High Frequency Deadlifts?! 3x Per Week Deadlift Program Review - Greg Nuckols' 28 Free Programs
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
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This is my breakdown of Greg Nuckols' 3x per week deadlift protocols for beginner, intermediate and advanced lifters. Here we take a look at his approach to periodization for the deadlift, including exercise split, accessory work and progression of percentages.
I ran this. I loved it. I hated every moment of it but I felt so strong.
After 4 months I couldn't barely walk. I replaced the Emom deadlifts with light deficits at RPE 8.
My muscles mass shot up substantially although my deadlift did not.
Funnily enough at end of the 4 months I couldn't lift more weight but after a month on a recovery program, I tested again and it turns out I had put 20kg extra on the bar. Went from 160kg max to 180kg.
I've deadlifted 3x a week for many sets of low reps, easy to overtrain but the gains are magic
did you squat at the same time?
@@pacman7328 nope, didn't have a squat rack
How new to lifting were you? (what was t oh r starting and ending pr)
@@seanmat8 250 to 315 5'8 170 pounds female
how many sets? like 4-6
I haven't tried this, but I know Matt Vena has promoted high frequency deadlifting, and he has had a lot of success.
I think the general standpoint Nuckols and others has is that deadlifting multiple times per week is more fatiguing than other lifts at first, but if you drop the intensity to a manageable level you can build your work capacity over time. I believe the beginner to intermediate to advanced programs Nuckols has reflects that.
I see possible good in the “beginners” program. If the beginner has a honest and knowledgeable partner, or a trainer, all the singles give plenty of opportunity to fine tune and critique form, while getting some work done. Idk🤷🏼♂️ just a thought.
That's exactly why he recommends it. This phrase is taken exactly from his spreadsheet:
"This is the deadlift routine I’d recommend new lifters to start with. I know most people
would prefer to knock out a couple heavy sets and call it a day, but especially for
someone learning the form, doing a bunch of singles can help ingrain great technique
faster. If you don’t know your max, use conservative weights for the first three weeks -
every rep should be very easy until you work up to a heavy single at the end of week 3.
Always stop as soon as you feel your form breaking down"
@@4everMaxty I actually jumped on the 3x beginner yesterday, since I haven't deadlifted seriously in a long, long time. As such I feel a bit iffy on the technique, and I'm combining this with somehwat easier (front) squat work. Then again, I can admit to having a high tolerance for doing lots of deadlift work, as opposed to squat (3x squat per week which many people praise tend to kill me over a long period of time, 2x works better for me) so... I'll report back how it went in a couple of weeks.
Alex, I've been watching your videos for the past month and I really enjoy all your content. Your videos helped me bridge the gap between beginner and intermediate programming. Keep up the great work!
I haven't run this exactly but have done 8x3,10x2,12x1 type of workouts lately and i have seen great gains over what i used to do,it is tougher than it looks and you should go lighter than you think but its great for technique and i found i recover well,getting way more touches allowed my to sharpen my technique on decently heavy weight,doing sets of more than 5 never worked for me because i had to go very low on weight to get it with good technique.
It depends on your style of deadlifting. If your squat is very close to your deadlift, you deadlift with a flat back and deadlift feels less tiring than squats, you can do it for years and see increases in your performance. I've been doing it +2 years with success. Went from 400lbs to 500lbs and now i'm aiming for 550lbs in 4 months. Bw 200lbs.
I think the deadlift has more of an expression capacity than a developmental capacity.
Lets say it's 85% expression of strength, and 15% development of strength.
The expression is important, but the body can only handle so much of it.
The squat, and the front squat carry over so much to the deadlift that if you move up in both of those you would see improvement somewhere in your deadlift. Either form, weight, or reps.
The deadlift will progress at a lower frequency, so one has to ask... Why in the absolute fuck would you wanna deadlift 3 times a week. On the lighter deadlift days you are probably doing a weight you could squat instead with less fatigue.
Amazing observation and I concur.
Because a deadlift is more specific to a deadlift than a squat
@@mastertrey4683 If you need to be that specific to one lift then I guess knock yourself out.
Hey Bromley, I love the videos and have been actively studying your content for a while now but I haven't come across much information about top sets and how I should implement them into my own Powerlifting programming. I'm sure me and many others would love to hear your take on it. Thanks!
I'm about to run the 3x weekly beginning program. Will report back.
I’d rather do two deadlift days every other week
Week 1 Max effort deadlifts Monday
Speed deadlifts with bands between 8-10 sets of 2-3 reps wave starting at 40% on Thursdays!
Week 2 max effort squat on Monday
Speed deadlifts 45% and so on and so forth.
I know you hate speed work as you stated before, but it really has helped improve all 3 big lifts in the past year. My total went up 200 lbs this year! Obviously it won’t keep going up that quickly, but it was clear to me, my body responded well to that type of work!
How about PTTP by Pavel Tsatsouline which prescribes 5 days a week deadlift?
Barbell Medicine and Greg refer to a study that claims deadlifting did not cause more fatigue than squat. It is called "Deadlift vs Squat" or whatever and it's from 2016. What do you guys think lol
It seems Baraki's recommendations are in line with any other volume based school of thought, which is to keep effort low and increase your tolerance to work/frequency. That's perfectly valid and can be applied to deads. But the bit about 'the data not supporting squats being less taxing than deadlifts' is absurd. It implies that he believes the studies done on this subject are thorough and expansive enough to rank over the direct experience of just about every high level coach and athlete. Just branding himself by being contrarian.
@@AlexanderBromley If you actually look at the parameters of the study they kind of _don't make sense either._ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28704311/
It is kind of a mindfuck to realize that with their rigidity to the literature they _are_ being contrarian. That's one of the criticisms I've seen thrown at BBM in that as soon as one pop study comes out saying something, they flip flop to meet it - a very fickle approach, though they are successful powerlifters and strength coaches.
Very recently Greg took the same stance and used the same study as a reference.
ua-cam.com/video/LGj3bHpaFbw/v-deo.html
It is true though that many coaches and even PhDs don't even agree with that statement - Mike Israetel has come on record to say that he thinks that the notion that deadlifts are not more fatiguing than other lift is nonsense, so it is contended at this point even though the general consensus has always been high volume/frequency deadlifting will leave you dead.
@@ProphetFear Thanks for this. I don't know what's more infuriating; how shitty the study was or the fact that it gets cited as if it has legs. Nuckol's bit about sensory nerves in the hand contributing to the illusion of deadlift fatigue was.... interesting. This merits a video.
@@AlexanderBromley And during the Revive Stronger hypertrophy roundtable video where they discuss deadlifts for hypertrophy, Menno mentions that one study found that a list of exercises were measured for how long recovery took, and deadlifting was the outlier.
Anecdotally raw deadlifting is almost certainly more fatiguing than strapped, but yet many people who use straps exclusively still say deadlifts fatigue them more than squats.
ua-cam.com/video/2xK0yvP3qt8/v-deo.html
Here is the video where Mike addresses this study or some similar study and basically calls it nonsense. I find it funny because many people I see dismiss Mike as being dogmatic and just parroting literature when in reality he goes against the grain of much literature and says that one study on anything is almost meaningless. He's more of a bro with a PhD than the stereotypical pencil pusher exercise scientist making inane claims about training.
I haven't personally run this program, but I don't think you're right that Greg just wanted to complete the series. He has said multiple times that he thinks the best thing for beginner lifters to do is 'grease the groove' on deadlifting, that's why he likes the higher volume.
I believe he said he pulled 405 the first time he deadlifted and he attributes it to all the 'greasing the groove' he got picking up lumber as a kid.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with the points you make about the quality of the program, but I'm pretty sure Greg does think there is merit to the higher frequency/volume deadlift approach, especially for beginners.
1. I found that squatting (barbell, safety bar, belt squat) WILL build your deadlift up since it is working very similar groups of muscles.
2. Use accessories (gluts-ham raise, reverse hyperextensions, etc) to help build some muscle in the areas you need!
3. Deadlift wise, do less reps, more sets and practice technique! Ingrain proper motor patterns in all styles (conventional, sumo, etc).
4. Don't take lots of reps to failure. Leave some reps in reserve!
5. Doing this has built my deadlift up tremendously without breaking my body down more than I have to in order for adaptation to occur.
About to do a deadlift AMRAP to estimate my max and start this Monday, I did 335x6 and 365x3 recently so my max is in the upper 300s or low 400s right now. I should be eating either at or slightly above maintenance, and I'm probably going to use straps to avoid obliterating my hands on the knurling of a new texas power bar. I'll come back with the results, whether it's a torn spinal erector or a 50 pound PR.
Lol. Straps are smart. So are upping the cals. You trying to train anything else?
@@AlexanderBromley I won't be training anything particularly taxing, my normal overhead press programming will remain essentially the same and I'll probably be doing some very light squatting just to maintain the movement pattern as it's always been a fairly counterintuitive movement for me.
Just finished the 3 day deadlift program, unfortunately a 90% single warming up to a max was an absolute grind on test day so I'm going to do a sort of intensification week next week. I have a feeling I'll hit a PR in the following week after that, I sort of expected this as I find that I need a few more sessions lifting at higher intensities with my deadlift than I need with my squat or bench after a phase of relatively low RPE lifting but even taking that into consideration I wouldn't run this again. I just don't think the technical proficiency you gain from doing 10+ singles at less than 70% at RPE 0 is relevant to the sort of technical proficiency you need at 80% or higher, at least as an intermediate lifter. I think a session of rows or some other back work would actually be more conductive to building your deadlift in the long term than extremely light, low RPE deadlifting without being so taxing that you can't focus on any other lower boy movement.
So. To be clear, your assessment is that the 90% single being difficult was from not enough stimulus?
@@AlexanderBromley Yeah that's what I'm leaning towards.
Thanks for the review of all the 9 programs 🙂. I would be interested to see a review of Project Momentum 2016 from Mike Tuchscherer of RTS (there is also a 2017 version). Essentially it was a big experiment, he provided a program (free) and analyzed the result. You bench, squat and deadlift 4x times a week for various week, obviously with variation different intensity and so on. I tried it a couple of time and I get good results.
Yeah, it would be interesting to see some RTS program reviews.
Nice analysis,this is for 1 time run at most.I have 2 question.
For high reps deadlift , touch and go or reset is optimal?
After what percentage ,explosive/speed reps are beneficial for strength?
Thanks,keep up the good work.
Always reset. Or do Romanians. Touch n go is worst of both worlds imo lol
I tried this. I couldn't finish the first workout of the second week. Way too fatigued. The twice a week program however worked wonders but this was too much
Yeah I don't blame you I couldn't do the 3rd workout on Week 2 or Week 3 at all, totally fatigued. I think this needs to be run with a much lower than usual training max.
Do you get a free trial of Tren along with this cycle?
15 sets of 1 rep? 10 sets? 5? What's the rest between between these single sets? What about the sets of 4s and 3s? Sorry if I missed that part. And also, doesn't sets of 6 to 8 also help improve your deadlift?
It's EMOM. Every minute on the minute. You finish the set as quickly as possible within a minute. The rest the remainder of the minute before starting again at the next minute. Do this until all sets are done.
I did 10x1 @ 82.5% on jailhouse strong with 45sec rests once per week it was hard wouldn’t want to do it on 3 days 😫 I prefer look of 6x1 4x1 3x1 on other programs
Came for the program
Stayed for the drawing skills
I'll try it! I need to get my deadlift up 40 lbs asap! Trying to max my Army Combat Fitness Test I have coming up. Suggestion?
Try to eat in a caloric surplus. You’ll put on a little fat but more weight means you can move more weight. This will also give you the energy to recover from workouts. I would check out the Bulgarian style of training, it’s where you choose one exercise to specialize in and do it almost every day and it is great for increasing a specific lift. Just some things to think about.
@@jackhultstrand8673 Thanks for the input. I really appreciate it. I'm going to look into it. 👍
What about a beginner who does an A/B split, doing 2x5 deadlifts on B day, starting at 135lbs and then adding 5 pounds of weight every week as they progress?
A day: Squat, Bench, Bent Row
B day: Deadlift, Overhead Press, Pull Ups
So they would deadlift once on one week but twice the following week adding up to three deadlift sessions every two weeks.
So I tried this program (3x beginner deadlift) and I just wasn't ready for it at all, I'm just about intermediate and basically coming back to lifting after a long break (although this is a now a couple of months in so I'm more or less where I left off when I stopped lifting).
Week 1 fine but wow singles are very different and I basically did most of them with 20-40 seconds rests. Week 2 started off fine but by Week 2 day 3 I was toast, I skipped that day and moved onto Week 3 which was lighter so I thought cool I'll recover and then knock out some heavy singles by Day 3. Now I did mess up because I went to gym and did some suitcase carries the day before my Day 3 but even so I was so fatigued I had to skip the 3rd day too.
I think overall it helped because I really wasn't comfortable with my deadlift. I think I should have lowered by training max by 20kg though.
Going to go back to the 2x beginner for a bit with Trap bar as the alternate.
I used to deadlift 4 times a week and even did sack carries during rest day and had no problems with it.
Some people might not be able to handle this much volume but what I did was I splitted my current volume into different sessions and added just a few more sets. Of course I started at a lower intensity such as 65-70% and worked my way up to doing 70-95% heck I'd even go for 97.5-100% once a week and I had no problems. My work capacity was off the charts. The most important factor that I would consider when running a high frequency deadlift program is to minimize the eccentric portion of the lift, A.K.A just drop the barbell or lower it down fast. I also used a belt most of my sessions and if ever I had a sore lower back, I'd just do a below knee rack/block pull and do the same weight and reps that I am supposed to do off the floor.
What type of numbers did you get to doing that?
@@AlexanderBromley went from 420-470 @65kg ish
Thanks for mentioning skipping the eccentrics. Very important.
@@BluegillGreg you'll be out for almost a week if you get a really sore lower back
Near the end of my 31 year powerlifting career I only deadlifted heavy once every 10 days. I squatted once evey 8 days and did light deads on squat days. If deadlift day fell within 2 days of squat day I waited to squat for a day or two. Worked well for me.
Hey Alex - how would you program for a BJJ athlete who wants to get stronger?
I train BJJ 5+ times per week and want to compete at a high level. I’ve finished my NLP and unsure where to go from here .
Please! For powerlifters moving into BJJ and what to maintain power 🙏
I love the chalkboard and analytics ! But... I hope all you rough and tough young dudes see what Bromley drew in the upper left hand corner. 👍💪
Ok. I'll be a guinea pig starting this week. Super detrained right now so this might actually work. Putting in 350 as my max lol. As commenter Roy says, should be fine with no eccentrics :/
Glad you mentioned eccentrics. That definitely is a big part of this.
I personally tend to deadlift twice per week and that works just fine for me. I've been looking at adding an EMOM kinda like his beginner split, but it's a little intimidating. Heck, doing 5x5 is a lot of work, doing a 15 rep EMOM is gonna have me gasping
I love to deadlift but I really don't like squatting and I don't care much about benching. I'm thinking about trying to deadlift three times a week and my deadlift max is about 405 right now good idea or bad idea?
this is ideal for that 18 year old on 5000g of test that sleeps 18 hours a day and eats 10k calories. If this is not you, then find a smarter way to train
it depends on your leverages,i have decent deadlift leverages and i recover the same or better than squats i imagine someone with even better leverages can do it,i do 2x week and i am fine while working 10 hours a day and sleeping like 7 hours,i imagine if i cut some accessories i could do 3x but my squat would suffer,now if i wasnt squatting and going just for a deadlift peak i thing 3x a week would be better
@@TheBilaras97 but why would you WANT to do that? that's not optimal at all.
@@The_Practical_Bond idk cause deadlifting is fun?
@@TheBilaras97 yes, it is. But so are squats, bench, OHP, logs, stones, farmers, etc. if you want to get strong in the deadlift dont deadlift.
@@The_Practical_Bond Ok thats probably wrong all of the worlds best deadlifter do it at least once per week
Ive been looking through some stuff from people that have run programs with high frequency deadlifts...however with little squatting. I dont personally think it's the ideal way to increase your deadlift max but Ive seen a recurring theme of lifters saying it has really upped their work capacity after the deload.... Might be worth considering if you got a few months to experiment with something....
I did this. I benched and deadlifted 3 times per week while squatting 2 times per week.
It was absolutely murder on my body. My knees got and over use injury. My back hurt quite a bit.
But I put on a lot of muscles in less than a year while putting 20 to 50kg on all my lifts. This was in the middles of the pandemic too so I didn't work out continuously.
My bench shot up from 60 to 105 in a year.
The constant front Squats made me very atheletic. I had the highest vertical jump in my gym. I was also training running in my off time. I managed a 30 minute 5K.
I was a beast, but at the end I was also very exhausted and beat after running this program.
Halfway I replaced the EMOM deadlifts on Day 2 with RPE 8 deficit deadlifts and Sumo I replaced with Block pulls.
The highest frequency I've ever deadlifted at is twice a week. I managed maybe 4 weeks of it before I was just bolloxed.
Some mutants can handle twice and three times a week, I ain't one of them. Great breakdown as always!
You mean the guys that are on testosterone and can recover almost 100% after every workout
It might also be a good stragety more for guys and women under 180 pounds
Bro, I deadlift 2 days a week all the time and I feel fine. I think if you don't have really short arms and you are not a very strong lifter you should be good
I've never tried it, is deadlifting 3 times a week that bad?
The key to recovering from high frequency deads is just to be weak
Hi Alex, would I be able to contact you about using a portion of your video for a personal page with a reference?
you can use it
Going to run this once gym reopens
Can someone explain 4-4-8 to me say week one I squat 185x4 then 165x8 then 185 amrap then next time I squat do I jump 15 pounds like it says and try 200x4
Oh come on. last year I did x5 deadlifts and I also squatted on the same workout before deadlifts. Improved both lifts by a huge margin. Yes I squatted and deadlifted 5 days a week from monday to friday. Pulled 595lbs after 4 months of x5 week squat/deadlifts. Made more progress than Ive ever made before. (From 500lb to 595lb)
Now I only do x2 squat/deadlift workouts in a week because my job keeps me from the gym. Doing 16hour shifts just dont allow alot of heavy stress training and I can say that x2 week deadlifting is not producing results nearly as well as the x5 week deadlifting did.
Soooooo...stay away from Deadcember. Lol
You can absolutely deadlift 3 times a week at the appropriate intensities. It actually trains technique very well, maybe better than going heavy once or twice a week. These percentages and rep ranges in this program are very manageable for almost anyone, though I wouldn't be excited about doing 15 singles.
The question is how much technical benefit do you gain and what ability to train other lifts do you lose. I dont see the risk/reward as being there
@@AlexanderBromley If all lifts are trained at the right intensities & volume, then couldn't you progress fine on all? It seems the technical gain is worth the small recovery cost, considering how important technique is at max loads. I know that's a powerlifting perspective, but Nuckols' is mainly for PL-ers.
I do 3x a week .... its not for the beginner. .
Do you guys remember the time Greg got lean? He looked killer
My job destroys my body so I deadlift every 3 weeks an that usually gives me enough recovery time. Recovery is very tricky
Bruh when I deadlift I can’t squat for shit for a few days
tl:dr - Greg knows how to program bench and squats but not deadlifts