Alright, so I've been working out for about 2 years, after taking more than 10 years off from it and gaining a ton of weight. I've made some good progress. I'm not trying to get anywhere overnight and if I hit my ultimate goal in 3 more years I am OK with that.
As my name implies, I am a big fan of HIT/Mentzer routines and I've had good success with this. I have tried different splits, volumes and frequencies, using the HIT principles as guidelines and I have found that my best results seem to come when I perform 2 sets/exercise and 2-3 exercises/body part, in general - and follow a 4 day split of:
Monday: Legs
Tuesday : Chest & Biceps
Wednesday: off
Thursday: Back
Friday: Shoulders & Triceps
My back workout is as follows:
Deadlifts: 1 warm-up set and 2 sets to failure, typically doing a drop set on the second set.
Pull Ups : 3 sets (I can only get 2-3 reps after deadlifts so I do extra sets)
Bent-Over Rows: 2 sets to failure
Under-Handed Pull Downs: 2 sets to failure.
So what is happening is that I was deadlifting about 415 pounds for 6-7 reps about 4-5 weeks ago. I increased the weight to 435 and I could get 3 reps. The following week I got 4 reps. Ever since, it's been declining. Last week I did 2 reps and this week I did 2 reps (although I almost got a 3rd) on the first set.
The thing is, I feel like I really had a great workout last week and expected to come back stronger. I did 2 reps, and then did drop sets all the way down to 335 pounds (3 drops). My back felt pumped for 2 days after.
My question is, how often do you guys train deadlifts? Do you think training this exercise with high intensity every week is too often? Have any of you dropped back to every 2 weeks and if so, did you notice improvement in just your deadlift, or did it maybe have an impact on your other muscle groups improving? And finally, I were to train them every other week, would you think doing deadlifts week one and doing NOTHING week 2 would be better than doing heavy, to failure deadlifts on week one, and then lower weight with higher volume week two?
One of my other thoughts is that my ego is just in the way, since I jumped the weight and the reps were slightly lower than I normally like. I am normally in the 4-10 rep range and this is obviously just below. On deads, I normally don't go above 8 reps...what rep ranges do you like to be in?
As my name implies, I am a big fan of HIT/Mentzer routines and I've had good success with this. I have tried different splits, volumes and frequencies, using the HIT principles as guidelines and I have found that my best results seem to come when I perform 2 sets/exercise and 2-3 exercises/body part, in general - and follow a 4 day split of:
Monday: Legs
Tuesday : Chest & Biceps
Wednesday: off
Thursday: Back
Friday: Shoulders & Triceps
My back workout is as follows:
Deadlifts: 1 warm-up set and 2 sets to failure, typically doing a drop set on the second set.
Pull Ups : 3 sets (I can only get 2-3 reps after deadlifts so I do extra sets)
Bent-Over Rows: 2 sets to failure
Under-Handed Pull Downs: 2 sets to failure.
So what is happening is that I was deadlifting about 415 pounds for 6-7 reps about 4-5 weeks ago. I increased the weight to 435 and I could get 3 reps. The following week I got 4 reps. Ever since, it's been declining. Last week I did 2 reps and this week I did 2 reps (although I almost got a 3rd) on the first set.
The thing is, I feel like I really had a great workout last week and expected to come back stronger. I did 2 reps, and then did drop sets all the way down to 335 pounds (3 drops). My back felt pumped for 2 days after.
My question is, how often do you guys train deadlifts? Do you think training this exercise with high intensity every week is too often? Have any of you dropped back to every 2 weeks and if so, did you notice improvement in just your deadlift, or did it maybe have an impact on your other muscle groups improving? And finally, I were to train them every other week, would you think doing deadlifts week one and doing NOTHING week 2 would be better than doing heavy, to failure deadlifts on week one, and then lower weight with higher volume week two?
One of my other thoughts is that my ego is just in the way, since I jumped the weight and the reps were slightly lower than I normally like. I am normally in the 4-10 rep range and this is obviously just below. On deads, I normally don't go above 8 reps...what rep ranges do you like to be in?