The dead lift is one of the most valuable lifts that you can perform for overall total body strength.
In order to prepare yourself for most any physical feat and to enhance your athletic performance you have got to include the dead lift exercise into your arsenal of strength lifts.
This is why I want to talk about a simple method that you can use in order to improve this lift.
Improving Your Dead Lift To tell the truth there are several things you can do to increase your dead lift.
Looking at your technique and making sure you have a sound quality lift is definitely a biggie, but general adjustments within the scope of your lifting program is what I am going to address today.
Looking at the dead lift in this case I am going to be referring to the barbell version of this lift in case you didn't already know that.
So how can we increase our dead lifting ability? Well as a strength and conditioning professional I like to have measurable variables to compare things to.
In the case of the dead lift I like to know some sort of max effort number.
This can be a single rep maximal effort number or even a 3 or 5 repetition maximum.
To keep things simple lets say you are capable of performing the dead lift with 200 lbs.
on the bar for a count of 5 reps.
For the sake of discussion lets assume that you are structuring your workouts to try and perform the 3 sets of 5 reps with the 200 lbs.
Now knowing the 200 lbs is pushing your limit at 5 reps you may notice right away that you are unable to complete the full 3 sets of 5 reps.
You may only be able to execute 5 reps on the first attempt, 4 on the second, and 2 or 3 on the third.
In this case your total lifting volume is no greater than 12 total reps with the 200 lbs.
Now the next little part is easy.
Instead of trying to perform the 200 lbs.
at a full rep range of 3 sets of 5 with your lifted reps falling short of the desired 15 total reps simply flip the formula around to attempt 5 sets of 3 reps! Now you are only having to worry about hitting 3 reps per set and hopefully are now able to get the desired 15 reps for your total volume.
If this still doesn't work you can manipulate the numbers again by adding even more sets and fewer reps if necessary.
This is a single method that you can use within your program design to increase your dead lifting strength.
Remember that there are several things you can do to improve your dead lift.
As far as making a quick adjustment this is one method that I promise is tried and true.
Take time to practice and make sure your technique is flawless.
Remember that most anyone can train hard, but only the best train smart my friend!