So I’m trying to write my own programming, because I think it’s a valuable skill to be able to do it yourself.
Monday - Squat
Tuesday - Upper
Wednesday - Deadlift
Thursday - Rest
Friday - Squat
Saturday - Upper
Sunday - Rest
The days in bold are the workouts in question. I feel as though my deadlift day is too close to the following squat day (Only 48 hours) because every time that squat day comes up I feel like shit, my lower back is on fire and pumped, I can’t keep my brace properly and I just generally feel weaker and need longer between my sets. It turns what is usually an RPE 8 - 8.5 on a Monday squat day into an RPE 10. I have over a 600lb deadlift and close to a 500lb squat so I believe the amount of volume I need to do for my deadlift can not be appropriately done in one day without producing a crazy amount of fatigue that I can not recover from in time for Friday squats.
My first thought would be to split my deadlift volume up into 2 days and just do it on the same day as my squats but I am worried this will compromise my deadlift training because doing them after squats is very hard and I’ll have to drastically lower the intensity and doing them before squats will make squatting very hard and I’ll have to lower the intensity drastically on those. I only have 8 weeks till my meet so I don’t wanna screw up my programming by changing anything and making it worse than it already is.
SAA,
Thanks for the message and I hope you’re well. I do also agree that writing programming is a valuable skill, but I am not sure how good of a job we can do it ourselves given the difficulties with being objective and unbiased- even if the skill to program effectively is already possessed. If it’s not, I’m not sure self experimentation is a great strategy, but I digress…
I also disagree that you should have a deadlift day if you’re a powerlifter, as I think you should likely pull multiple times a week considering the DL is 1/3 of your total. You are also likely to get better at both recovering from the pull and tolerating the stress of pulling the more you pull. Now, if your squat programming is not of the appropriate intensity to allow for more frequent squatting (and pulling) then I think that is wrong*,* which would require additional modification of your training.
Additionally, if you’re a powerlifter you need to develop the appropriate conditioning for your sport and this requires your ability to pull after benching and squatting, i.e. in a fatigued state.
I do not know the intricacies of your programming, but I would wager your session RPE (sRPE) is far too high on a regular basis to allow for effective programming with respect to frequency. This ultimately compromises volume and training adaptations.
So no, I do not think splitting up DL volume is the play here. Rather, I think you probably need to retool your programming more markedly such that you’re doing more full body training more regularly at, perhaps, a lower average intensity than currently.
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