For the past couple months I’ve been focused purely on hypertrophy and running and I’m loving it. Instead of deadlifts I’ve been doing barbell RDL’s one leg day and dumbbell RDL’s the next leg day. On dumbbell rdls I’m up to 80s right now and I’ve run into an issue. The 85’s and up at my gym are hilariously huge. I can’t imagine they won’t be insanely cumbersome and annoying to handle , even changing the path of the exercise my a decent amount. My question is should I just do barbell rdls both days ? Maybe have a lighter higher rep one day and moderately heavy and sets of 8-10 the next ? I was doing a mix of barbell and dumbbell to change it up a bit but I’m not sure how much that really matters if I just care about Hypertrophy? Another thing I thought about was just doing single leg dumbell rdls but I don’t know how valuable they are and I already do lunges and Bulgarian split squats for single leg work.
Hey Brett,
Glad you’re enjoying your training. May I ask what program you’re running? Is there any opportunity to do another hinge type exercise, e.g. trap bar RDL, hip thrusts, lying leg curls, DB SLDL off a deficit, good mornings, or similar?
-Jordan
Jordan , thanks for the response.
my gym does have a trap bar so I could try that. I currently already have lying leg curls in my training as accessory work, single leg dumbell deadlift is a possibility also. I don’t have a ton of interest in hip thrusts or good mornings if I’m being honest .
I’m running my own put together programming currently. Just trying to hit each muscle group twice a week for 12-15 sets of 8-15 reps. I keep a weight until I can do 15 reps across all sets and then I bump up the weight and repeat.
SLDL is stiff legged deadlift. I don’t really like single leg deadlifts for hypertrophy, but I do use them all the time for rehab work.
I would favor SLDL, trap bar DL, or hip thrusts for this slot if it were me.