Old Forum deadlift ?s

[Dan Anderson]

A liitle background: In October I began my first consistent and serious go at barbell training.  I have been running 5/3/1.  I have made very good gains in all of my lifts, but my deadlift seems to be coming along the slowest.  For those of you familar with 531, i have not had to reset my numbers since starting, which has been fun. About 10 weeks into the program I pulled 500.  This was not a true max but was close.  Now, roughly 36 weeks later, I cant say I feel a whole lot stronger in my DL, despite training with weights that are a decent amount heavier than I was 36 weeks ago. Im stronger for sure, just not quite were I thought I would be.   If I  had to give a very realistic guess I would say that I can pull 520-530.  A few thoughts:

1. Maybe I have/had more room to improve on my other 3 lifts.

2.  I know I still have not found my perfect groove in the DL .

3.  Pulled 500 working off of a training max of 380.   Now training max (this is the number I currently

base my % off of) is 490.  This makes me wonder if it might be time to cycle back down despite the fact I can still hit all of my required reps somewhat easily.  I was training  lighter a while back and I still got stronger.

3.  Gains are just slow.

Thoughts?  I know there is not a specific question asked.

 

[Journeyman]

Not a specific answer, but some more things to think about if you haven't already:

1. Maybe. What's happened to your other lifts--gone up, and by how much?

2. Very possible.

3. If you can still hit all your target numbers 'easily' (what does this mean for you, in terms of RPE--how many reps are in the tank?) then I wouldn't back-cycle just yet. Might as well ride the wave as long as you can. That said, 36 weeks is a very long time to run a somewhat linear cycle, even with a deload every 4th week, so I'd back off at the first sign of getting stale if you are going to stay on the program.

4. It's called becoming more advanced... progress won't be a straight line forever.~30lb on your 1RM in 36 weeks is good progress for a simple, non-specialized program. No, it's not where you want to be (where is that?) but progress is progress and not worth complaining about, imo.

How much do you weigh and how tall are you? Good leverages for deadlift (very long arms)? Conventional or sumo? Do you do your reps dead-stopped, or touch and go? What was your deadlift experience/training when you pulled the 380, and how close to a true 1RM was that?