Maybe there are different kinds of lifters

For a while now i've been confronting what i thought was an inherent deficiency on my part when it came to the deadlift:

One rep at ~2x body-weight --- feels great, readily achievable
Several sets of 5 reps at ~1.33x --- feels bad, very difficult

Am i somehow very tired every time i work on deadlifts? Have i hit my "natural limit"? Am i not working "hard enough"?

Is there such a thing as "burst"?

This was the question i finally asked myself today, and i'm both delighted and surprised to report that the answer appears to be "yes".

In fact, not only are there two "sorts" of lifters⁰ but there appears to be a significant amount of genetic control expressed over this form of "specialisation". There are twin and family studies¹ which appear to show that muscular strength and power phenotypes are anywhere from 30% to 85% heritable! It seems reasonable then to think that this genetic contribution explains why some lifters excel at single-rep, high-force efforts ("burst") while others tolerate repeated sub-maximal efforts ("sustain") more effectively.

A weight lifted

On a more personal note this information i think has finally set me free. Given where i am on the strength chart², i believe that i've past neural and physiological adaptions and i'm now operating in regime of genetic predispositions. And that's fine! Strength means different things to different people.

This knowledge has finally set me free. The reason that my lifts are the way they are is not because of any of the concerns which used to dog me; rather i have a preferred (inherited!) lifting style and that's normal. If anything, i'm looking forward to restructuring my deadlifts around heavy doubles and triples³ so that i can really lean into my natural predisposition and continue to grow and enjoy my workouts.

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⁰ this may not be surprising to runners: sprint vs marathon is clear physiological distinction

¹ the following two studies for example

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310791032_Heritability_estimates_of_muscle_strength-related_phenotypes_A_systematic_review_and_meta-analysis

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8775245/

² somewhere between intermediate and advanced according to the following, using my body-weight

https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/kg

https://www.strengthlog.com/deadlift-strength-standards-kg/

³ with occasional recovery periods of low effort high repetition work