Workout Wednesday #2 The Deadlift

Most of us start working out wanting to improve our physique and strength and don’t know much beyond we want a six-pack, sculpted pecs and big biceps so persisted to crunch, press and curl away. Unfortunately this leads to strength imbalances, poor posture and internal rotation of the shoulders. Compound lifts, which involve moving more than one of the body’s joints to perform the exercise, such as the front squat, chin-up and deadlift, actually engage more core fibres than sit-ups and also improve the strength of our posterior chain, which is the musculature that runs up the back of our body from our heels to the base of our skull. This neatly brings me on to the virtues of deadlifting, one of the best exercises for strengthening the posterior chain. It is a compound lift that stimulates growth and strength like no other. It develops total body co-ordination, strength and power, what can be more functional than picking a heavy bar from the floor? It’s said that our training should be focused around primal movements, which are variants of overhead presses, squatting, hip hinges, pushes, pulling, twisting and loaded carries. The deadlift is part pull, part squat and part hinge.

A deadlift is performed by pulling a bar up from a dead stop on the floor, unlike a squat where the ascent is aided by the energy stored from the descent to spring you back up, this is why many powerlifters squat more than they can deadlift. Imagine if you squatted by having the bar rest on pins set to the bottom of your range of motion when you squatted in the powercage, so rather than descend into the hole and explode out, you had to fire up from nothing…seems a lot harder breaking inertia like that doesn’t it? This is the aim when deadlifting. It primarily taxes the erector spinae (which run either side of the lumbar spine which forms your lower back - they raise your torso up in spinal extension) the glutes (which serve hip extension) and the hamstrings (which serve to flex the leg or extend the spinal column when they contract dependent on if the contract from the end that attaches behind the knee or the end that attaches over the hip joint), though it will stimulate growth throughout your whole body.

Ryan Wheal is an RAF Intelligence Officer and 7s player who says that the key to good deadlifting is a solid grip, strength in the lumbar spine, and explosive power. But why do we care what Ryan says?
Not that he’d tell you why as he’s a humble man; but I can let you in on a few secrets as he is a close personal friend of mine: he has a plethora of world titles and records from competing in drug free federation events because he can pull three times his bodyweight off the floor. Yes, three. It’s respectable to pull double your bodyweight; Ryan does just over triple - I got bored and mildly envious of counting how many resulting titles and records this has bagged him.

Ryan has got so au fait with the deadlift that his personal mental checklist is simply “Grip, Dip and Rip” – these three points summarise a laundry list of coaching cues that Ryan now performs practically instinctively though those of us out there needing to learn, improve or brush up on our technique will need a lot of training with a focus on concentrating hard in order to utilize great technique through quality coaching cues – this is absolutely imperative.
Set up by putting standard size round plates on an Olympic barbell set up on a lifting platform. Using different size plates changes the mechanics of the lift, which means you’re not deadlifting
o(n another note, who ever invented those octagonal plates should be neutered). If your gym has professional grade ELEIKO plates, use those; they’re the best out there.

"Stand directly behind the bar with the middle knurling directly in front of your navel. Look down - the bar should be over your feet. An optimal push through the floor will require the midfoot to be directly under the hips so the bar must be above the midfoot.

Common mistakes made in the set-up are not touching your shins to the bar; this distance from your body increases the pressure on the intervertebral discs of the spine leading to lower back strain at the very least. Equally as bad is touching the bar to the shins with an incorrect angle in the shins. Too much and you’re too deep too pull cleanly, not enough and your shins are near vertical robbing you of leg drive. This can be counteracted by making the bar sit above the balls of your feet, then taking your shins to the bar. This creates the “positive shin angle” of approximately fifteen degrees that lends itself to so many athletic abilities like sprinting and jumping and enables more leg drive from the lift off. However this may instantly put you out of the game; if you can’t get in this position and maintain a strongly set neutral spinal position, you will have to go away and work on the flexibility of your hamstrings and calves, however you may be able to rack pull to get a feel for the movement as you work on flexibility. So, your feet should be just inside shoulder width - directly under the hips – with the bar above the midfoot. Closer and you lose balance, wider and you lose the biomechanically advantageous position.

So there you have it, plenty of great comprehensive tips there to get you deadlifting with the right form! I personally think that sticking your tongue to the roof of your mouth and holding your breath deep in the pit of your stomach when performing any type of strenuous heavy lift is a great tip, and is one used by all the best Rugby Union players in the World, just don't do it when the reps are high or on that 5k run, you will definitely pass out....There is more detail on this subject below, and as Dave Tate says, it is NOT cool to pass out doing this exercise, so do it right!

That was the what to do...next up is the what not to do by Dave Tate...and his 10 tips, you have probably seen a great example of all of these in your local gym by a guy who looks like he will hurt himself whatever exercise he is doing.

Dave Tate is a World renowned "deadlifter" and teaches the best to get better,and although some of these tips are advanced, they apply to you if you are lifting 300kg or 30kg. 

Mistake #1: Training the deadlift heavy all the time

Very few people can train the deadlift week after week and still make progress. I feel the only ones who can get away with this are the ones who're built to deadlift. If you're built to pull, then the stress on your system is going to be less than those who aren't built to deadlift.

The deadlift is a very demanding movement and it takes a lot to recover from. This is compounded if you're also squatting every week. The squat and deadlift train many of the same muscles and this is another reason why you don't need to train the deadlift heavy all the time. Years ago the only deadlifts I did off the floor were in meets. The rest of the time was spent training the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. While my deadlift increased 40 pounds over the first few years, I did run into some problems with this approach.

Since I'm not built to deadlift, these things aren't natural to me. A session of speed deadlifts with a moderate weight pulled for five or six singles. This way the weight was heavy enough to teach good form and not too heavy to tax the system. This worked out to 45 to 50% of max to be trained after the dynamic or speed squat workout.

This is a mistake I made for years. Stand in a deadlift stance and pull your shoulder blades together. Take a look at where your fingertips are. Now if you let your shoulders relax and even round forward a little you'll see your fingertips are much lower. This is why we teach a rounding of the upper back. First, the bar has to travel a shorter distance. Second, there's less stress on the shoulder region. It'll also help to keep your shoulder blades behind the bar. You'll read more on this later.

This is another mistake I see all the time and most lifters know better. It happens most of the time because of a weak lower back or a bad start position. While keeping your shoulders rounded you must keep your lower back arched. This will keep the shin straight and the shoulders behind the bar and keep your body in the proper position to pull big while keeping the back under minimal stress.

If you pull with a rounded back, the bar is going to drift forward away from the legs, thus putting you back into a very difficult position from which to recover. When the bar drifts forward, the weight of it will begin to work against your leverages and cause you to have a sticking point just below the knees or mid-shin level. When you pull you can either arch your back in the beginning standing position before you crouch down to pull or once you grab the bar. Either way it's important to keep the lower back arched and tight.

There are many ways to strengthen the lower back for this. Good mornings, reverse hypers, and arched back good mornings are a few. You can also use a band around your traps and feet for simulated good mornings. With this technique you only use the bands and train for higher reps (in the 20 to 30 rep range) for local muscular endurance.

Mistake #4: Not having enough air in your belly

As with most exercise you must learn how to breathe. Stand in front of a mirror and take a deep breath. Do your shoulders rise? If so, then you need to learn how to breathe. Learn to pull your air into your diaphragm. In other words, use your belly! Pull as much air into your belly as possible, then when you think you have all you can get, pull more. The deadlift isn't started by driving your feet into the floor; it's started by driving your belly into your belt and hips flexors.

One note on holding air while you pull. You do need to try and hold your air as long as possible, but this can only last for a few seconds while under strain because you'll pass out. So for a long pull, you're going to have to breathe or you'll hit the floor and people will stare. While there are several people out there who may think this is a cool thing, I disagree. It's much cooler to make the lift!

So when you reach the point where you begin to really have to fight with the weight, let out small bursts of air. Don't let it all out at one time or you'll lose torso tightness and cause the bar to drop down. By letting out small bursts you can keep your tightness, continue to pull, and lock out the weight.

Mistake #5: Not pulling the bar back

The deadlift is all about leverage and positioning. Visualize a teeter totter. What happens when the weight on one end is coming down? The other end goes up. So if your body is falling backward, what happens to the bar? It goes up! If your weight is falling forward the bar will want to stay down. So if you weigh 250 pounds and you can get your bodyweight to work for you, it would be much like taking 250 pounds off the bar. For many natural deadlifters this is a very instinctive action. For others it has to be trained.

Proper positioning is important here. If you're standing too close to the bar it'll have to come over the knee before you can pull back, thus going forward before it goes backward. If your shoulders are in front of the bar at the start of the pull, then the bar will want to go forward, not backward. If your back isn't arched the bar will also want to drift forward.

For some lifters, not being able to pull back can be a muscular thing. If you're like myself, I tend to end up with the weight on the front of my feet instead of my heels. This is a function of my quads trying to overpower the glutes and hamstrings, or the glutes and hamstrings not being able to finish the weight and shifting to the quads to complete the lift. What will happen many times is you'll begin shaking or miss the weight. To fix this problem you need to add in more glute ham raises, pull-throughs and reverse hypers.

Mistake #6: Keeping the shins too close to the bar

I'm not too sure where this started but I have a pretty good idea. Many times the taller, thinner lifters are the best pullers and they do start with the bar very close to their shins. But if you look at them from the sides they still have their shoulders behind the bar when they pull. This is just not possible to achieve with a thicker lifter.

If a thicker lifter with a large amount of body mass — be it muscle or fat — were to line the bar up with his shins, you'd see he would have an impossible time getting the shoulders behind the bar. Remember you need to pull the bar back toward you, not out and away from you. So what I believe happens is many lifters look to those who have great deadlifts to see how they pull, then try to do the same themselves. What they need to do is look to those who are built the same way they are and have great deadlifts and follow their lead.

Mistake #7: Training with multiple reps

Next time you see someone doing multiple reps on the deadlift, take note of the form of each rep. You'll see the later reps look nothing like the first.

These two reasons are enough to keep the deadlift training to singles. If you're using multiple reps with the deadlift, then stand up in between each rep and restart the lift. This way you'll be teaching the proper form and be developing the right kind of strength.

Mistake #8: Not keeping your shoulders behind the bar

You've already read this a few times in this article and it's perhaps the most important thing next to hip position in the execution of the deadlift. Your shoulders must start and stay behind the barbell when you pull deadlifts! This will keep the barbell traveling in the right direction and keep your weight going backward. The deadlift isn't an Olympic lift and shouldn't be started like one.

For the Olympic lifts you want the shoulders in front of the bar; for the deadlift you want them behind the bar. The amount of misinformation out there about this is incredible.

 Mistake #9: Looking down

Your body will always follow your head. If you're looking down then the bar is going to want to travel forward. At the same time you don't want to look at the ceiling. Focus on an area that keeps your head in a straight up and back position with the eyes focusing on an upper area of the wall.

Mistake #10: Starting with the hips too low

This is the king of all mistakes I see. Too many times lifters try to squat the weight up rather than pull the weight.

All I want you to do is look at your hip position at the start of the lift when you pull and watch how much your hips move up before the weight begins to break the floor. This is wasted movement and does nothing except wear you out before the pull. The closer you can keep your hips to the bar when you pull, the better the leverages are going to be.

You need to find the perfect spot where your hips are close to the bar, your shoulders are behind the bar, your lower back is arched, your upper back rounded, your belly full of air, and you can pull toward your body. Nobody ever said it was going to be easy, but then again, what is?

The first thing you need to do if you are serious about gaining strength in the deadlift is to spend more time under the bar and get some graft in! Find a real gym and start training with those who were much stronger than you. The best training secrets come from the small garage gyms with very strong lifters, not the spandex driven, neon-machine warehouses.  

In Conclusion.

I only have one thing to say about the deadlift....it's awesome, keep your technique/form though, nobody wants to see bad form in the gym, if you are losing form, drop the weight...simple as that.. Do the deadlift right, do it more often and you will start to see all the physical benefits you dreamed of, just stay away from the crunch machine.

Stay strong and look out for the next article....

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