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Barbell Dead lift - Grease the Groove Question

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Hogan Simon

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Hi everyone. I work from home and have a small gym in my garage. I want to know if this would be a proper and worthwhile application of grease the groove for dead lift.

If I set a timer for 15 minutes and every time it went off I walked to my garage and did a 5-rep set of dead lift, every day of the week, would that be a good protocol to follow?

Thanks!
 
Wow, that would be a TON of deadlifting.

I actually have not heard of using GTG for deadlift, though I suppose it could be done. If so, I'd be more inclined to pull MUCH less than that -- maybe a single at 50% of your 1RM maybe once every few hours for a total of 3 or 4 total pulls each day.

Curious to hear other thoughts on this.
 
Thanks Anna, appreciate your perspective. Maybe I need to consider backing off a little. I do 2 pull-ups every 15 minutes currently every day when I work, which is my first application of GTG.
 
You may try it, but every 15minutes seems like a lot of deadlifting. Like Anna said be conservative with the weights. Greasing the groove with two movements might ok or too much .....try it and see how you respond to it. Listen to your body
 
I'll second @Anna C 's response, although I think you could probably do:
  • A set of 8-10 every hour at 50-60% 1RM (sort of Even Easier Strength-like (EES)), or
  • A set of 3-5 every hour or two at 60-75% 1RM (sort of Easy Strength-like (ES))
Even better, vary the timing in the spirit of PlanStrong... Roll a die in the morning:
  • Shows 1, lift every 60 min
  • Shows 2-3, lift every 120 min
  • Shows 4-6, lift every 90 min
Or something like that. If you roll the same number as the previous day, re-roll. (You could also roll a second and/or third time to determine % and reps, but that's probably getting fancier than what you had intended and also probably isn't necessary.)

Remember to include mobility drills too (at least at the end of the day) as that *is* a lot of pulling.
 
GTG DL, which I have played with, actually needs to find the sweet spot in terms of weight, and it's generally on the heavy side. Start with 70% and see how you do. Maybe 3 singles at a time, maybe once a day to start for few days, then twice a day for a while. I have heard of people GTG'ing with singles as high as 90% - it's very individual.

Build up the volume only gradually, be very alert for lower back soreness and take a day off now and then.

Buuuuut, perhaps you can give us some more information about your athletic/training background, injury history, current pursuits, and reasons for wanting to try this kind of training.

-S-
 
Thanks everyone, as always, great ideas here.

Steve, I am a decent athlete. 6'4", 195 lbs. 42 Yrs old. Been working out for a long time now. I am somewhat new to the strongfirst ideas but I like them a lot as it is something new in many respects.

Been doing kettlebell based training for 2 years; have seen Phil Scarito a few times; smart guy.

I am hoping the GTG dead lift approach will make me stronger for golf (I play a lot, and these days you HAVE to be an athlete to be any good).

Thanks!
 
It might be wise for the OP to read Pavel’s PTTP before undertaking his proposed GTG deadlift program.

The math is scary: The OP will perform a set every 15 minutes, which is 4 sets of deadlifts an hour. I’ll assume that the OP sleeps 10 hours a day (and I have no basis for that assumption) so that he’ll perform 4 sets per hour for 14 hours a day.

That’s 4 x 14, or 56 sets of deadlifts a day, and since he’s considering doing this “every day of the week,” that’s 56 x 7, or 392 sets of deadlifts a week.

And with sets of 5, that’s 5 x 392, or 1,960 deadlifts a week.

I think most of us experiment with programs, and eventually modify or adapt them to best suit ourselves, and that can be a good thing.

But Pavel’s PTTP program is really, really good, and the maximum he recommends is 20 sets (p. 44), although he points out that gains can be made with as few as 2 sets (pp. 18-20).

Deadlifts are a great exercise, but I don’t believe that “if some is good, more is better” is an effective approach to them.

But - - since the OP has found a job that allows him to take 4 breaks an hour, he may be a lot smarter than me! ;)
 
@Steve Freides :
Thanks for your experiences.

Playing with the thought of GTG deadlifts for a while now, but till now I have no clue how a time efficient warm up could be structured for GTG deadlifts. Any tips?

Tried 70% GTG for a day every hour without warmup and had much more soreness than after a real heavy session. Usually I do a whole body warm up, deadlift 3x5 or 5x5 and than start my KB practice.
 
Please reread my earlier suggestion. Try once a day for a while, then twice a day for a while, and so on. Perhaps start with our popular Daily Dose Deadlift.

There is something about the deadlift that, for me and I think it’s also fair to say for most others, makes it play by different rules in some regards than just about any other lift. Take it easy.

-S-
 
Grease the Groove is a good way to build volume in exercises in which your current capability makes it impossible to accumulate adequate stress to create an adaptation. Many of the body weight exercises fall into this category. It’s hard to do 3 sets of 5 pull-ups when you can’t do 3 pull-ups. So, do 2 pull-ups several times a day in order to amass adequate stress to create a strength adaptation. Another example might be a bell you can only press once. So do multiple sets of 1 spread widely across time.

None of the barbell lifts suffer from this inability to make the load meet the desired rep range, so you’re able to simply program in this case the deadlift with adequate stress to disrupt homeostasis all in one go and move on with your day.
 
Bill Been said:
Grease the Groove is a good way to build volume in exercises in which your current capability makes it impossible to accumulate adequate stress to create an adaptation. Many of the body weight exercises fall into this category. It’s hard to do 3 sets of 5 pull-ups when you can’t do 3 pull-ups. So, do 2 pull-ups several times a day in order to amass adequate stress to create a strength adaptation. Another example might be a bell you can only press once. So do multiple sets of 1 spread widely across time.

None of the barbell lifts suffer from this inability to make the load meet the desired rep range, so you’re able to simply program in this case the deadlift with adequate stress to disrupt homeostasis all in one go and move on with your day.
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I don't think it's as simple as that.

First of all, doing all of the training of a single exercise at a single time definitely works. For some a time a week or two may be enough.

However, I think there certainly is value in doing some part of the training as fresh as possible for as much of the training as possible. In this sense the GTG approach works well.

The GTG approach also enables a trainee to train more. And generally, more is better. It likely is far less convenient, but that is another matter.


Myself, I have great experience from GTG training with kettlebells. I have not tried it with the barbell due to the convenience factor, but I have done high frequency deadlifts and have found it useful and the workload recoverable. I plan on trying the GTG deadlifts in the near future when I get our home gym in ordern
 
Antti said:
I don't think it's as simple as that.
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Agreed 100%. There are differences in training regimens, both in how they effect the rest of one's life and it what sort of results they bring.

-S-
 
Hogan Simon said:
Hi everyone. I work from home and have a small gym in my garage. I want to know if this would be a proper and worthwhile application of grease the groove for dead lift.

If I set a timer for 15 minutes and every time it went off I walked to my garage and did a 5-rep set of dead lift, every day of the week, would that be a good protocol to follow?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You might try something like one set a day with a barbell and then the one leg deadlift or a kettlebell deadlift in high GTG volume might build up accessory strength or form. I got some benefit from doing squats with just a dowel to dial in my form. I found it better than bodyweight squats because I imagined and gripped the dowel like it was heavier. GTG is intended to be primarily neurological as far as I understand. You don't want a fried CNS as Steve has said.
 
I have not done GTG DL, but I think Daily Dose comes close to it and I've had very good results with that. I would do a couple reps at any point of the day, sometimes before going for a run. This can be done in a very short amount of time, and since I keep getting stronger doing it, I see no reason (for me) to add volume.

I'm curious what the motivation is for GTGing it?
 
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