Deadlift Progression after I hit 455x1, 475x1 & 455x1

Step 1 of this involved 4-5 weeks of clusters. After that, this is what Eric planned:


OK here is the plan. This is gonna seem funky to you so if you don't understand something let me know.
Looking at the clusters and breaking them down to their essense: take out all the fancy methodology and you basically did a bunch of singles and then a bunch of double with 415 with VERY short rest periods.

My idea is to build on that by:

1. Using doubles with liberal rest periods and building the weight….taking advantage of the increased rest.

2. Increasing the density to build on recovery while using doubles to stoke and facilitate that.
That's the best I can explain it right now….the first one is simple enough. You did doubles with no rest so now you turn around and do doubles with rest. More rest more weight. Doubles are not something we have talked about that much in and of themselves.

Most people when they say singles they mean something but when they say doubles they really are just using short-hand for two reps. Doubles are hardly ever used as if they have some value in and of themselves and they are more often employed in those crappy percentage based schemes. But double have some good things going for them and I use them a lot for certain reasons.

Much of the time, the second rep is better than the first. Look at triples and you have one bad rep, one good one, and one not so good. The second one is the sweet spot. Your past the first one so your nerves are better and you are not over-analysing it. Beyond the second to the third most people will simply not maintain the quality with very heavy weights.

So that can be an advantage of doubles over singles. And they are obviously more time efficient.

There will be two phases, each two weeks. And then we may add a third phase of another two weeks. If we add a third phase then the next two weeks after that will be singles, so that would make two months or 2 mesocycles using your language.

The first phase you will warmp up, using singles to acclimate until you get near enough to the 410 or 415 mark and then do a double with 410 or 415 and then move up through 420 and 425 for doubles. You can increase the weight again after that if you can maintain quality or you can stick at 425 (unless you can't do 425 that day of course). Aim to get 5 or 6 doubles for the first workout.

For the second workout do much the same thing and aim for the the same amount of sets, but see if you can add weight in any way that you find possible.

That couldn't be more simple.

For the second phase it's a bit more complicated and will take a bit more time.

It should go something like this:

Phase Two, Workout 1:
415 x 5
425 x 2 (+ 10 lbs)
420 x 5
430 x 2 (+ 10 lbs)
425 x 5

Phase Two Workout 2:
420 x 2
430 x 2
435 x (to near failure)

That should be challenging enough. The first phase, although it seems like a lot of doubles is actually less demanding than what you've been doing. You know by now that more weight doesn't always mean more demanding. The first workout of the second phase brings the volume and density through the roof so be careful with that.

If we decide to add another phase on it will be to increase volume and density using the weight range we establish in phase two workout two.

Cluster Sets

Oh of course. There are no rules to it. In this case you've general increased the reps and thus greatly increased the volume.


Or your could have started with 2 rep clusters then went to one with increased weight. Or you can maintain volume and just increase weight…which would usually be microloading like you planned.
Theoretically a cluster could be done in any way you can imagine up to I'd say about 3 reps. I don't thing anything more than three reps is really practical. That DC stuff is not really clusters it's post failure training. Not the same thing AT ALL.


But look at pullups. You were talking about increasing volume. Well say your best set of bw pullups was 10 reps. You could do three rep clusters with the goal of pulling off more reps. Iit would still be clusters.


You can also combine clusters with density training.


For instance say you took that 10 rep pullup and you did 3 rep clusters. So that you do:


1. 3 x 5 (minisets) —- so 15 total reps instead of ten


2. 3 x 6 (minisets) —— so 18 total reps (this takes around 96 seconds)


3. Density training with 18 reps in less than 1.5 minutes (so say you do 18 reps in 1 minute 20 seconds)


4. Density training for 1:20 seconds with at least 19 reps or more.


That's just an example. Maybe ambitious as hell of course but it's just an example.


The goal would be to increase your volume in general. It wouldn't matter how that panned out when you went back to straight sets as long as your volume increased overall.


I'm not saying you should do that it's just an example of the versatility of clusters.