30min Deadlift Challenge

[K_pem]

I thought I would share one of my old favorites that I use to kinda gauge where I’m at strength/muscular endurance wise.

This is tweaked and stolen from Dan John; essentially he says if you can’t complete this challenge you’re either weak or out of shape.

The original rules are simple: load a bar with 315lbs and pick it up for 2reps every minute, which is great.

I sometimes tweak that to make it a little more competitive to have a time to beat and say the goal is doing 60 reps in under 30minutes. Then try to beat my time.

Figured this might be fun for some of us to do through summer leading into season. You can obviously scale it up and down to your strength level but this is the OG.

Let me know what you guys think!

 

[Stickmark]

Adjusted for age, say over 50 years old, yeah, I think I do around 240...maybe more

 

[ETtikka]

315lbs regardless of weight or height???

 

[K_pem]

Adjusted for age, say over 50 years old, yeah, I think I do around 240...maybe more

I think adjusted for "Age" isn't really a fair way to gauge it, I know guys over 50 that are way stronger than me... haha.

But yes, I think that adjusting for your ability is fine. Obviously if your max DL is 240lbs you won't be able to do this challenge very effectively, even at say 225lbs. But I think that's what lends itself more to the "weaker" aspect more than the "out of shape aspect" of the challenge. Assuming my max DL is still around 475-500lbs, 315lbs would only be like 60-65% of my 1RM; so if we were making it purely based on endurance take 60-65% of 240 and you'd be doing this same thing at like 150lbs ballpark. Id encourage you to bump that up to say 165lbs or so as I think you'll find that 150lbs is far too easy, but you do you!

 

[K_pem]

315lbs regardless of weight or height???

That is what the original challenge was for yes. I think probably due to this guy being primarily a strength/conditioning coach for elite athletes, the assumption that most of them can deadlift 315lbs for reps is not a far cry.

Obviously, you can scale as needed, but I think if you're a normal sized-relatively healthy/active lifter; you should be able to do this. For reference I'm about 5'9" and around 195lbs, I'm not sure what my max DL is anymore since I just had my knee replaced in January... But I know it's a lot less than other "strong" guys my size.

 

[S.Clancy]

I do something similar for dips, pull-ups and BW Lunges. Basically, I pick one of those exercises and rep structure (usually 5 for pullups, 8 or so for dips, 10-12 for lunges) and do sets every 20-30 seconds for 20 min straight. Welcome to hell.

Personally, I would want to be doing an exercise that is really easy technically and has a really low chance of injury doing something like this. Deadlifts to me carry too high of an injury risk especially as you fatigue.

 

[K_pem]

Dude, 5 pull-ups every 30 second for 20minutes is pretty impressive.

I don’t disagree, this isn’t a challenge that I would encourage anyone without a good amount of experience/hardened form to attempt. But I think most people that would attempt should know to protect themselves when form starts to breakdown.