High Rep Deadlifts

I have looked into The Cube Method and watched loads of videos around Brandon Lilly’s views on it and due to the nature of the programme including a rep day, speed day and heavy day, I was wondering whether high rep deadlifts would be beneficial or detrimental to training?

The only reason I ask is because of a video I watched of Dave Tate a while back, saying that deadlifting at an extremely high intensity (i.e 1RM or high reps with medium to high weight)can take up to two weeks for your body to fully recover from it. He did say it wouldn’t neccessarily impact your other sessions e.g squat and bench, but that it may impact your deadlift day the following session(s) until you recover…just wondering how everyone else views this?

You seem to have asked about both high rep and high intensity? Obviously these two are at opposite ends of the spectrum so which one do you want to know about? Or you just wanting to compare and decide which is better?

As far as high intensity deadlifts go, I personally love them and think as far as powerlifting training goes they help me a ton. However obviously the closer you’re getting to your 1RM the less total reps you’re gonna get in and the more it might impact on your training, however I am still managing to pull heavy every week without it seeming to negatively effect the next weeks session, although I think some people have talked about the guys pulling big numbers not being able to deadlift heavy with as much frequency, but once again it all depends on your recovery and experience level.

I don’t have much experience with high rep deadlifts because personally I hate them, I do however do ‘high’ rep (10 reps) stiff legged defecit deadlifts as a way of trying to build up my lower back and hamstring muscles. My reasoning for this is that with high rep deadlifts my form will tend to go to shit and its one of those things that because you’re using a lighter weight your form will almost definitely be different to your form when using close to 1RM weight. Hence why I like to do heavy as fuck cluster style deadlifts as my actual deadlift training, because that’s going to emulate my form in a competition more closely.

Hope that makes sense and I kind of answered what you were asking?

5’s are about as high as I go. I save the high reps for the assistance stuff.

If you’re training strictly for powerlifting, you can probably get away with never doing more than 5 reps in a given set on deadlift. I personally do high reps (10+) about once a month because it’s relevant to Strongman competitions. It’s great for conditioning as well. My training has never suffered from doing high rep sets at a frequency of once a month, or even at every other week. You can take that for what it’s worth, as I’m not particularly strong, but I’ve done 15 reps@ 405 and not been hindered in my training the next week.

cheers for the replies guys…

rusty92 : I was wondering more about the high reps end of the spectrum. Good point about the form issue though, I actually did them today and noticed after about the 3rd rep that my form was completely different. I too enjoy just lifting heavy on deadlifts more than any other lift, just didnt know if throwing some high rep stuff would be like shock training and cause my body to become stronger as a result. what’s the most you’ve pulled if you don’t mind me asking?

Alrightmiami19c : that’s similar to how I was training to be honest, do you compete?

flipcollar : yeah I was thinking about using them from a conditioning perspective, like I said, I did them today and f*ck me, don’t think I’ve ever been that worn out after an exercise with exception of doing a 1RM!
Might take that on board though and try and include them once a month.

[quote]JMallon95 wrote:
cheers for the replies guys…

Alrightmiami19c : that’s similar to how I was training to be honest, do you compete?

[/quote]

I’ve only done one meet (November 2013). Hurt myself a week after and I have been trying to get back since. Finally feeling good again and will be doing a meet in January.

BTW, the reason I don’t go over 5’s usually on deadlifts isn’t due to some article or study or anything. I have just found in the past few years that I respond better to low reps with deadlifts, particularly 3’s. You may be the complete opposite and see great results with high reps.

Im a powerlifter and I never pull over 5-6 reps. I just take my deadlift in mini cycles
week1: pick a weight I can do 3x5 deadstop
week2: pull sumo or conv (the opposite of the previous week) up to one set around 80-85% then work on weakness (pause dl, SSB)
week3: 3x3 +50lbs of week 1 weight
week4: same as week 2 adding 20-25lbs on top set.
week5: 2x2 +25lbs of week 3 weight
week6: light dl or none at all, start over week 7 with 3x5 +15-20lbs

JMallon95 the most I’ve pulled is 528, but I’m going to pull 572 in my next meet on 30th November even if it kills me. Haven’t done a 1RM for a while now, but last Thursday I did a total of 6 singles with 517 with 1 minute rest between them so I feel safe to say my max is more than 11lbs higher than that. Obviously everyone respond differently but I like to do higher rep rack pulls with shrugs at the top and defecit stiff legged deadlifts and keep the low rep stuff to the full deadlift, but as people have already said, what works for someone might not work for everybody else, so it’s worth playing around and seeing what works best for you!

Alrightmiami19c: ah man…bet that was sh*t. Hope you do well in january…which weight class are you competing in?
yeah I understand, not too sure what works best for me yet, not been training for too long ya see so I think I’m just gonna experiment with different things.

cparker: sounds good, did you come up with the mini cycle yourself through training? what’s your total?

pulled 650

my deadlift routine as of late goes like this

start with a deadlift that i can t&g for 20+, add 25-50 pounds a week til the reps go under 6 - assistance is heavy

then take a deload

then heavy top set for 3 to 5 reps and high rep assistance

basically, high rep t&g deads do two things they keep me fresher(deadlift 3 times a week) and fixed my lockout problem…high rep deadstop deads have always burned me out (deadlift once a week) after using them for 3 weeks or more

I usually just follow 531 for DL never taking reps over 3 in one set. Just following Jim’s recommendation.

I love doing Sadiv Sets for speed and high rep work. Many mini sets.

Also have tried doing Reps on the minute for the same idea. Just recently did this for 30 minutes. 315 x 40 reps in 30 minutes. As long as bar is moving fast and form is solid keep going.

[quote]JMallon95 wrote:
Alrightmiami19c: ah man…bet that was sh*t. Hope you do well in january…which weight class are you competing in?
yeah I understand, not too sure what works best for me yet, not been training for too long ya see so I think I’m just gonna experiment with different things.

cparker: sounds good, did you come up with the mini cycle yourself through training? what’s your total?[/quote]

Ya through trial and error. total 545/385/655 w/o wraps @250 with about 3 years training exp so Id like to think my programming and stuff has worked for me so far

[quote]JMallon95 wrote:
Alrightmiami19c: ah man…bet that was sh*t. Hope you do well in january…which weight class are you competing in?
yeah I understand, not too sure what works best for me yet, not been training for too long ya see so I think I’m just gonna experiment with different things.
[/quote]

Probably 198. But if I weigh 202 I won’t cut, I’ll just lift 220.
That is really the best thing you can do. It takes a while to figure how your body responds to certain things. Just be smart about it, and always give yourself enough time to recover.

I have done high rep deadlifts and they were fine for building mass and adding strength. I did the 3-month 5/3/1 BBB Challenge and started off with a really low training max to learn sumo, which primed me for high rep sets. Once I finished the challenge and went to a normal 5/3/1 routine I hit 295x15 in the first month and eventually tapered off and hit 460 @ 170. Note that it took me 9 months to taper from the really high rep range down to maximal weights. Although form tends to break down for high rep sets, you can learn a lot about your technique. It forces you to fight the form breakdown by putting yourself in the most efficient position to grind through. I’ve improved my technique the most from learning how to grind when having just enough energy to get through a rep only in the optimal position - the times when you expect the weight to feel difficult and you may possibly fail but you actually felt powerful when finishing the rep. Using shitty form will probably make you feel miserable the next few days.

I don’t think high rep deadlifts are optimal when trying to push your deadlift to a much higher level. A lot of people might not agree with this method but I think it can get a person to a Class 1/Master deadlift. Fatigue sucks but you can learn from it. Once you’re going for elite numbers and beyond, you’ll want to stick with moderate to high intensities to get better carryover to your max.

Edit: I only attempted max reps on the 3+ day and stuck to the minimum 5 reps on 5+ day and 1 rep on 1+ day. My assistance work RDLs 5x8 week 1, 5x5 week 2, 5x3 week 3.

When I was doing boring but big my BBB deadlift was deficit axel deads. Fucking awesome. It was the 5x10 version by the way.

I usually work up to a heavy set of 2, 3 or 5 reps and then I do 3 sets of 5-8 reps with 80% of whatever my top weight was that day for some volume. I’m able to consistently gain this way though, I have been hitting PR’s pretty regularly on my pull.