7 Tactics To Increase Your Deadlift By 100 Pounds (Fast!)

October 12, 2021

The deadlift is one of the greatest tests of full-body strength. It's such a simple exercise that it is considered the king of strength. Not to mention a strong deadlift means you’ll be the most useful at your next house moving event! Whether that's positive or negative I do not know. But I digress.

The deadlift will bulletproof your back and reduce incidences of pain while strengthening the all-important hamstrings and glutes which don’t get much love with the hours of sitting we go through each day.

So, if you’re looking to pack 100 lbs onto your deadlift fast, then you need to implement these 7 tips to increase your deadlift.

7 Wickedly Effective Ways To Increase Your Deadlift

Push The Floor Away

This is a simple cue you can use to engage more of your legs while deadlifting. Sometimes, we can get into a habit of treating the lift solely as a pull encompassing mainly the back and hamstrings. However, our legs have big powerful muscles. So, take advantage of them!

Instead of thinking about pulling the weight up, think of pushing the floor away. Both cues accomplish the deadlift but pushing the floor away cues your legs to push.

Boost Your Squat

The best way to push the floor away? It’s to boost your squat so you can put that new leg strength to use. Back squats and front squats will develop leg strength like no other lower body exercise. Generally, when your squat numbers go up, so do your deadlift numbers.

Squats will also develop your isometric back strength where back squats will strengthen your lower back while front squats will hammer your mid and upper back.

Use All Of The Deadlift Variations

How To Increase Deadlift Fast

You don’t always have to deadlift in a conventional or sumo stance. You can perform both of these variations to build your deadlift and many others. Pulling from blocks, a deficit, with pauses, and using Romanian and stiff-leg deadlift variations will strengthen various parts of your deadlift.

Pulling from the blocks or using rack pulls will allow you to overload the deadlift heavily taxing your back musculature. Pulling from a deficit will increase the time under tension and the work your muscles need to perform. It’ll also make your regular deadlift feel much easier.

Using pauses also increases the time under tension of the exercise but also develops crazy isometric strength of the back, glutes, and hamstrings. If you can pause in a position around your knees and still complete the lift or lower the weight back to the floor, you'll be well-positioned to pull much more without a pause.

Romanian and stiff-leg deadlifts will preferentially target the glutes and hamstrings to a greater extent than the deadlift. So, you can use these variations as accessory exercises for the posterior chain.

Deadlift Less

Deadlifting is one of the most taxing movements you can perform especially if you are lifting heavy often. It’s not like the bench press or overhead press where increasing the frequency of the lift is a foolproof way of hitting bigger numbers.

The deadlift is the opposite. Deadlifting less often is going to allow you to recover adequately between sessions. So how do you get enough volume to boost your deadlift numbers? By doing a lot of accessory work!

Bodybuild Your Back, Glutes, And Hamstrings

It’s not a secret that a big back, glutes, and hamstrings are going to skyrocket your deadlift. Mass helps to support mass. That means if your goal is to become a deadlift phenom, focus your accessory efforts on these muscle groups.

Don’t start trying to build your bench press at the same time by benching three times a week. That isn’t going to help you deadlift more weight. That training time should be geared towards the deadlift muscles instead.

Train Your Grip

If you can’t hold the load you’re trying to deadlift, it doesn’t matter how strong your back, glutes, and hamstrings are. Mixed grips and hook grip are strategies you can use to instantly increase your grip strength. But they’ll only get you so far.

Training your grip directly is the fastest way to develop bone-crushing strength in your hands so you never drop a deadlift again. Using axle bars is a simple way to train your grip as the fat bar will increase the demands on your hands and forearms.

If you don’t have access to a fat bar, Fat Gripz are great additions that can be added to your barbell to increase their diameter. If you're not sure about the size you should get, check out my measurement guide in my Fat Gripz guide.

Towels are also a great way to boost your grip strength. Pull-ups and farmers walks with towels increase their difficulty tenfold for your hands.

Create Full Body Tension In Your Setup

This involves taking the slack out of the bar, keeping your lats tight, and already pushing your feet into the ground before starting your pull. Without this tension, you’ll place unwanted strain on your lower back and be moved out of position before the plates leave the ground.

The slack is the movement the bar makes before the plates leave the ground. This small movement will throw your deadlifting position off and may result in missing the lift. This slack must be pulled by creating tension first.

Keeping the lats tight like you have tennis balls under your armpits you don’t want to drop keeps the bar close to the body. As soon as the barbell drifts forward during the deadlift, you place more stress on your lower back and make the lift infinitely harder to complete.

Program To Increase Your Deadlift By 100 Pounds Or More!

Increase Deadlift By 100 Pounds

This is an 8-week deadlift specialization program written by competitive Strongman and Powerlifting extraordinaire Matt Falk. This epic program uses the principles stated above to boost your deadlift fast! If you want more information on the full program, click here.

Week 1

Day 1

Exercise

Set/Rep

Load

A1) Box Squat

Work up to 5RM in no less than 6 sets

10 RPE

B1) Good Morning

3 x 12

Not heavy

C1) Leg Press or DB Hack Squat

5 x 10

Each set heavier with the last set being challenging

D1) Broad Jump

5 x 5

Cell

Day 2

Press Day (Your choice)

Day 3

OFF

Day 4

Exercise

Set/Rep

Load

A1) Deadlift

Work up to 5RM in no less than 6 sets

10 RPE

B1) Front Squat

3 x 8

70-80% perceived 1RM

C1) Wide Grip Pull-Up

3 sets

2 x 8-9 RPE. 1 x 10 RPE

Day 5

Exercise

Set/Rep

Load

A1) Overhand Barbell Row

5 x 10

Each set heavier with the last set being very challenging

B1) 1-Arm DB Row

4 x 10

Each set heavier with the last set being very challenging

C1) Neutral Grip Lat Pulldown

3 x 10

10 RPE

D1) Sled Drag

4 x 80-100 ft

Cell

Day 6

Events day if practicing Strongman.

The Deadlift Specialization Program To Boost Your Deadlift By 100 Lbs!

About the Author

I am a professional strength & conditioning coach that works with professional and international teams and athletes. I am a published scientific researcher and have completed my Masters in Sport & Exercise Science. I've combined my knowledge of research and experience to bring you the most practical bites to be applied to your training.

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