Deadlift 1RM test, knee pain + bulking question

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hey BBM,

I have a few question about a couple of different topics:

Deadlift 1RM:
I’m currently running PB III for the second time, and this week was week 14 of the program. I’m recovering from a long term hip injury and only recently got back to squatting, so I decided not to test my squat 1RM. Also, on week 11 of running PB III for the first time I injured my shoulder and i’m still recovering from that, which is why I also decided not to test my bench 1RM (i’m at around 80%-90% of where I was prior to the injury, though benching and pressing in general is still quite painful). Before PB III I ran PB II and PB I a few times, and before that the beginner template, so today was my first time ever testing my deadlift 1RM (and first time my 1RM in any lift). Before today, my best lift was 195 kg @ ~RPE 9, and I decided to work up to 200 kg today for my 1RM test (see the link for the video, you can’t really see much in this recording though you can still see the speed the bar was moving at: Deadlift-1@RPE-9.5-17.11.2023).
I feel like 200 kg isn’t my true deadlift 1RM, though I was afraid of jumping 10 kg up to 205 kg since the most i’ve ever done before is 195 kg.
What do you think about rerunning week 14 of PB III again next week, and trying to go for a true 1RM next week? If so, based on the video and how 200 kg moved, is 205 kg a good choice for a 1RM test next week?
Also, from what you can see in the video, are there any changes in form you’d suggest? I’ve had my form reviewed a few times via the form check service, and was told generally that my form is good, though that was with submaximal weight.

Knee Pain + difference between knee sleeves and knee wraps:
As i’ve said above, i’ve been dealing with a long term hip injury and a shoulder injury. I haven’t been following the squat programming of PB III and instead have been running sort of a linear progression with 5 reps @ RPE 8, then taking off 5% and doing another 2-3 sets of 5. Before the shoulder injuy, I was squatting low bar and my knees felt fine, though I did feel a bit of discomfort (I’ve had a history of knee pain since I was young which I was told is because of flat feet). Since my shoulder injury i’ve had to switch to high bar squatting and I felt a gradual increase in knee pain as i’ve been increasing the weight (I got to 115 kg with low bar at the time of the shoulder injury, then started at around 100 kg when I switched to high bar squats and worked my way up to 120 kg for 5 reps @ RPE 8). This week, the knee pain got to a point where it was very painful for a few days after my day 1 squat session, also in my day to day life when going up stairs or kneeling down and such.

Is there anything I can do about this knee pain and is this something to be worried about or should I just keep training through the pain as i’ve been doing recently? For now moving back to low bar squatting isn’t an option because of my shoulder, though I hope in the next few weeks i’ll see some progress with that.

As a follow up question, i’ve been squatting completely raw for the time being, so without knee sleeves/wraps and without a belt as I didn’t feel like I worked up to a weight that required it yet, though i’ll probably add a belt once I stop progressing at this rate on my squat. Would you recommend knee sleeves / wraps to deal with the knee pain, and if so should I go for sleeves or wraps and what is the difference between these? I’ve looked it up by didn’t really come to a conclusion of which one I should be using, if at all.

Bulking questions:
So, i’ve been bulking for around 18 months out of the last 2 years (Not all of the 18 months was consecutively). For context, i’m 22 and my height is ~180cm, I’ve started at ~70 kg @ ~13% bf, and i’m currently ~81.2 kg @ ~18.2% bf (I’ve been weighing myself every morning and these numbers are based on the weekly average with this scale: Robot or human?). In the morning my waist is currently just above 33 inches. My question is, how much longer can / should I continue this bulk? In one of my previous posts last year, Jordan suggested that I should work my way up in body weight up to ~95 kg over the next 4-5 years. Originally, my plan was to keep bulking for another 10 months and hopefully reach around 87 kg, and from there cut down a bit of fat and start a slow bulk again in order to reach 95 kg in a few years. Does this plan sound good, or should I just keep slowly gaining weight at around 6-7 kg a year, and get to around 95 kg over the next 2 years and cut down from there? While I don’t won’t to gain excessive fat, I do feel I have a bit more room to grow before I need to cut down.
As a follow up question to this, my next template i’ll be running is PB III again in order to continue recovering from my hip and shoulder injuries, and after that i’m planning on running strength III. Should I keep bulking as usual while running strength III, since it’s main purpose isn’t really hypertrophy, or would I be better of maintaining my weight while running more powerlifting focused templates? I feel like my main weak points are my shoulders, calves and forearms both visually and in terms of strength, and these muscles won’t really get much direct work from strength III.

Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.

2

Hey Ben,

Thanks for the post.

To your question regarding what to do on the deadlift, I agree this was not a max. I’d think somewhere closer to 220 is likely your 1RM, perhaps higher. That said, I see no reason to repeat week 14 and test again. Rather, I’d have added more weight while you were maxing out on deadlift at the end of the template if you were interested in finding a true 1RM. I don’t see much benefit in testing again, as you don’t really need an accurate 1RM value for training going forward. Unfortunately, I can’t see much from this angle to comment on your technique. Bar is in a good place, you keep it on your legs, and the overall rep is pretty solid.

For the knee pain, I think the programming likely needs to be heavily modified to hammer out this issue. I suspect the weight is too heavy and there’s not enough direct work going into desensitizing the positions you have pain in. For example, 5 @ 8 would be many weeks into a rehab plan, which would be adjusted based on symptoms. I do not think this is due to high bar vs low bar per se’, though sometimes a change in movement itself can produce some relief. Most often, it’s the simultaneous reduction in load that co-occurs with movement change that helps. I think if your knee pain is completely manageable in that you don’t have to change programming and you don’t have symptoms you’re aware of while using them, then yes I’d use them. I’d favor knee sleeves or a light training wrap that you can keep on (without re wrapping) during the squats.

For the weight management question, you can keep bulking as long as you want to. I think it is unlikely that you will be able to bulk continuously for the next 5 years without any periods of maintenance or cuts due to personal preferences regarding body composition, diet-related fatigue, and so on. Nevertheless, I think “what do” should be determined every few months based on how things are going. I would not feel comfortable laying out a rigid plan for years. All of our templates would be fine to run regardless of what you’re doing with respect to weight management. All of our strength focused programs should produce an increase in muscle size, provided the individual responds well to them.

I do not think strength III or PB III are appropriate if you’re dealing with shoulder, knee, and hip pain that require significant changes to the program. Rather, one of the rehab templates and/or combining the lower body elements from the hip or knee pain template with the upper body elements from the shoulder template would be my recommendation if coaching isn’t a realistic option at this point.

-Jordan

3

Hey Jordan,

Thanks for the reply.

For your last point, I forgot to mention a couple of things regarding my injuries since I didn’t want the post to be too long:

For the hip injury - I’ve been dealing with CAM type FAI for about 4 years which led to a slight labrum tear, though to keep it relatively short, i’ve worked with a BBM coach on a form check over a year ago and he also gave me advice as to how to rehab my hip and get back to squatting. 2 years ago I wasn’t able to squat with full depth without pain even without any weight, so I worked my way up over the last 1-2 years from a relatively high pin squat all the way to being able to squat freely with next to no hip pain (though if I squat with excessive ROM I might still feel some pain). Once I was able to squat with a full ROM without any pain, I started at 40 kg and worked my way up to 120 kg (which I was able to do before my injury, though it was a few years ago). I didn’t make any jumps, and have only been adding 2.5 kg to the bar every week until the weight started to become challenging at around 110 kg.

For the shoulder injury - I didn’t mention this, but I wasn’t running the actual PB III programming, rather I found an entry point where I could bench with minimal pain (which was around a 60 kg tempo bench at the time), and i’ve been slowly working my way up from there in terms of weight, volume and exposing my shoulder to movements that I wasn’t able to do right after getting injured such as incline bench, OHP and pull ups, though i’m still not at 100% there. I am planning on running the programming for PB III as written, as strength-wise i’m quite close to where I was when I first started PB III, and I want to get back to where I was and feel like i’ve recovered to a point where I can tolerate the regular programming of PB III. I do sometimes feel a bit of pain when pressing in general, though it’s manageable. The only place I haven’t really made progress in terms of this shoulder injury is being able to squat low bar rather than high bar since it’s painful to put my shoulder in a very stretched position.

As for the knee pain - Though I have felt some discomfort for a while (though it’s not due to any injury and i’ve always felt some discomfort in my knees), it’s only really gotten to a point where it’s painful over the last few weeks, and as I mentioned in the hip injury section, it’s actually been quite a long and gradual increase in weight and it only started getting challenging in the last few weeks. When I said I was doing 5 @ RPE 8, this was already over a year into rehabbing from the hip injury, and some of the sets were probably slightly under RPE 8, as i’ve just been adding 2.5 kg every week until I reached a true set of RPE 8 which was around 110 kg, and from there i’ve been adding weight when possible. Given this information, would you still suggest a change in programming? I’ll also go ahead and buy some knee sleeves as I currently don’t have any, so i’ll see how this effects the knee pain.

Also, given this information, would you still say PB III and strength III are not appropriate, or would you say that it’s fine to run them? (Maybe with slight modification on the squat programming due to the knee pain, if the knee sleeves won’t help).

For the deadlift 1RM - The highest e1RM I had while running PB III was 207 kg when I did 185 kg for 1 @ RPE 7. In general, I started the template with an e1RM of 204 kg when I did 165 kg for 4 reps @ RPE 7, so I thought that I haven’t really increased my deadlift. Given you said that my 1RM seems to be closer to 220 kg, is it fair to say that i’ve been significantly undershooting on all of my deadlift sessions?

If so, how should I fix this moving forward? Should I jump in weight to 177.5 kg for 4 reps @ what is supposed to be RPE 7 on week 1 (which would be an e1RM of 220 kg) or should I gradually increase the weight and worry a bit less about overshooting, which is I why I was very conservative in adding weight.
As a final question, when I next test my 1RM, would it be reasonable to go for 200 kg, 210 kg and 220 kg as my attempts, or would you base it off of the e1RM that I get to the week/s prior to testing?
Also, is it reasonable to be worried about making such a big jump in weight since my current best is 200 kg and I have a bit of a history with injuries, or would you not be worried about it if I were to select the correct weight for the 1RM test?

4

Hey Ben,

Thanks for the reply. Regarding the hip, it is unclear to me if you currently have pain with the existing level of training stress, which is why I am hesitant to recommend continuing on the current programming (LP) or engaging in the programming of either template you suggested. If no current discomfort and coming off the LP, I’d think PB III and Strength III are likely a bridge too far from a training stress standpoint. They could work, with reducing volume and RPE by ~ 1-2 sets and 1-2 points each to see if that is manageable. I would not do singles for another 6-8 weeks though.

Regarding the shoulder, I feel similarly, e.g. I’m not sure if you’re currently pain free and therein lies my concerns with the jump to the training stress from both programs. The same modifications listed above could work as an entry point.

For the knee pain, yes, I think this represents a need for a change in programming regarding exercise selection, rep and intensity prescriptions, and total training stress for the week.

I don’t know if you’ve been undershooting, as the calculator may not be terribly accurate for your current level of strength performance from multi-rep to single-rep efforts. If you rated the DL video you sent to me @ 7 or 8, I wouldn’t argue with you. I think for loading, you should work up to a weight you perceive to be at the appropriate RPE. I am not concerned at all with you underloading the exercise in training.

I would base 1RM testing on what’s happening that session. You can have an idea about what weights you should be handling based on recent and historical performances, but you’ll have to feel it out as you go along. I think starting at ~ 90% your e1RM for your first attempt is reasonable, then rate the RPE, and go up from there in 5-10% increments.

I do not think smaller or larger jumps for 1RM testing modify injury risk uniquely.

-Jordan

5

Thanks for the reply Jordan.

Regarding the hip and shoulder injuries, sorry if I wasn’t clear - I meant to say that currently I do not have any pain with my current programming.
I’ll only have shoulder pain when trying to get in to position for low bar squats or if I were to bench with too wide of a grip / dumbbell incline bench with my arms in certain angles, where there is more of a stretch on my shoulder at the bottom of the movement at a painful angle. I’ll only have hip pain if I were to squat way past 90 degress. Though, I try to avoid getting into these painful positions for the time-being and i’m not feeling pain when sticking to the form that works for me as of now.

For the hip, after taking a long time to work my way up both in terms of volume and intensity as I mentioned above, for this last run of PB III i’ve been following the regular PB III programming for squats / leg press on days 2 and 3 of the program, and i’ve only changed squats on day 1 to be a sort of LP as I mentioned above, though i’ll go ahead and dial back on the intensity and volume for a bit as you suggested.

For the shoulder, in terms of strength i’m at 80-90% of where I was prior to the injury with minimal pain as I mentioned above. In terms of the programming, after slowly building up in terms of intensity, volume and exercise selection since the injury, for the last block of PB III (4 weeks) i’ve been running this proramming:
Day 1 - Incline bench, 3 sets of 10-12 reps @ RPE 7-8. Day 2 - paused bench - 3 sets of 6-8 reps @ RPE 7-8 + 30* dumbbell incline bench, 3 sets of 10-12 reps @ RPE 7-8. Day 3 - close grip bench, 3 sets of 8-10 reps @ RPE 7-8. Day 4 - OHP, 3 sets of 8-10 reps @ RPE 7-8 + Incline cable flyes, 3 sets of 12-15 reps @ RPE 8-9.

Given this, I feel comfortable trying the programming modifications the you’ve listed as an entry point as you mentioned, and hopefully i’ll be able to soon get back to the regular programming of the templates. I will however take this week as sort of a “deload” week for squats as you suggested, and work my way up from there to see if that would be also a good entry point for squats given the knee pain.

For the deadlift, the calculator i’ve been using is the one that’s in the PB III template. For how I would rate the RPE on the DL video I sent, if I were to rate it on the day without watching the footage back I would have probably rated it @ 9-9.5 at the time, though looking back at it, it does look more like @ 8. Just the week before, my top set was 195 kg for 1 @ what I thought was RPE 9, which looking back at it doesn’t make much sense. The reason I thought I was undershooting is that if you were to tell me to go for 1 rep @ RPE 8 without watching back the deadlift footage and your comment saying that it looked @ 7-8, I would have probably gone for ~190-192.5 kg. I might go ahead and record more of my sets for myself to keep track of the speed of the bar in order to help me gauge the RPE, as I haven’t really been recording the regularly, except for checking my form once in a couple of months.

Thanks again for the help, keep up the great content coming from BBM.

6

Ben,

I think that limitations of communicating by forum are becoming clear for the level of consideration. That said, I think you’ve got some good direction here.

For the DL weights, even if you you rated 190-192.5 is 10kg under your 1 @ 8, I do not think this level of difference (in accuracy, not precision) will matter with respect to training outcomes. For that reason, I wouldn’t really worry about it.

7

Makes sense, Thanks for the advice!