Once my retarded housemate moves out I'm turning his room into a weight room.

Can't be arsed anymore with the gym, full of roided out guys watching each other grunt in an exaggerated and homo-erotic way as they dramatically throw down weights.

Whats a good untrained deadlift? I've only tried it like twice before, managed about 220lbs for two reps, but seemed quite difficult. I find it hard to believe that people can really gain that much strength, where it seems like they double their lift weight.

It depends on what you weigh. Here's one such guide.
http://exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/S ... dards.html

Sounds like you started far too high if you can only manage two reps. You should start really light, focus on perfecting the form and then build it up from there. Rest assured, if you train eat correctly your numbers won't be long increasing a lot.

I lift over double my bodyweight for a set of 5/6 whenever I deadlift. My record is 190kg, but I found 60kg very heavy the 1st time I lifted it.

I'm more interested in absolute than relative strength. Otherwise we'd find ways to claim we're stronger than elephants or something. Besides, a big part of my desire for strength training is self defense, and relative strength is irrelevant there.

If others find ~60kg heavy the first time, then I have some hope for my genetics after all. The internet is full of internet tough guys claiming to have lifted 250kg the first time lol.

Well, that's pretty much guaranteed to be bullshit.

Unless they are REALLY big.


After I lose a bit more weight, I'm going to have to change gyms again. My current gym gets mad at us if we drop the weights. It actually sets off an alarm and they get mad.

I'm down.

Personally I'd place my bets on Ethnocide- doesn't mean I wouldn't do it, though. I love sparring people, and even losing means I grow stronger from the experience.

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I figured as much, once I knew you had done 190 kg before

Correction: four plates at 75 kg is right around the corner

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The first time I deadlifted, I had already been doing squats (and other compound exercises) for several months, and I could do 135 lbs for 5 reps without much trouble. So, I've more than tripled my deadlifting strength since first starting out.

For bench press, I just started with 60 lbs to get used to the movement, then when I pushed myself I could do 100 lbs for 5 reps. Squats: same starting strategy, and I came out at 135 lbs for 5 reps.

I'd say for a normally masculinized male, 100-200 lbs for a handful of reps is a good starting point. Deadlifting 220 lbs for 2 reps as a beginner (assuming you haven't ever done bent-over rows, squats, or other leg and posterior chain exercises before), is solid, though I second foxyproxy's advice to lower the weight and do higher reps in the beginning. Don't go very heavy and push yourself to the point your form starts breaking down (which nearly always happens for 4RM sets and heavier) until the capacity to execute the correct movements has been ingrained into your nervous system, and your body has been strengthened enough to handle this.

Once you are an advanced lifter, when pushing yourself to the point you are testing one rep maxes, some breakdown of form is inevitable and fine- that is when you know you have pushed yourself to your limit, and so when you have hit a good stopping point in terms of testing yourself. Also, as an advanced lifter, your tissues (bones, tendons, ligaments, etc.) will have been strengthened enough that they can handle the stress placed on them during mild to moderate form breakdown, so you will be resistant to injury from this breakdown. But until then, you want to lift relatively light, with strict form, at all times. (Even advanced lifters lift with strict form in general, during their normal working sets.)

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Sounds like Planet Fatness. (Yes, I put an 'a' in place of an 'i' there on purpose.)

Yeah, it has actually been alright though. It's open 24/7 so I can go anytime I want, which outweighs some of the bad things. The other one open 24/7 does not have enough equipment, and the one at my college is closed at the moment.

Well, better than nothing, at least.

I know I personally wouldn't last long in a Planet Fitness. I would be kicked out in no time.

Hit 385 lbs for 1 rep on below parallel high bar box squats with a pause at the bottom. Also recently bumped my below parallel high bar squat up to 415 lbs for 1 rep.

My strategy has always been to progress until I hit a plateau, then change only one variable at a time (or as few variables as possible- I obviously can't control for seasonal hormonal variations, physiological changes from sunlight conditions, etc.), so that I know any changes are likely due to this one change, and then monitor the results. If something seems to work, I incorporate it into my strategy.

Some recent changes: Periodizing my weight/reps has apparently boosted my strength, and adding casein to my milk has helped as well.

There's one by my house, so I joined it when they had a special. First workout, I discovered that you can't do squats there, so I canceled. They don't have a squat rack, they only have machine-assisted squats. Probably their typical clientele would seriously injure themselves trying to do proper squats, and they don't want the liability.

Yeah. They don't have benches anymore either. They do have an alarm that goes off to embarrass you if you grunt, drop the weights or do anything too loud. It's designed to encourage heftier people to get in shape on their own terms, and those people sometimes get intimidated easily.

Finally benched the bar! Oh my god I am so happy!

Had a great workout today.

160kg Deadlifts & 110kg Squats on the same day.

Nice I wish I could still do that. These days, I can't handle doing both squats and deadlifts in a single workout- I'm always dead after one or the other!

In fact, deadlifts are so hard to work in with everything else, I only do them once a month, at the most. Maybe I just need to stop being obsessive compulsive and do more deadlift days instead of squat days...I need to modify my schedule somehow to start incorporating them again- I've been stagnating at 515 for way too long.

At the end of fifth year of college, I used to throw some heavy deadlifts at the end of some squat days- that's when I started progressing through the 400's, actually. I also remember my university gym during the summers was literally only open Monday through Friday (closed on weekends). My lifting schedule during most summers had 5 workouts, so I had to cram each workout into one of these weekdays- non-stop lifting, no mercy. It looked like this:

Monday: Bench presses and curls.
Tuesday: Squats
Wednesday: Weighted decline situps and shrugs ("break day", haha)
Thursday: Overhead presses and bent-over rows
Friday: Deadlifts

Rest over the weekend, repeat the next week. The only times I would deviate from this were when I had insomnia and so was too sleep deprived to lift on a given day (in which case I modified the schedule so that I could get back onto the normal track within a week or two), or when I had to take out deadlift day for a horseback riding show sometimes.

This was the most rigorous schedule I have ever done, and my strength always ballooned over these summers. If I were to do that schedule now though, with my current workout intensity and volume, I would literally injure myself. The last time I tried to do heavy deadlifts the day after heavy bent-over rows, I pulled a muscle in my armpit (teres major, I think)! I was working up to test my 1RM, warming up with 495 for 1- on my way up: RRRIIPPPPP!

In terms of my back, it was an easy pull and I pulled it up swiftly, but in terms of this armpit muscle, it was already so broken down from the bent-over rows the day before, that it just couldn't handle the stress and it tore. I immediately stopped the workout (one of the hardest things for me to do), just doing some test pull-ups, deadlifts with the bar, other movements with the bar, to try to figure out which muscle I tore and to figure out which exercises I would still be able to do the next week. I was unable to do a normal, symmetrical pull-up. Luckily this muscle isn't stressed too much during most movements, so after a few days of rest I was able to continue my other workouts, and after a week or so I was able to do some lighter bent-over rows again. Bent-over rows are back and stronger than ever (320 lbs for 1 rep with a mixed grip), and all my other lifts are the stongest they've ever been, but I still haven't tried deadlifts (or pull-ups) since. Lesson learned: at this point, never deadlift the day after bent-over rows!

It's been about two months since that day, and my teres major feels strengthened back to normal, for the most part, so I'm going to experiment with doing a few pull-ups again- if all goes well, I will fit in a deadlift workout spaced apart from any squat or bent-over row days, and cautiously warm up and workout until I either feel pain or injure myself again! My other exercises (squats, weighted back extensions, bent-over rows, curls, grip training, etc.) hit all the muscles involved in deadlifting, so naturally even though I deadlift rarely I always maintain (or even gain a little) strength in it- assuming this muscle won't tear again next time, I'll probably be able to pull 515 okay (in fact, that 495 for 1 where I pulled the muscle was actually the easiest pull of 495 I've ever done, in terms of all my other muscles- part of why it sucked so much to stop that workout). But to progress through the 500's, I will have to start doing them regularly again.

Man, I am itching so much to get my deadlift going again. I HATE injuries. I'm doing those test pull-ups tomorrow after squats. Time to get this lift up to 600!

Damn dude, injuries are rough. That particular one does not sound fun. Thankfully with me, in my 4+ years of lifting now I haven't got an injury yet. The worst I've done is give myself a muscle imbalance in places resulting in some mild knee or shoulder pain in the early days, thankfully something like that is easy fix by good form. It makes me pretty anal about form these days though.

Squats and Deadlifts I normally actually fit in on the one day now. I'll go heavy on one and light on the other, then the next week I'll swap them around. Even though I rather Deadlifts since they feel far more primal and beastly, if I was to do just one it would have to be Squats. I've found in the past if I concentrate too much on Deadlifting and not Squatting, it seems to make my hamstrings stronger than the quads or something because I seem to develop a bit of an imbalance after a while.

Alternating them like I do once a weeks seems to work for me, but then I haven't been shooting for one rep maxes in a while now. Might be a different story then.