough", do you not love lifting? Don't you love it when you stand on the platform, look at the heavy barbell with all the plates before you fix your gaze on the horizon, get really tense, slowly lower to the bar, latch your fingers around it, take the final breath, wedge yourself between the bar and the ground and then come up with it in one triumphant movement? Isn't that one of the best feelings in the World?
 
For those of you who are looking for "strong enough", do you not love lifting? Don't you love it when you stand on the platform, look at the heavy barbell with all the plates before you fix your gaze on the horizon, get really tense, slowly lower to the bar, latch your fingers around it, take the final breath, wedge yourself between the bar and the ground and then come up with it in one triumphant movement? Isn't that one of the best feelings in the World?

For someone who likes strength as I do, this is like reading porn!

What I have found as I get older is that there really is no reason to intentionally limit how strong you get. And while I understand that some prefer to limit how much muscle they gain, there is also no reason to intentionally limit muscle gain either. Life has a way of doing this for you. Strength is difficult to build and muscle even more so, but both are easy to lose. If you combine a busy and stressful job with past injuries, getting those annoying colds here and there, and the inevitable advance of age, and you will not get too strong or too big.
 
I bought two more 25lbs plates. I've got my bar up to 300lbs now and I just did a set of 5 reps with about 30 seconds in between each rep. I have enough plates now to take the bar up to 330lbs which is nearly exactly 1.5 times my bodyweight, which is 225lbs almost exactly. Steve wrote that the SF standard is to do 5 reps at 1.5 times your bodyweight (presumably without 30 secondbreaks in between of course). For now 450lbs seems out of this world, so I'm not taking any risks yet. However, when I build up strength I'll keep going up in weight I suppose. For the time being my goal will be to do 5 reps at 330lbs.
 
For now 450lbs seems out of this world, so I'm not taking any risks yet. However, when I build up strength I'll keep going up in weight I suppose.

I don't know if you did deadlifts before and took a long break or never did them, but either way you're now somewhat of a "newbie" to deadlifts. This is a good thing. I predict that you will see large improvements over the next several weeks due to "newbie gains." Sadly, these will stop, but enjoy them while they last. Glad you got more plates. Load up that bar and milk those newbie gains.
 
I don't know if you did deadlifts before and took a long break or never did them, but either way you're now somewhat of a "newbie" to deadlifts. This is a good thing. I predict that you will see large improvements over the next several weeks due to "newbie gains." Sadly, these will stop, but enjoy them while they last. Glad you got more plates. Load up that bar and milk those newbie gains.
Well, with two years of S&S under my belt, maybe one of the WTH effects was to be able to jump into deadlifting and find myself already lifting 300lbs without hurting myself. 450lbs still seems insane though. The 5 reps at 330lbs though I'm sure I can do already! If that's part of the SF test then I'm already there. Maybe my 1 rep max would already be 450lbs, but I'm too worried about injury to want to try it yet. I'm going to throw in that my judo strength is better now due to deadlifting almost 1.5 times my bodyweight.
 
Well, with two years of S&S under my belt, maybe one of the WTH effects was to be able to jump into deadlifting and find myself already lifting 300lbs without hurting myself. 450lbs still seems insane though. The 5 reps at 330lbs though I'm sure I can do already! If that's part of the SF test then I'm already there. Maybe my 1 rep max would already be 450lbs, but I'm too worried about injury to want to try it yet. I'm going to throw in that my judo strength is better now due to deadlifting almost 1.5 times my bodyweight.

You're doing great, keep it up.
 
For the barbell SF requirements, it says 5 reps at 1.5 bodyweight for "technique" and 2X boyweights 1 rep for strength. Does this mean that being able to do 5 reps at 1.5 bodyweight is not making me strong enough? I sort of don't understand it.
 
@Kozushi
Do not focus on StrongFirst certification requirements. They are not standards, they are minimum levels that are expected from instructors, when they pass the cert.
Before reaching this level, anyway, we had to do 5 reps with less weights.

The absolute weight on the bar does not matter that much. The quality of the rep does. Your are doing well, do not overthink.
It's all relative, anyway. One man's big deadlift is another's warmup.
 
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