How He Deadlifts 3X His Bodyweight! (THE PLAN)

Today, we are talking about Jesse and how he deadlifts 3x his bodyweight. In this video, Jesse and I explain exactly how he was able to progress his deadlift to elite level strength.

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.
6. 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 Pac