The Coan-Phillipi Deadlift Routine, Explained

The Coan-Phillipi deadlift routine is a 10-week deadlift specialization Ed Coan programmed for his training partner Mark Phillipi. It takes a single deadlift day per week and builds progressively from 78 percent of a projected meet max in week one to an attempted PR at 108 percent in week ten. The program is peaking work, not accumulation. All the strength is supposed to already exist before the 10 weeks start.

Each session has two parts. The top single is the headline lift. Week one prescribes a double at 78 percent. Week four is a double at 86 percent. Week seven is a single at 98 percent. Week ten is a single at 108 percent, the meet PR attempt. Between those top sets, the program prescribes backoff work: deficit deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, stiff-leg deadlifts, rows, and good mornings. The backoffs do the hypertrophy work and the pattern practice. The top single is a measurement, not a builder.

The routine assumes the projected meet max is an honest number. Starting at 78 percent only works if that 78 percent is actually achievable as a clean double today. Lifters who start with an inflated projected max miss singles in weeks five and six, and the entire back half of the program breaks down. Coan himself wrote the starting max as a 2-3 percent overshoot of current best. That means the week ten attempt sits at 108 percent of a pull you can hit today, not 108 percent of a pull you used to hit three years ago.

The program prescribes only the deadlift day. Squat, bench, and accessory work happen on the other days of your week at your own discretion. The assumption is that you are a competitive powerlifter who already has a squat and bench program in place that does not interfere with the deadlift day. Lifters who try to run Coan-Phillipi on top of a high-volume squat program usually find that squat-adjacent fatigue crashes the deadlift progression by week six.

The taper is aggressive by modern standards. Volume drops sharply in weeks eight, nine, and ten so that the week ten attempt lands on a recovered body. This is the part most lifters get wrong when attempting Coan-Phillipi. They treat the taper as optional and try to hit heavy accessory work alongside the top single. The program only works when the taper is actually executed.

Run Coan-Phillipi when you have a meet 10 weeks out, a tested deadlift max that has been stable for 6 to 12 months, and the discipline to miss a rep rather than grind it. A missed top single in week six is a signal that the projected max was set too high, not a reason to push through. Recalculate the remaining weeks off a 2-4 percent lower projected max and continue. Do not drop into a black hole of grinding every subsequent session.