The 639 lb Deadlift Framework: How Taylor Broke a Year-Long Plateau at 495

In recent years, the narrative for lifting has been towards “more training volume”, especially for lifters who are trying to break plateaus.

The reality is that while there is a certain amount of work you need to do in the gym to improve your performance on the Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift when preparing for a powerlifting meet, how that training volume is spread out when you have a very demanding life outside of the gym.

Today’s article is a 2-year retrospective case study of my time working with a new powerlifter named Taylor. He is a father to 2 girls, works a full time job that is very physical and also had started his own business around the time we started working together. In total he works 70+ hour weeks between both jobs.

If you want to skip how we arrived at the decisions we made, at the bottom of this page there is a link to access the exact framework we used to take his deadlift from 562 in May 2024 to 639 in December 2024 . If you’re interested to know WHY we made the training decisions so that you can customize that template for yourself, read on…

Background

Prior to us working together, Taylor had lifted for a few years and had gotten to about 220 lbs, but had regained about 25 lbs since then, putting his bodyweight in the mid-240s.

His lifts were as follows in May 2022:

• Squat: 395 lbs (struggled with depth)
• Bench: 260 lbs (had been stuck for about a year here)
• Deadlift: 495 lbs (had been stuck for about a year here too)

His goals were to get back into the 220s and compete in his first powerlifting meet but he felt he needed to get stronger first before signing up for that meet.

He had run programs like Juggernaut AI, Alpha Progression and had self programmed as well, but historically those apps would leave him burnt out and plateaued because of all of the volume they would assign.

Here’s how we took him from plateaued lifts to winning his first powerlifting meet and more recently pulling nearly 150 lbs heavier on his deadlift than where he started.

The First 4 Months of Coaching

When he’d signed up for the Platform Ready Blueprint, Taylor and I went through an initial phase working on ramping up volume to quantify “how much” volume he could tolerate without under recovering. In conjunction with this, we had also implemented some pause and tempo work to clean up some smaller technical elements to his lifts. By the end of the first month, we had found those figures and were seeing more consistent lifting technique.

By September 2022, Taylor’s lifts were as follows:

• Squat: 450 lbs (55lb PR)
• Bench 315 (55lb PR)
• Deadlift: 550 (55lb PR)

This was by far the strongest he’d ever been in his life and much of the wins we had in this period were simply made by establishing a ceiling for training volume so that we could avoid overshooting.

September 2022 to May 2023

After graduating from the PR Blueprint, Taylor took some time to work on his own and build on the new foundation we had laid out. He made some modest gains on his lifts and we had resumed working together in January of 2023.

In April 2023, his small business was really starting to pick up and the stress/workload from that had began to weigh on him. We had noticed progress started to slow, so aimed to keep training volume similar, but reducing the total nervous system fatigue by spacing out his heaviest days on his squats and deadlifts (the two most fatiguing lifts for him) with an Alternating Periodization Strategy. This helped alleviate some of the fatigue he was dealing with but some personal issues came up and there was no training from May 2023 until mid-August 2023.

First Competition Preparation

We had set goals for Taylor’s first meet to be mostly around getting a feel for the flow of the day and taking some small PRs. He had resumed training in mid August 2023 which gave us 4 solid months to build into his December 2023 meet.

We had elected to follow a pretty similar structure to how we had approached the PR Blueprint in his first 4 months of training, but with slightly lower volumes and the alternating periodization model outlined above.

His meet results were as follows, with PRs on all 3 lifts

Post-First-Meet Adjustments

While there were some definite wins from his first meet prep (lift PRs, of course, but also winning his division!) I felt like there was still some gains to be made and while reducing the frequency of heavy lifts had helped, some feelings of near-burnout were present here and there and we were noticing as his deadlift numbers were creeping up towards 600 lbs, recovering from deadlift sessions was becoming harder and harder (part of why I suspect that we had only seen a 12 lb gain on his deadlift compared to 50+ in previous cycles).

And so we leaned into the fatigue management strategy even harder to build out his strongest ever training cycle to date.

From May 2024 to his second powerlifting meet in December 2024, his deadlift increased 77 lbs from 562 lbs to 639 lbs.

The 639 lb Deadlift Framework

In my coaching experience, lifters who benefit from an alternating periodization style on their lifts and have very physically demanding jobs are the ones who benefit the most from a conjugate-inspired programming style. In the context of Taylor’s program, this means training a variety of movements over a training cycle rather than simply running load and volume adjustments on a competition deadlift.

For Taylor, the biggest advantage was that he was able to approach each deadlift session with intensity and focus without getting stale + detraining like he would when we simply pushed hard on competition style deadlifts for several sessions in a row.

We set things up using the following parameters:

• Alternating weeks of heavy squats and deadlifts
• Each session would target building up to a daily max (and PR) for a set of 1-3 reps.
• Deadlifts were organized into a 3-lift wave:
  • Session 1: overload. Using a movement which allowed him to train with weights above 100% of his max
    • For Taylor, this was primarily a competition stance deadlift from 2-6″ blocks.
  • Session 2: weak point development. Using a movement which is inherently “weaker” and has lower training weights, but is focused on building a technical or mechanical weak point.
    • For Taylor, these were primarily opposite stance deadlifts, sometimes with a deficit as a way to save his back but still develop his hips and legs in the pull. These allowed him to pull off the floor and through the mid point with more momentum.
    • By having this lighter session mid-block, Taylor was able to show up more recovered to his primary (3rd) deadlift session.
  • Session 3: Competition deadlift. Typically planning his highest readiness here.
• Squats were organized into a 3-lift wave:
  • Session 1: Upright Squat: typically a high bar squat, this was aimed to keep training loads SLIGHTLY lighter than his competitino squat and to encourage him to use his quads more in the squat without introducing too much additional variation.
  • Session 2: Box Squat. Varying depths here, focusing on increasing overall range of motion in the hips and developing the glutes + increasing heel pressure in the squat pattern as he would occasionally rock forward onto his toes with heavier lifts.
  • Session 3: Competition/Low Bar Squat.

While his competition and primary lift frequency was quite low, he did organize his training week to work muscular weak points (in a more bodybuilding fashion) 1-2 additional times per week as follows:

• Sundays:
  • Light Squatting @ 60-80% 1RM for sets of 2-3 (typically a halting squat or high bar variant) and
  • Direct quad work, 20-40 reps (hack squats, leg press, etc)
• Tuesdays:
  • Deadlift accessory work 20-40 reps, with the occasional top set of 6, focusing on posterior chain development. Often good morning variants and back extensions.
• Thursdays:
  • Primary lower body day (squat or deadlift)
  • Secondary Deadlift work: touch and go deadlifts for 10-25 reps

If you’d like a free copy of the program (organized into a google sheet for easy access), you can get a free copy of it following the steps below.

Free Copy of the 6-Month Training Program That Took Taylor from 562 to 639 lbs on his Deadlift.

If you’d like a free copy of the program (organized into a google sheet for easy access), you can get a free copy of it following any of the 3 methods below.

• Enter your contact details in the form below, it will link you to the spreadsheet immediately.
• DM me the word DEADLIFT FRAMEWORK on Instagram
• Join my powerlifting community: Starting Powerlifting. I’ve got 11 other free powerlifting guides in there alongside this program that you can get for free by joining me there.

PS – here’s another way I can help you prepare for your first powerlifting meet:

Apply to join my “Platform-Ready Blueprint” and become a case study. We’ll work with you 1-on-1 to show you how to add up to 200 lbs to your total and compete in a powerlifting meet with less than 5 hours per week in the gym.

It takes less than 60 seconds to apply HERE in order to find out more information and see if you’d be a good fit.