How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts. - Part 2

How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts.

Part 2.

This is a second part of the article How I hurt my back with Deadlifts, and how I fixed it. With Deadlifts. Read the first part here. 

Once I had figured out what my issues were with my strength training and I was able to start training properly again, it was time to start building a program that would keep me intact a long time. After all, programming can make a big difference on how you can recover and keep on progressing.

 

“Proper volume and load management”

When it comes to strength training, I believe proper load (weights) and training volume (sets x reps x load) management are the keys for long-term results and staying healthy. Whether you train too much or too heavy, most likely you are going to run into issues in a long run or every once in a while. Understanding how to fluctuate training volume and weights on the bar can set you up for long-term success. 

 

“Loading…”

Lets start with load management. With load management I’m referring to training intensity as a percentage to one repetition maximum, how often you vary the rep ranges with your training and how hard you are training.

My training used to be all over the place. One week I might do a 10 RM (repetition maximum) on a deadlift and next week I would go for a 5 RM. And I would go for a lot of rep maxes. As you might imagine relative intensity was very high every time I trained. Go hard or go home, right? If you know anything about programming, you might notice that this is not a long-term method for improvement. This is a fast track to few PR:s and to injuries.

I was doing a lot of heavy strength work and not enough of hypertrophy or basic strength work. I wasn't using maximum strength loads (90-100% of 1RM) all the time. I would usually train around 5RM weights or 80-90% of 1RM. These intensities cause a lot of strain to joints and connective tissues. Therefore, they didn’t get enough time to recover. Connective tissues take longer time to recover compared to muscles and for long-term joint and tendon health, taking few weeks completely off training at least once a year should be a must. It needs to be said that, even training with lower intensities, 60-80% of 1RM do cause strain to the connective tissues, just not as much as the higher intensities. One other thing with load management is that axial fatigue (fatigue on the spine and its supportive musculature) doesn’t get a change to decrease if no breaks from heavy axial loading is taken periodically.

 

What is a better way to manage training loads then?

Key number one. Spend time on purely hypertrophy and basic strength work at least few weeks at a time on occasion. Imagine your strength capacity as a pyramid, where the height of the peak is your maxing out potential. You want to focus on building your base wider, so that the peak can be built higher eventually. After all, bigger muscle can be a stronger muscle, once you teach it to produce all its force potential. There is a reason for weight classes in strength sports. Also, dedicating time to building muscle is a good time to fix muscle imbalances that can occur if you spend most of your training on the main compound movements.

I can see that concurrent style of strength training, where strength and muscle size gains are trained simultaneously can be an efficient method. However, the strain on the connective tissues is always quite high. Therefore, lower intensity phases might be beneficial to give those some time to recover. In addition, dedicated training phases provide an opportunity to maximize training adaptations to specific outcomes. With concurrent training you are making gains in strength and muscle size simultaneously, but the progress can be slower compared to what can be achieved if you solely focus on one or the other. Once you switch the training focus from one phase to another, the adaptations can be maintained. Especially if you know how to maintain them.

Key number two. There is no need to push the relative intensity through the roof every day. In another words, leaving few reps in reserve does build strength and muscle as well as going all out. Maybe even better in a long run. Most beginner trainees, or even “advanced” trainees don’t know how to push when the weights start to feel heavy. When push comes to shove, they simply give up and rack the weights even though they had plenty of good reps to go. On the other hand, there are guys and gals with hardcore mentality, where there is only one time to end the set. When you can’t lift the weight anymore. Neither of the aforementioned are optimal methods.

Whether you measure relative intensity in RIR (repetitions in reserve) or by RPE-scale (rate of perceived exertion), there is a range where training is optimal and progressive overload can be included easily. With RIR-training, training between four to zero reps in reserve produce pretty much the same training outcomes. When talking RPE-based training, RPE of 6 to 10 give pretty much the same results. Easy way to add progression to either of these methods is to start training from easier effort level and move towards harder training with upcoming weeks. With RIR-based training starting from 4 reps in reserve and having less RIR each week is a great progression. With RPE-based training, starting from lower RPE and increasing it each week works great.

Figure 1. RPE- / RIR-scale

“Turn down that volume!”

Next up, training volume management. The amount of sets you do within a week per movement pattern. This is where I see a lot of people drop the ball. It seems like every other fitness expert post workouts on their socials, where they are banging up to 25 sets per muscle in a single workout! And yeah, that’s way too much. However, the average person can’t tell the difference whether the fitness expert knows or doesn’t know what they are doing if they simply look jacked. That’s the only thing that matters. For those who understand appropriate strength training volumes, they know that 10 to 20 weekly sets per muscle group or movement is pretty much the agreed upon 'optimal range', with some individual differences of course. Even up to 30 weekly sets for experienced lifters is obtainable. Could it be that all these fitness experts simply have very high training volume tolerance? Doubt it. That stuff needs to sell and look hardcore. If you test that kind of a workout, you're most likely getting fairly fatigued and you're sore the next day, or for days. It’s easy to have someone do a workout that is tough. Just have them do lots of reps and sets and they will be fatigued. Fatigue doesn’t equal effectiveness. Properly executed reps and sets do.

Now that I got that out of the way, lets continue. I used to be the average person who didn’t know about sports science. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an average guy, but now I know my share of sports science, and especially about the strength training portion of it. I used to do so many sets per workout and once I learned that it’s better to train a muscle group twice per week, I just added more sets for my second workout! I basically doubled the training volume. My performance would improve at times, but most times it didn’t improve, and most of all I would very frequently have minor issues and muscle strains.

 

What can you do to manage your training volume?

It’s very easy. Start with smaller amount of work and build up to a maximum recoverable volume. You can make very good gains with quite small amount of training volume. You can recover much better from lower amount of work, and in addition, you can train much longer without taking deloads or time off. You can start with as little as two sets per movement and work your way up from that.

Like already mentioned, the “optimal range” for strength training volume is between 10 to 20 sets per muscle group / movement pattern per week. (Keep in mind, you'd want to get into this range with all movement patterns and muscle groups. Not just your favorite ones). However, even lower volumes do work if you increase the training volume eventually. Depending on a muscle group or a movement pattern, I tend to start my training with 6 to 8 sets per week. That’s 3 or 4 sets per workout! I usually build up the set amount from that adding one set each week, and my personal sweet spot is somewhere between 12 to 16 sets weekly. Hardly ever more than that. The amount of sets you can train with is very dependable on a muscle group. Smaller muscles tend to tolerate higher volumes. For example, arm muscles and postural musclature in the upper back may prefer higher rep and set amounts.

Maximum recoverable volume (MRV) refers to the amount of work you can't recover from anymore without getting hurt. Once you feel very fatigued pretty much daily, you are sore multiple days after the training session, going to the gym doesn’t excite you and your performance at the gym starts to decrease, you can be quite certain you have reached your MRV. The amount of training volume each individual can recover from differentiates depending on genetics, lifestyle, and training age. For this reason, following a training plan that is similar to someone who trains for a living makes no sense to the average gym goer. It might be smart to build up to your personal MRV periodically every few weeks or preferably few months.

Recently, I have learned to stay away from that MRV-zone a lot more. I think that if I train with slightly less volume, I can train longer without deloads or time off from training. I make good gains from week to week, from month to month, until I just simply need to take a mental break from hard training. Yet, it needs to be said that training volume probably should increase while you spend more and more years at the gym. However, during these years the time spend in the gym needs to be progressive and consistent. If your strength training is very occasional and not goal oriented, I don’t see much need to increase volumes excessively. You’re probably better off with lower training volume. But if you really want to keep making progress from year to year, your training volume might need to increase eventually to maximize your results. So, you should keep track of your MRV and if the training volume, that used to be very hard to recover from is now quite tolerable, your MRV is probably higher than before. So, keep pushing with more volume!

 

“Take away”

My message is this: People should learn to listen to their body more and adjust their training better suited for them in order to get better results and to avoid injuries. This doesn’t mean everybody should know periodization and how to design training programs. No. Rather, don’t just blindly follow a training program and think you must train super hardcore to improve. Training should definitely be difficult, but not to a degree where you must skip days in order to recover, or if you’re sore all the time.

Perfect your lifting technique, start with less sets and add more when you can, don’t always train to failure, it’s not necessary, and make sure you take time off from the gym sometimes.

This is what I did with my deadlift training, and how I fixed my back with deadlifts!

 -Mitja

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