Low Back & Glute Recovery

Hi, just wanted some quick feedback on the following weekly structure. Because of various reasons, I’m looking at trying to fit deadlifts one day after back squats, but I’m somewhat concerned about posterior chain recovery.

Monday - Bench

Tuesday - off

Wednesday - Squat
Back Squat, heavy/light*
Leg press/Hack squat (i.e. low-back free quad work)
Ab work
Calves

Thursday - recovery/conditioning day
45-degree back raises (just bodyweight,high reps to get blood in the muscles and help with recovery, obviously nothing intense).
upper back recovery work too.
Low intensity cardio

Friday - Deadlift
Deadlifts, heavy/light*
low back assistance
abs

Saturday - off

Sunday - off

  • Heavy would be 3x5, and light would be 3x10-12. Basically the idea I had was to alternate heavy and light days with the squat and deadlift. So during a week in which I’m doing squats heavy, I would do deadlifts light. Similarly, when I do squats light, I would do deadlifts heavy that week. This way maybe I would be able to manage low back stress better as I’m avoiding doing really heavy low back work two days near each other.

Does this make sense? I know there are a number of powerlifting programs where you do heavy squats and deads separated by one day (some 5x5 variants in particular), so maybe I’m just being a panzy and my back will be fine? My dead is around 400lb if it helps.

Thanks in advance.

I’m no expert, but I’m going to chime in.

Without knowing if your post includes all the detail, it appears you are lifting M W F with Th as a sort of prehab/cardio day. Maybe your schedule only allows you to workout on these days, but I would recommend using M as a lower body day (let’s say squats and assistance as you listed), W as an upper body day (bench as you listed + I am assuming assistance), and F as a lower body day (deadlifts + assistance as you listed).

I would try to keep the lower body days separated by the weekend different in intensity because they are so close together (so if I deadlifted heavy on Friday, I’d squat light on Monday - and vice versa).

I don’t see the need for the Thursday session as you are already working the back muscles twice a week (extensively on deadlift day, secondarily on squat day). Maybe just cardio would make sense.

FYI, I am currently doing two upper and two lower workouts per week with one day for conditioning. My lifts are improving (setting PR’s on a regular basis) and I am at a similar strength level (at least on the deadlift where you mentioned your level).

Have you looked at Beyond 5/3/1 1.1 on this site? With your schedule, it may work well for you.

Every other day for me is lower body, it could be a squat, a deadlift, or both. Yes my lower back gets sore but it usually gets loose after 15 minutes of warming up.

[quote]Souldozer wrote:
I’m no expert, but I’m going to chime in.

Without knowing if your post includes all the detail, it appears you are lifting M W F with Th as a sort of prehab/cardio day. Maybe your schedule only allows you to workout on these days, but I would recommend using M as a lower body day (let’s say squats and assistance as you listed), W as an upper body day (bench as you listed + I am assuming assistance), and F as a lower body day (deadlifts + assistance as you listed).

I would try to keep the lower body days separated by the weekend different in intensity because they are so close together (so if I deadlifted heavy on Friday, I’d squat light on Monday - and vice versa).

I don’t see the need for the Thursday session as you are already working the back muscles twice a week (extensively on deadlift day, secondarily on squat day). Maybe just cardio would make sense.

FYI, I am currently doing two upper and two lower workouts per week with one day for conditioning. My lifts are improving (setting PR’s on a regular basis) and I am at a similar strength level (at least on the deadlift where you mentioned your level).

Have you looked at Beyond 5/3/1 1.1 on this site? With your schedule, it may work well for you.[/quote]

Back in my undergrad when I trained with the college powerlifting team for a little while, this is exactly how they did it. The strongest guys seemed to fit another full workout focusing on weak points on the weekend and did lots of little mini workouts outside of the PL gym.

Currently running a setup as stated above : M deads. W upper. F squats. No problems w. Recovery. In fact im pause squatting after deads Monday and doing stifflegged deads after my squat workout Friday w. No problems…

Your body will adapt better than you imagine… as a one day a week squatter I used to have massive doms after squat day. Adding a second squat day actually helped eliminate this! Well 80 percent of it or so. Now its minimal.

Try it. Looks soundly configured.

Deads the day after squats can work very well if you want to go that route.