I’ve been lifting in my garage for two years, and I tried my first powerlifting meet in December (1129 lb total – 408/297/424 @ body weight of 232 lbs). Since this was my first meet, and just 5 months after I underwent a bilateral inguinal hernia repair, I knew I wouldn’t be particularly competitive, but to finally be around other powerlifters was motivating and eye-opening.
One unexpected takeaway from the meet is that I’m now a little sumo-curious. Watching some big sumo pulls didn’t seem as weird as I thought it would. Compared to my other lifts, my deadlift seemed much farther behind the crowd than my bench or squat. While I think I may enjoy sumo, the last thing I want to do is try it, get frustrated, and experience even more relative underperformance from a detrained conventional deadlift.
Right now, I’m on Week 3 of the GPP/Hypertrophy template, and I am planning on following it with Strength I. For the “competition” version deadlift slots, I was thinking of alternating between sumo and conventional weekly, while keeping accessory lifts conventional. Would that be a decent strategy to scratch the sumo itch and avoid detraining the conventional?
I’ve had good success with your templates so far, and I appreciate the great content!
Thanks for the post and congrats on your first meet. Very impressive!
If it were me, I’d just do one type of pull- conventional or sumo- for an entire training block and see how you feel. There’s no right answer, but that’s what I’d do in this case.
I don’t think you’re likely to detrain much, if at all, since you’re still pulling (and squatting) regularly.
i also have have this itch
as I’ve said in other posts I unfortunately had a slight lower back tweak (don’t know how it occurred) that made my deadlift really weak but now I actually feel my back is fine and squats are back if not better than before my pressing was not effected but my deadlift is still very much behind.
everything feels heavy and very slow is This maybe because I’m still building my confidence with the lift again ?
I’m currently able to squat 165kg @8 but my deadlift is also 165kg where as before it was 180kg @8 so I’m thinking I’ve just started strength 1 by doing sumo as my comp slot on day 3 exercise 1 and doing my conventional as the overload slot on day 1 exercise 3 and keep all assistance as conventional does this sound like a good idea ? Or just stick it out with conventional ?
And I see one of your BBM team members Charlie uses a sumo pull if I’m correct ??
I think if you want to pull sumo and have never done it before, that you should just go for it and try it out.
As far as whether or not you should do it for both the comp and assistance exercise slots, that’s more personal preference. In a GPP block I’d probably be more apt to do sumo and conventional 1x/wk vs. a dedicated strength block where I’d keep them the same, e.g. both sumo or conventional.
That all being said, it really doesn’t matter. There are no secrets here. In order to get good at pulling a particular way, you’re going to have to expose yourself to it over and over again.