A couple of weeks ago I had the worst deadlift session of my career (not counting those days when I was too beat up to pull at all. Since then, I've drastically increased my assistance work on my off days, to the point that I'm doing at lease 3-4 lower back exercises every day (except Saturdays, the day before I squat.)
The movement of the day was a reverse band deadlift. To minimize lower back stress, I decided to pull sumo, and to make sure I could at least keep up with the group, I packed not one, but two deadlift suits, even though everyone else was going raw.
As I was warming up though, I started to feel something I haven't felt in a long time... I actually felt...good. Not just good as in a little less f*cked up than usual, but really good. Here's how it went:
245 with the strong band x 5
335 x 1
385 x 1
425 x 1
475 x 1
515 x 1
565 x 1
At this point I was psyched. I was approaching pre-injury weights, and I hadn't even thought about putting any gear on. I knew that If I could pull 600, It would mean I'm in shape to start really training for a meet.
Pulled 605, then 635.
Granted, 635 with a reverse band isn't a whole lot, but it's a huge step forward from where I was a few weeks ago. My plan of ramping up my assistance work seems to be working. I'm also figuring out that conventional deadlift doesn't work for me, even in training. I've always been of the school of thought that you should train both stances, but I don't think my back can handle the extra rounding that conventional causes me. From here on in, all of my deadlift training is going to be sumo to protect myself as best I can.
For assistance, I did 4 sets of 12 flute ham raises
4 sets of 15 dumbbell side bends with 70lbs
4 sets of incline situps.
Big progress with this one, looking forward to the rest of the cycle!