Ok, so the training cycle before this last one, I hammered the shit out of romanian deadlifts (as a supplemental exercise in a westside template) and it put 35 pounds on my squat, and 55 pounds on my deadlift.
So I switched up the rep ranges and hammered the shit out of romanian deadlits in the same manner this cycle and it put 40 pounds on my squat this time around but I wasn’t even able to hit my PR from last cycle of 500 lbs.
I deadlift conventional and I’m just barely able to pop the weight off the floor. The only thing I noticed about this training cycle was that I didn’t do as much quad work this cycle as I did in the last one and I think weak quads might be responsible for me not being able to get the weight off the floor. My posterior chain is obviously stronger because I hit a rather large PR in the squat.
Anyone suspect that my quads might be holding me back?
But you hit a new PR in the squat, and the squat uses way more quads than the DL, especially since you DL conventional. If quad strength were the cause, you would not have hit a PR in the squat. Granted, in the squat you can take advantage of the stretch reflex while in the DL you can’t, but still, it makes no sense that your squat went up 40 lbs. and your DL stayed the same if the issue were quad strength.
I like the RDL myself, but I also noticed that after doing lots of RDL I would have trouble breaking the weight from the floor in a conventional DL (I now lift sumo). I think it’s because the RDL starts from the top position, so you can use the stretch reflex in the RDL. I think doing all those RDLs got you spoiled into taking advantage of your stretch reflex and you lost some of your starting strength that lets you pull a dead weight off the floor. The only cure for that is to do some old fashioned DLs from the floor. Do them standing on some plates or a box so you need to pull from a deficit. You can also try to bottoms up (also called “dead stop”) squats. Set the bar on pins at about the position where you hit bottom on your squat. Crawl under the bar and lift. You won’t be able to use nearly as much weight as with a regular squat.
Hmm, well I squat with a fairly wide stance and I have noticeably underdeveloped quads from doing so for so long. I only recently switch from sumo to conventional. I might be wrong, but it’s my feeling that the way I squat uses less quad strength than my deadlift. I sit way back on my glutes and hamstrings, and I pop out of the hole with my hip adductors. I dunno though, you may be right.
I’m gonna try out trap bar deads stranding on a box to bring up my starting strength.