How Often Should YOU Deadlift?
For a reason, the deadlift is one of the most popular strength exercises amongst most sports. The engagement of multiple crucial muscle groups makes it an excellent exercise. But despite being a great exercise, it is essential to know when to do it!
People have asked me the following question countless times;
How often should I deadlift?
If you are looking for a clear & detailed answer to this question, you should keep reading!
Aspects you HAVE to consider in advance!
Before going into a more detailed explanation, we did want to mention that the frequency highly depends on various factors.
- volume (high or low intensity?),
- weight (are you doing heavy deadlifts?),
- what type of deadlifts are you doing? (sumo deadlifts etc.).
Despite that, you should also consider what your specific goal is.
Do you simply want to lift more? Or is your goal to develop explosivity for basketball & vertical jumping?
All those factors together are going to give you hints if you should deadlift more frequently or not!
Frequency Explained with Science!
No matter what type of strength exercise you are going to do, there one crucial concept. Try to understand this concept & it will be effortless to know how often you should train!
If you haven't heard of the term super-compensation before, this section will heavily benefit your understanding of how much you should rest!
What is Supercompensation?
The best way to understand the concept of supercompensation is by looking at the graph above.
The horizontal axis is representing time, while the vertical axis tells the athlete's current strength level.
Obviously, the strength is going to drop significantly right after training, as your muscles are going to be exhausted.
After that, the strength level is slowly but steadily going to recover with the important note that your body super compensates.
Now, if you would train during the recovery phase (red area), you would train with too high frequency.
The perfect time to train is going to be at the peak of the supercompensation curve.
You would have to adjust your training program according to the diagram to deadlift higher reps or heavier weights quickly.
When do you reach Supercompensation?
The time that you reach supercompensation relates to the factors mentioned in the section at the top.
Furthermore, different body types are going to require different periods of rest.
To get the best understanding of how frequently you should deadlift, you should follow the following principles.
When doing heavy sets at high intensities, you are going to need more rest days.
As a side note, intensity relates to the strength capacity, that you are using within one repetition. If you deadlift 90% of your max, the intensity is going to be high, while the volume will be low.
But if you would deadlift 60% of your max and do 20reps, the intensity will be drastically lower.
Also, if you are planning to do explosive deadlifts, you will have to rest more. Explosive contraction is going to be tiring for your nerve system!
Should you deadlift twice a week?
During the past years, there has been quite a lot of hype around the idea of deadlifting twice per week?
But is that amount of training enough for serious lifters who train?
As covered before, the frequency depends on the style & intensity of your deadlifting sessions.
But to gain a better understanding, we recommend you to watch the video below!
No matter what type of deadlift you are going to perform, you will engage multiple muscle groups at the same time. Therefore the deadlift is one of the most complex but beneficial exercises! If you do 3-5 repetitions at 80-90% of your maximum intensity, you shouldn't deadlift more often than two times per week. Otherwise, you will move towards overtraining!
But if you are performing more than 12 repetitions at lower weights, you can easily deadlift three times a week. Low intensity & high volume trains your cardiovascular abilities!
How often Should I Deadlift?
If you are still looking for an exact universal answer, you didn't entirely get the point of the article.
Consider these factors in advance:
- What Intensity are you training at?
- Do you perform other exercises such as bench presses, squats & rack pulls with high intensities?
- How do you currently feel? / Do you feel like you are progressing?
Overall, we recommend you to deadlift less than three times per week in case you are going for hefty sets and low reps.
Especially if other compound exercises that work multiple muscle groups, you will naturally not have enough energy to deadlift heavy every day!
Overtraining is equally bad as undertraining!
Still, you should consider that there are multiple body types, that require different amounts of rest.
Try out different REALISTIC schedules & frequencies and then listen to your body.
If you feel fatigued and stagnated, it might be due to too high intensities on a frequent basis.
But there are more factors!
Active Recovery
For improved results, Active recovery can be beneficial if you want to compete with others in the fitness industry.
The best examples of active recovery are stretching & light cardio.
But also methods involving heat or cold to increase your blood flow can be beneficial.
Overall we recommend you to do stretches & to work on your hip flexors!
If you want to change your deadlift performance & drastically, I recommend you to read our review of a program called "unlock your hip flexors."
For myself included, this type of exercise & stretching have been significantly increasing my deadlift and overall fitness performance!
Other Factors:
Despite active recovery, more factors are influencing your physical performance!
The two most important ones are;
- sleepnutrition
Try to keep your sleep above 7 hours if you want to have a good recovery. Eventually, most of your recovery after an extended deadlift and squat session will happen during your sleep!
To deadlift more days a week, you might also want to change your nutrition towards a more healthy perspective.
Eating junk food & cake is obviously not the way to go.
There is going to be a significant difference in terms of your energy & performance with the right nutrition!
Deadlifting Program Ideas
Here we are going to go through deadlifting programs & options that you could apply.
Deadlift 3 times a week
- Day 1 90% Intensity 3-5 reps 5 sets
- Day 2 70% Intensity 6-9 reps 5 sets
- Day 3 60% Intensity 12-20 reps 3 sets
With this program, you would have a lot of variety in your deadlifting program. Giving you various intensities and volumes, you will work on maximal strength, hypertrophy & cardiovascular endurance at the same time.
Deadlift 2 times a week
- Day 1 80-90% Intensity 3-5 Reps
- Day 2 80-90% Intensity 3-5 Reps
This program will work on maximal strength by training your intramuscular coordination. For an increase in your 1 RM Max, you should consider working at high intensities with low volumes.
There are endless options to create your schedule. In the end, it is about testing out different options. By doing so, you will eventually find a deadlifting schedule, that works for you!
What Now?!
Do you have a deadlifting schedule yet? Do you feel like your current plan doesn't work?
Write down a suitable option for you right now! Test it out for at least one month and see if it works.
Keep in mind that you are going to need time to see if a schedule works for you or not!
Other than that, you can also find a deadlift schedule online!
Final Words
Eventually, your training frequency depends on various range of factors.
Body type, current fitness level, recovery, & intensity are just a few.
Therefore we recommend you to listen to your own body, as with time you are going to find the right frequency for yourself!
Despite the frequency, there is more to lifting heavy weight!
Perfect execution matters a lot. But also the overall combination of exercises that you chose to do in your schedule!
If you gain a better understanding of the anatomy of your body, you might also be able to improve the effectivity of your programs.
Therefore we recommend you to read more of our articles on the deadlift.
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