I had an issue with missing my deadlift at the top almost a year ago but it had went away and I made great progress until it reared its ugly head in the worst way possible recently. I bombed out of my meet because I got redlighted for the 638 video i posted as my opener and then couldn’t even break the floor when attempting it again twice. The other issue is that my deadlift significantly underperforms on meet day relative to in the gym as evidenced by my 660 double in the gym. I ran candito 6 week for this meet and thought getting used to squatting and deadlifting on the same day would help come meet day but this meet was worse than my last one where i hit my 635 opener but missed 675 twice.
How are your other lifts on the day?
Did you pull out a few failed lifts and some real grinders?
Were you feeling mentally or physically fatigued going into the deadlift?
Were you refuelling?
What was your mental state like going into the deadlift. Were you anxious about under performing or did you think you’d crush it?
What were your warm ups like?
How’d you sleep/eat going into the day?
Was a water cut involved? How did you rehydrate? How quickly and during the lifting?
When was your last training deadlift and what did your peak look like?
Sounds like you’re fucking up your peaking is all. I know a guy who has a pretty damn identical issue. Pulls a great double or single two weeks out or so, then barely makes his second attempt.
Your best bet would probably be to work your peaking out so your heaviest squat and DL are done three weeks out, and heaviest bench two, weeks out.
My squats were 220kg, 235 kg, and 240 kg. On the second I almost lost it forward but recovered for a 3 lb pr and on the third the lift was clean but i jumped the rack command on a 14 lb pr. I hit my 127.5.5 kg opener on bench and missed 132.5. kg twice.
I had the failed bench reps and a good pr on squat but the squat wast a crazy grinder.
I felt pretty good going in to deadlift and thought i was going to crush it. I was drinking glycofuse to stay carbed up and had a protein bar after squats. My warmup was 135x8 225x5 315x3 405x1 495x1 585x1
I did cut water and carbs so I ate a ton of carbs with very low fat and drank a ton of water. I weighed 82kg at morning weigh ins and was ~190. I slept well.
My last heavy pull is the 660 double which was 2 weeks out. I did candito 6 week minus week 2 as my program for this meet. I did my first meet 6 weeks before this meet and did my last heavy pull 9 days out for that one and thought that was too close but when i went 14 days it was even worse.
There’s your problem. Two meets year is around what you should aim for. That gives you time to actually get stronger.
Edit: I read a bit more attentively. Here are some more problems
After 315 those jumps are way too big. Usually around 50 lbs is decent.
More problems. Cuts fuck with you.
How old are you? I’m guessing under 25? You’re pretty strong, but it sounds like you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. That’s fine. None of us do when we start. That’s why we have coaches.
My advice to you is this.
Get off social media if you’re on it. It’ll give you a distorted sense of what good training looks like. Those people you see posting massive gym lifts and maxing all the time tend to perform like shit on the platform. Those who don’t are freaks and will dominate no matter what they do.
Get a coach, or at the very least get a good system going. Cube is good, 5th Set is better. Juggernaut is OK too. They all use the same principles. Ideally get a coach. I’ll shamelessly plug Greg Panora because he’s my coach, he’s cheap, and his system is basically 5th Set.
Forget cutting weight until you’re looking at setting a world record in a decent federation. Junior records don’t mean shit. State records don’t mean shit. Just get bigger. If you’re around 175-180 cm tall you’ll want to weigh AT LEAST 100 kg, more like 110 kg or more to be competitive.
You’re a strong guy and setting yourself up to get stronger by taking this all as a learning experience.
strongmangoals and MarkKO ask some good questions and make great points between them.
Failing at the top doesn’t really tell us enough and even the vid doesn’t make it clear what happened. Unfortunately from what I can see you pretty much got the lift but somehow managed to get some downward movement action right after for some red lights so it’s not exactly a miss.
Did the bar get forward? Did you lose your balance? Was it your knees inexplicably unlocking? Did you attempt to hyperextend your back at lock out? Could you not hold the weight at lockout for more than a split second? Were you so strong and explosively that your lockout was jarring enough to mess you up?
What I’m getting at is that perhaps there’s a technique/practice related element to your problem. From a sample size of two vids and three reps I’m seeing balance issues, sketchy lockouts e.g. shoulder positioning, rushing/short lockouts if at all.
I think a lot of the technical side of things can be addressed by locking out fully on every single rep of every set and holding it for a good long 2 or 3 count. If your rep work looks anything like your 660 double attempt then I’m not surprised you’re having issues at lockout because you don’t really get enough practice in that position or at least have it engrained to automatically unlock everything a microsecond after locking out. I know the tendency is to rush through reps especially on AMRAPs but it really isn’t helping out with your lock out.
Depending on what your exact issues are e.g. balance, keeping the bar close etc. there’s plenty more we can do to fix it. Just give us a better idea of what was going on
Aside from that I’d be curious as to how your deadlift looks like directly from the side because from the front I can’t see you back position very well. Are you a flat/neutral back puller or is there rounding of the upper and/or lower back? There’s give and take for whichever style of deadlift you go with. One of the takes for round back pulling is an awkward lockout so if this is you then it’s something worth thinking about.
To me it doesn’t look like you locked out either rep of the 660 (definitely not the second) so it isn’t THAT surprising you missed 640 at the lock out given comp plates, having also done max squats and bench earlier.
As Kangles said if you can figure out what the issue is, work on that and take more realistic openers you should be better off.
It looks like the bar was more than an inch away from your shins. A long time ago a guy named Tom Mcglaughlin who used to write for PL USA postulated that each inch in front of the center of gravity adds the equivalent of 25% of the weight to the lift. Whether he is correct or not, the point stands that if you lose a weight out in front (especially in the sumo), you would need to be Ed Coan to pull a weight back in and complete it.
I used to lift sumo and when I did, I would get bruising of the shins (even through the socks) and scrapes up the insides of both knees.
My guess is that with better technique you can probably lift 675. Good luck
Don’t open so heavy. Get the first one and stay in the meet.
Don’t cut weight. Weight classes don’t matter. How much you lift matters. Go in strong.
8-12 weeks out meet prep - mild triples(75-80%), openers and second attempts are all that should be done. Alternate those weeks: Opener/triples/second attempt/triples/opener/triples/second attempt/triples, etc. All the work is done for the meet. 8-12 weeks out is about dialing everything in.
More than likely by the time you got to the deadlift you were gassed. Grinded a squat or two before that. Not sure about your bench. Add in a weight cut and then trying to get it all back…??? It’s a learning experience.
Give yourself a little more time between meets. If you do another quick one like this last one then stick to the same peaking formula I told you. Perfecting your setup and execution of a max effort single is vastly different than normal training, especially mentally.
In the 660x2 video it looks to me like a soft lockout, plus you put the weight down right away. Get used to fully locking out plus holding it for a couple seconds. Also you probably opened too heavy, that 660 was not quite two reps so maybe 675-690 would be there for a third attempt on a good day. 90%-ish would be 605-620 and opening lighter is not a bad idea. I recently had a meet where everything was complete shit so I dropped my deadlift opener by 20lbs and made some big jumps for the next two attempts, ended up with a small PR and then realized that I should have gone 20lbs heavier because it was easy. Don’t look at openers as anything more than a last warmup and keeping yourself in the game, as long as you can comfortably get to your planned 3rd attempt from there you are good.
On the plus side, it looks like you have made a lot of progress on your deadlift, I remember you posting here when you were in the mid 500s.
That’s interesting. I used to dive-bomb my conventional pull. When it worked I had outstanding results. Other times, after ripping it off the ground, sometimes it would drift forward due to a loss in tension. And it resulted in a missed lift or if I embraced the grind, I would tweak my back.
These days I have a far more deliberate setup, pulling all the slack out of the bar and pinching the armpits shut. As a result I keep the bar on my shins and pull with much more confidence and my back is happier.
I used to pull off the floor too fast, the hips would come up and I would be stiff legging the weight. I went to a Coan/Efferding seminar last November and Ed noticed (GOAT, I reviewed the clip dozens of times and couldn’t see anything). Voila, no more back soreness.
