Strength and Physique

Q:  I looked in the side bar of your page and didn’t find anything about deadlifts, so I figured I’d email. I’ve read that DL’s should not be performed with a high number of sets or high frequency. What is your take on it?  Thanks,  Mike (Michigan) My Answer: Deadlifts should be performed no more than once a week.  Plus you should perform them at reps no higher than 6.  The exception is the Romanian deadlift, which you can perform at higher repetitions. The reason why you should perform conventional deadlifts with low frequency and low repetitions is that the lower back muscles (the spinal erectors) take a long time to recover from training, especially from a heavy compound movement like the deadlift.  This is why I don't recommend doing squats and deadlifts in the same workout, since the spinal erectors bear a large load in both exercises. The reason I don't recommend higher reps on deadlifts is that the smaller muscle groups (such as the spinal erectors

So is this diminishing sets approach intended to be done once per body-part? Twice? If I usually follow a typical bodybuilding workout of 4 exercises for each body part (3-4 sets, 6-10 reps), I have an average of 32 reps per exercise, 128 reps per body part. 70 is sort of in no-mans land. Thanks for your help,  Jon My Answer: Yes diminishing sets are to be done for one exercise per body part. If you're incorporating the technique into a program where you're performing 4 exercises per body part, however, then that is a sure way to overtrain. What I would suggest is reduce the number of exercises per muscle group to two: one heavy compound movement followed by diminishing sets of a different exercise. So if you were to incorporate diminishing sets into the chest portion of your workout, then it would look something like this: Bench press- 4 sets of 6-10 reps Push-ups- diminishing sets totaling 100 reps