Who doesn’t love the deadlift? When lifters like you and I find that we love to do something we tend to do it in excess - the issue with this is that it isn’t optimal for recovery nor achieving any gains to deadlift more than 1-2 times a week.
It’s actually much better for lifters to deadlift about once a week and to add accessory movements into your workout routine that will help you improve your deadlift. Remember, more is not always better when it comes to making gains in the gym - it can actually lead to reduced performance or worse, injury.
So, why is it that lifters should focus on deadlifting at most once a week?
It’s a compound movement
This was mentioned in another article in more detail but, the deadlift works a number of muscle groups in both the lower and upper body. This means that you’re going to be using quite a bit of energy due to the number of muscle groups you are using - which has an effect on the amount of time it takes for your body to recover from training (especially if you’re focused more on volume than you are on intensity).
Endurance and hypertrophy work take time to recover from
Research states that the difference between recovery for hypertrophy workouts and endurance workouts is very minimal. In both cases, our muscle fibers take on quite a number of micro tears and also have a build up of lactic acid from our body converting carbohydrates into ATP. This only means that you’re likely going to feel like crap after each workout since you’ll likely apply the principle of progressive overload to your programming.
When you’re developing your approach to volume workouts you want to consider the effect that volume training actually has on your muscle fibers themselves. Deadlift sessions with a fair number of sets as well as reps that fall in the range of 8+ basically tears down the muscles (if you’re using a sufficient enough weight or about 50-60% of your 1rm). Also, keep the one thing that matters most when you want results to happen - it doesn’t matter what you do in the gym, it’s what you do outside of the gym that matters.
It taxes the Central Nervous System (even more so if you’re training for strength)
When you’re training for strength gains it’s important to pay attention to the effect that this training is having on your Central Nervous System - especially if you’re performing a powerhouse movement like the deadlift. On average, when you’re training heavy it can take about 3-5 days for your Central Nervous System to truly recover. Why? Well, when you’re focused on strength training and doing reps in the 1-6 range more of your bodies focus is on making new neural adaptations. The entire goal of strength training is to allow lifters to access more of the muscle fibers that they already have in their bodies. It also requires a bit of muscular coordination which can be a pain on the Central Nervous System.
How exactly do you know if your CNS is getting taxed?
Believe me, you’ll know. Your body will experience a variety of symptoms - from loss of grip strength all the way to constant headaches, any of these things can be a sign that you need to give your body a break. However, this can be avoided if you understand that heavy movements require more of that coordination between muscles and thus tax the CNS very easily (especially if you’re lifting in between 80-100% of your 1rm. Which you likely will be). When your Central Nervous System gets taxed your body will no longer receive any benefit from added training.
In fact, you will likely start to decline in performance (in very much the same way that your body gets taxed from too much hypertrophy or endurance work). Research actually suggests (as well as several professional powerlifters, bodybuilders,
Conclusion
As you can see it’s usually best to keep your main (compound) movements to a minimum if your goal is to actually see any kind of improvement. A good number to start with is 1 for most lifters as this number allows them to get adequate recovery and to manage the stress that they’re placing on their bodies throughout the week. If you want to get more of a workout in, another option is to add accessory movements that place emphasis on the back into your routine. So, instead of trying to deadlift 2+ times a week, Deadlift once a week and add a few sets of Lat Pulldowns, DB R
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acid
http://www.fsps.muni.cz/emuni/data/reader/book-4/04.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4723165/
https://www.hoylesfitness.com/exercise-and-health/overtraining-and-cns-fatigue/
https://1upnutrition.com/blogs/expert-advice/how-do-you-tax-your-nervous-system
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1034/j.1600-0838.2003.00297.x
http://www.theissnscoop.com/skeletal-muscle-hypertrophy-science-of-size/