That's right, I told you. That's 540. I got it.
I'm surprised you haven't made that an intro yet.
Oh, it's coming.
What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com.
Jesse Laico, Athleanx.com. Also known as Dr. Deadlift.
I'm just Jeff, by the way. So today I want to talk about the deadlift and most importantly,
Jesse's progression up to today.
3.3 times my body weight.
So that's just three times your body weight. 3.3 times your body weight, an impressive
lift by any standard. How did he do it at a body weight of?
166.
166 pounds, which is pretty much phenomenal. So, let's get into how we did it. Guys, I
took some flack years back from the less educated who basically thought that spending time working
on fixing the foundation before jumping into the big lift and piling the weights on the
bar was a flawed approach. I still stick by my plan, that's the best way to approach this
long term. I talked about this pyramid, right? There's a strength pyramid at the bottom of
that pyramid is strength. It's the base of everything that builds off of it as you can
see here. However, I said that the pyramid is also supported by something else. Therefore,
the strength isn't the bottom of the pyramid, it's not the base of everything. Because if
I can compromise your stability and there's ways I can do that, by either having limited
flexibility or mobility or in this case, postural issues, then I can undercut the entire pyramid.
It's like a tree, if the root system sucks, the tree is going to fall down no matter how
big and strong it is. So, we spent quite a bit of time working on Jesse's posture. Right.
And also some of the different issues you have with flexibility and mobility. Thoracic
spine was horrible.
Yeah. Oh, God.
All right. So, you can see some of these pictures here, like Jesse didn't have really the prerequisite
safe body, I don't think, to start stepping over heavy weights and try to lift them because
he was just going to let the weights go up and up doing some of the compromised body.
So, we spent a lot of time doing that.
Yeah.
Then what we did was move on to sort of those muscular weaknesses or the component weaknesses
that were going to undercut his deadlift anyway. Right?
Yeah.
So, we use some of the accessory lifts. What were some of your favorite ones?
So, my favorite ones were the Straight Arm Push Down.
Getting you to activate the lats and engage them and hold them tight throughout the whole
lift.
Yep. RDLs.
Working on the hinge capability. Again, something that didn't come naturally for Jesse was getting
the hinge to work properly. But more importantly, one of your biggest struggles was at the end
of the deadlift to being able to finish.
Yeah.
So, you did RDL, next one.
High Pulls, that was to work my upper back and upper back strength.
Right. A lot of times again the thoracic weakness, right, to be able to hold your shoulders back
tends to drive that forward rounding which can work its way down the spine into the lumbar
spine. And it starts with that lack of strength through the upper back, so we did those.
Yeah. Hip Thrusts was big.
So, another move like the RDL to sort of work on that terminal hip extension.
Lat Pull Downs.
Okay.
I love the Lat Pull Downs.
So, when KC Mitchell was in here, KC told you how much he liked to use the Lat Pull
Down.
Yeah.
As another move to improve the Deadlift.
And then finally Power Shrugs.
Right. So, Power Shrugs, again, working that upper back and becoming explosive, especially
off the floor.
Yeah.
You don t use straps?
No.
Grip work is something we've worked on a lot.
Yeah, grip strength is a huge component of my accessory work.
You do a lot of carries.
Yeah. Farmer's Carries. So, it was the Dead Hangs and the Farmer's Carries were the probably
the two biggest things that I did for my grip strength.
And just to give them an idea, how often are you working, let's say your carries into a
weekly routine?
Well, like you had said in a previous video to do, I had done it almost every single workout.
Now it's about 75% of the workouts that I do.
So now the specific plan, because people probably want to know what your plan is. Right.
Yeah.
So, let's can I erase Dr. Deadlift?
Yes, of course.
Thank you very much. So, phase one 3 x 5.
Yeah. So that was done as an ABCD structure with B and D days specialized in the Deadlift
with a 3 x 5. That was part of the old school iron program that I did.
By the way, guys, literally people wanted to ask, what did Jessie do? Exactly what we
put together was the old school iron plan.
Yeah.
This is the first phase of that plan, which was meant to sort of build strength in your
bigger lifts and build those that foundational strength.
So, I was doing that one to two times a week just based on that structure, but I repeated
phase one three times. So, I spent three months doing phase one because I noticed that my
strength was continuing to progress and progress and progress. Once it stopped progressing,
that's when I moved on to Phase 2.
So, I want to interject here and say that the reason why I think he saw sort of those
uncapped, faster progressions
Yeah.
is because the time was spent earlier on
Yeah.
to build up that foundation. I can't say enough guys, I've seen far too many athletes who
jump the gun and go too quickly on adding the weight, which is fine because they're
capable of doing it. But when it's built upon that cracked foundation, everything crumbles,
right?
Yeah.
But if you have the foundation in place, even if you have to take some time in the beginning
to set the stage for that, ultimately, I don't know many people that are deadlifting more
than Jesse is, especially at his weight. He's literally in the competitive area. He can
step into a competition and win it at this point.
I mean it's elite as strength standards would say.
Right. I mean, the other thing, I just spent time at my next live event with Matt Wenning,
who is one of the most respected and accomplished power lifters of this generation. And he actually
pointed out the exact same thing, that unless you spend the time to work on fixing your
weaknesses and to fix this cracked foundation, you're literally setting yourself up for disaster
long term. And he actually has his Wenning Warmups that he uses to address this exact
situation so that you're not stepping over the bar or getting under the bar with a body
that's not prepared to do it. Then we kind of shift the gears in Phase 2.
Phase 2, that was what we call a Contrast Wave Loading.
Right.
And that scheme was five reps, one rep, five reps, one rep, five reps, one rep.
Like that.
Yeah.
So go ahead and explain that a little bit.
So, with the five reps we were using, what was it, 80%?
80%.
80% of one rep max and then shifting to the one rep I was using 90, 92
92.5.
92.5 and then five again at 80%
At 80%.
Then it was 90
5.
And then 80% again, and then 97.5.
97.5, right. So, the idea here is that from workout to workout, the 80% with the five
rep is going to stay the same. But with the one rep, we're going to basically creep up
the percentages.
Yeah.
So, the next workout, you wouldn't start with 92.5, you d start with 95, then you go to
97.5 and then you go to 100. And then the next workout you're going to go from 97.5
to 100 to that and then at that point
102.5.
102.5, so just establishing a new PR on the lift.
Yeah.
But this phase was one that really started to help you to bump up the numbers.
Yeah, and it was cool because I was seeing new masses every single every single time
that I was going to 102.5%.
Right. So now interestingly, in Phase 3 here, strength is one component of the overall big
picture. There are esthetic benefits that also a lot of people want.
Yeah,
Jesse's one of them. Mr. 8 Pack. Right. But overall athletic performance, again, we just
had the Athlean-X Games. We want people that could be agile, have stamina, have power,
endurance, have the ability to move in space, have good flexibility, good mobility, be strong.
But in Phase 3, also in old school, and you're talking about continuing to maintain and build
off of your key lifts that you're working towards.
Right.
So you are able to sort of go back to getting some of those esthetic benefits. So that was
here.
Yeah. So, after my hypertrophy work to start the workout, I moved into a 5 x 5 and again
that was increasing the weight by 5 pounds each workout that that showed up.
Right. And then following the standard progression for the 5 x 5 also. So, starting with the
3 x 5 and then increasing that volume by the end. And this approach has led you to the
numbers that we see here today.
Yeah. And I think is the most beneficial thing that I've ever done to help increase my deadlift.
Yeah.
And not just that, but I also worked my other big lifts, and it was really great for my
strength to go up on my squat, I'm almost at four plates on my squat.
So, you're not just a Dead Lift Specialist?
Not just a Deadlift Specialist.
You re just not built for Deadlifts?
No. not just. You're just not built for deadlifts?
No, no. I'm almost at four plates on my squat, I'm up to 380.
Right.
Last time I tested here.
You can see it here. Yup.
Yup. And it's moving, honestly, pretty easy compared to some of my other maxes that I've
hit. So, I'm hoping I'm going to hit four or five pretty soon.
Again, not surprising, guys. If you build your overall strength, you don't just become
strong in one lift and one lift only.
Yeah.
If it's done the right way, it's transferable to a lot of different lifts.
Yeah.
So any other little nuggets or since you are Dr. Deadlift.
One thing I can suggest is that what I did is treating every single rep that you do like
it s a max lift. Being explosive off the floor as fast as I could and power my glutes to
the bar.
Yup.
Because if I didn't do that, I would be weak when it comes to that.
Plus, first of all, it's like a motor unit recruitment practice, right? Like you want
to be able to at your at your highest totals, be able to recruit your motor units to their
full capacity.
Yeah.
So, if you start to do this from a lighter weight, Larry Wheels does this a lot. He basically
explodes through every single repetition. I think that when you need it the most, you
have the ability to tap into those motor units to allow you to move some pretty heavy weights.
And if you don't do it and you only try to do it when you need them
Yeah.
they don't have enough practice being engaged and being brought into action. So, it's a
good it's a good tip for sure. So, I got to say I'm going to say it right here on camera,
proud of your work.
Oh, wow. Wow.
Done.
Wow
Don, done an amazing job.
I can't believe it, he's giving me praise.
It's like a proud papa, you know. I just got to say proud papa. So, if you guys want to
do the same thing, we talked about Old School Iron. It's available over at athleanx.com.
If you're looking for more videos, how we put the science back in strength, because
that is one of the components of it, but it's not everything. Again, the complete picture
to be Athlean, you've got to have some other elements to your training as well.
Yeah.
We do it all in Athlean-X you can find more at athleanx.com. All right, guys, we ll be
back here again soon in just a couple of days. Make sure you hit subscribe turn on your notifications
so you never miss a new video when we put one out. All right. See you soon.