Over a year ago, I wrote an article called Are You Doing Stupid Stuff in the Gym? In that article, I made a somewhat bold statement that seemed to ruffle some feathers:

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: any healthy male under the age of 50 can deadlift 400 within two years of proper training — and most can do it even faster than that.”

Several people took issue with it, but as they say, opinions are like a**holes; everyone has got one. We proved that two years was a conservative estimate for a lot of folks when my business partner Pete pulled 400 after just 364 days of lifting.

Anyway, it’s been a while since this statement of mine received any attention, but I just got this email the other day:

A while back you wrote an article on T-nation, and in it you wrote your belief that anyone could achieve a 400-pound deadlift in two years of training. Anyway, here’s another point of data to support that.

I started working out July 06. I attempted my first DL that October and didn’t start deadlifting regularly until February 07. I used a measly 215 lbs then. I made tremendous progress initially, hitting 385 in August 07. Then I stalled for a long time. In February 08 I made a slight gain to 390 then went cold again. I took a long break from DLing then started on the Coan DL program 7 weeks ago. Finally, 3 weeks ago I pulled 400 for a double, and this week I got 405 for a single.

That’s been a goal of mine and I’m pumped to have finally achieved it.

Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what kind of program this guy used to get to where he is, but it only took him 18 months from when he first started deadlifting regularly. Again, I’m not saying that your deadlift is the absolute measure of your progress or efforts, but I’d say that it’s a reasonable consideration for those who are healthy and training regularly.

Get your deadlift up with Maximum Strength.