I’ve learned a lot about the Catalyst Athletics crowd since I’ve been writing articles for Performance Menu over the last two years. Some of the things I’ve learned have come from reading the forums on the Catalyst website and checking out what people are talking about, and I’ve picked up other things through the connections I’ve been able to make in recent months with people in "the network." When I talk about "the network," I’m referring to people who are Catalyst readers, WOD followers, and lots of other people who like to blend the Olympic Lifts with several different forms of training to gain strength. I’m really enjoying you network folks, and there is one interesting (and refreshing) fact that I’ve been able to observe.

You guys like the deadlift.

It seems like every time I read something from the Weightlifting & Powerlifting forum on the website, there’s a thread where people are discussing the deadlift. You people love it, and I can’t say I blame you. The deadlift was my first love in the iron game. Well... maybe not my first love. I guess the bench press was actually my first love. But my bench press love wasn’t real love. I know that now. My bench press love was like the love you have for a high school girlfriend. It’s not true love, but it seems like it at the time because you’re getting a lot of cool immediate rewards. And likewise, it wasn’t until after I had wasted a lot of time and energy on my bench-press-first-love-not-really-but-it-seemed-like-it that I finally discovered the deadlift. And the love for the deadlift is the love that lasts a lifetime.



Now, everybody and their crippled grandmother has written an article about the deadlift. If you’ve been around strength sports long enough and done plenty of reading, you’ve probably heard a lot about technique, training methods, benefits and hazards, etc. of the deadlift. Regardless, I’m going to write a deadlift article anyway because I am absolutely positive that I can give you some information that will benefit you, and I’ll bet my medulla oblongata that some of it will be stuff you haven’t thought about before. Nobody has been this confident since Johnny Cochran. So whether you’re an Olympic lifter, generalist, strength coach, powerlifter, or human being who wants to live a better life, read on and soak up the knowledge.

Why do we love it so?

As most of you know, the deadlift is one of the three competitive lifts in the sport of powerlifting. Several phenomenal world record lifts have been pulled since powerlifting became an organized sport decades ago, from Lamar Gant’s 688 pound pull at 132 bodyweight to the heaviest deadlift of all time, Andy Bolton’s 1008 pounder. That’s right. Human beings have lifted those weights. Some people have called the deadlift "the best overall test of a person’s true strength level that can be performed with a barbell." I agree with this. When a person is locking out a heavy deadlift, there are very few things in the world that will give the same feeling of complete physical exertion.

If you follow powerlifting at all, you know that the last twenty years has seen an explosion of supportive gear in the sport. Canvas squat suits and denim bench press shirts have been invented that have allowed powerlifters to add 200-300 pounds on these lifts through the supportive slingshot effect they provide. Many people (myself included) believe that this equipment has gotten totally out of control and blemished the sport. However, nobody has ever been able to find a piece of supportive gear that adds tons of phony pounds to the deadlift. Sure, some lifters wear supportive suits in the deadlift that are fashioned much like the squat suits, but their effect on the lift is generally considered minimal. In fact, many of the top lifters in the world still pull their competitive deadlifts in regular wrestling singlets because the supportive suits don’t help that much. This situation has allowed the deadlift to remain relatively pure in terms of comparison of the top numbers from thirty years ago and the top numbers of the world’s current best. While the squats and deadlifts from the 70s and 80s have been left in the dust by today’s supportive-gear-enhanced lifters, the deadlifts of former icons like Vince Anello and John Kuc still stack up today as some of the finest pulls in history.

One of the things about the deadlift that I personally find interesting is the fact that it seems to be the one major strength lift that people can still perform fairly well in old age. We all know that our strength starts to go downhill as we get older. That’s not a news flash. But if you spend enough time in strength sports and do enough reading, you’ll notice that some lifts go downhill faster than others as we get older. The Olympic Lifts, unfortunately, are some of the prime culprits in this dilemma. The snatch and the clean and jerk rely on explosive power and flexibility, which are two areas that don’t hang around long once the gray hair starts to pop up. Don’t get me wrong, there are still thousands of old masters weightlifters in the world who are performing the Olympic Lifts into their fifties and sixties (and older!). But the poundages take a major nose dive and the technique of a sixty year-old lifter is usually much slower than a twenty year-old (no offense meant; anybody who is still snatching at sixty is a god in my eyes). The same thing holds true for squatting and bench pressing, because the knees and the shoulders often don’t hold up well to all the pounding and compression as the years pass.

However, the deadlift has some interesting features that seem to make it a more favorable lift for geriatrics. It’s probably because it’s easier on the knees and shoulders than the aforementioned squats and Olympic Lifts, and the nature of the lift increases postural core strength. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. At a recent powerlifting contest in Florida, 64 year-old Bob Gaynor pulled a 680 pound deadlift in the 198 pound weight class. Yeah, seriously... The current all-time world record in the 198 pound class is 859 by Ed Coan. That means Bob’s lift is 79% of the biggest lift in history in his weight class, and he’s 64. Believe me brothers and sisters, there are no 64 year-old Olympic Lifters who are snatching or clean and jerking 79% of the world record. The current clean and jerk world record in the 208 pound weight class is 510 pounds by Poland’s Simon Kolecki. 79% of that record would be 403 pounds. Try to find a 64 year-old who is clean and jerking 403 pounds. You’ll have better luck looking for the Loch Ness Monster.

Of course we all know that there aren’t a whole lot of Bob Gaynors running around in the world. Bob is a freak of nature, no doubt about it. But if you read Powerlifting USA magazine and look at the meet results section, you will routinely see lifters in their fifties and sixties who are still pulling well over 500 pounds. I just competed in a powerlifting meet last weekend where two men in the 60-64 age group pulled well over 500 and another lifter in the 50-54 group did 589. And speaking of that meet I lifted in last week, I think I might have figured out a training secret that has allowed these old geezers to keep yanking big iron. Wanna know what it is?

Heavy singles?

I decided to try a little experiment at this recent meet. Before I tell you how it worked, let me give you some background. Throughout my lifting career, I have always trained the deadlift by deadlifting heavy... plain and simple. When I did my biggest deadlift (672 pounds) back in 2003, I was deadlifting once a week and basically always performing doubles and singles in the 620-650 range. I didn’t do much high-rep training and, because I was only 31 at the time, my body handled it pretty well.



Now, I’m 38 and it’s just really damn hard to pull maximum singles and doubles every week. I’ve found that at this age, heavy deadlifts take a few weeks to fully recover from. My recovery time isn’t nearly as good as it used to be, and having a full-time job makes it really tough to have a lot of energy at the end of the day when I hit the gym. So when I decided to compete in a powerlifting meet recently, I made a decision to experiment with my training a little. First, I established a goal for how much I wanted to pull at the meet. Considering where I am in my lifting life right now, I set 570 pounds as the goal. I had knee surgery back in June and I pulled a tough 545 six weeks later, so 570 looked like a weight that would make me happy for now. Then, I decided that I was only going to use sets of five reps with lighter weights in training because my body just won’t take the pounding of heavy singles and doubles right now. So I calculated out how much I needed to pull for a set of five reps to give me a projected one-rep max (1RM) of 570. I used the following formula:

I wish I could take credit for inventing this mathematical equation, but I can’t. I’ve read it in various places over the years. I most recently read it in Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 book. You multiply a certain weight by how many reps you complete, then multiply that number by 0.0333, then add the original weight to that number, and the result is your projected 1RM. For me, it calculated like this:

This meant that I needed to pull 490 for a set of five reps to put my projected 1RM at approximately 570. And that’s what I did. I used a simple progressive overload program for eight weeks and then, three weeks before the meet, I pulled 490x5 and that was the heaviest weight in attempted in training. It was a challenging set, but definitely not the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

When I came to the meet, I pulled 501 on my first attempt, 551 on my second, and then finished with 567 on my third attempt. The weight was difficult, but probably not even in the top five toughest deadlifts I’ve ever pulled. I could have done 573 or maybe 578, probably not much more. So the formula was very accurate, and I was able to hit a big lift in competition without wrecking myself in training. I’m already planning to use this method again. My next goal is to get back to a 600 pound pull, and the formula says I’ll need to do 515x5 to hit a 600 pound 1RM. We’ll see how it goes. Those of you who want to improve in the deadlift might want to give this method a try. It worked for me.

Other musings...

Here are some rapid fire ideas for you:

Question: What is the best assistance exercise for the deadlift?
Answer: The squat

Question: Can you make progress in the deadlift without heavy squatting?
Answer: Yes, but you’ll make more progress if you’re increasing your squat strength.

Question: What are the most important technique tips for the deadlift?
Answer: 1) Try to keep your back flat 2) Think about pushing down on the floor instead of pulling up on the bar.

Question: Will heavy deadlifting cause back problems?
Answer: If you use good technique and train correctly, there is very low risk of back trouble.

Question: Is it bad to pull with a rounded back?
Answer: In my opinion, yes. There’s only one Konstantin Konstantinovs, and you’re not him.

Question: Do heavy deadlifts improve your Olympic Lifts?
Answer: Not really. Heavy deadlifts are slow, and weightlifting is a speed sport. Snatch and clean pulls are much more effective tools to improve in the Olympic Lifts. Of course it’s worth mentioning that there are some good lifters who occasionally use deadlifts, but the vast majority don’t do them.

Question: Is abdominal work important in the training of the deadlift?
Answer: Absolutely. It’s important in everything, period.

These days, everybody wants something that will keep them feeling young. Women run to Botox; men run to Viagra. Nobody wants to feel old, so they’ll do practically anything to keep feeling young. So let’s agree that there are few things in the world that make a person feel older than a sore lower back. How many of us can think back to when we were kids and we watched our dads grunt like rhinos when they stood up out of their recliners? Their fat guts were pulling their lower vertebrae out of whack, and they let the whole house know about it when they had to get on their feet. Then we go to the airport and see the poor old people who are wheeling their luggage across the terminal with permanent curvature in the spine. It’s rough to look at.

I don’t know everything about the solar system, but I would just bet that most of these people didn’t incorporate a sensible lifting program into their lives. I would even guess that many of these same people spent most of their lives telling others that lifting heavy weights was bad for your back. You probably don’t hear those comments from Bob Gaynor. Deadlifting is a terrific exercise for increasing strength and having fun in training, and I’ll even say that it can make your golden years more golden if find ways to keep training it productively.

We talked about love in the beginning of this article, so think about being in love with somebody and then apply the same principles to your deadlift training. As the years go by, you have to think of creative ways to tolerate each other if you want the relationship to stay alive. The same thing goes for deadlifting. Think outside the box and don’t ever give up, and before you know it you’ll be seventy years old with strong spinal erectors and smiling like Peppy McHappystein.