How to Do Barbell Deadlifts
- Ascend to the loaded barbell by placing your feet beneath the bar and starting approximately shoulder-width apart (your exact distance may vary depending on your anatomy and personal choice).If not contacting the bar, your shins should be in contact with it.
- To reach the bar on either side of your legs, push your butt back and bend at the waist. Using both hands, take an overhand grip on it.
- Verify the alignment of your hips and shoulders. Set your lats by squeezing your shoulder blades together, then contract your core. Don’t glance up; maintain a neutral neck posture.
- Maintaining the bar close to your torso, drive the weight higher while pressing your feet through the floor. It’s acceptable if you find that the bar scrapes your shins. Put on pants or buy long socks. At the top of the list, flex your glutes without reclining.
Important Deadlift Tips
Leave the Gear at Home
Tighten Your Lats
Think of Every Rep as Its Own Rep
Fitbulk advises against rushing the deadlift, especially once you begin moving substantial weight. Take your time, even if you’re performing a set of six or eight reps. After every rep, don’t be scared to complete every item on your checklist. Your objective need to be to do each rep with fluidity and cleanliness.
Common Deadlift Mistakes
You Mix the Grip
Fitbulk advises: When deadlifting, adopt an overhand grip whenever possible rather than the common mixed grip. The mixed grip, which prevents the bar from slipping when you’re deadlifting really heavy, involves using one hand overhand and one underhand to grab the bar.
This doesn’t appear to be a problem in the near future. However, with repeated use, the mixed grip uses your mid-back and lats in somewhat different ways on each side of your body. Additionally, it gives the deadlift an anti-rotation character, which is undesirable in this situation. Consider this: In order to increase the difficulty of the pullup and make it a core-taxing anti-rotation exercise, we deliberately pick a varied grip. However, our core has other tasks to complete, therefore we don’t want it exerting itself further during a deadlift.
You Start Too Far Away
When lifting weight with a barbell, you should keep the device as near to your body as you can. This entails placing your feet beneath the bar at the beginning and pulling straight up, even if it means your shins will get scraped by the bar. Pulling the bar from too far in front of you will put your lower back at risk because you will be starting from a compromised position. If this is an issue for you, get some long socks or put on some pants.
Your Hips Are Higher Than Your Shoulders
This is essentially the last point reversed, but it bears repeating. You’re compromising the position of your lower back and increasing your risk of pain and injury if you can’t start your pull with your hips lower than your shoulders. A dumbbell or trap bar deadlift would be a better alternative for you if you can get into the right position for it.
You Overextend at the Top
Yes, tightening your glutes to highlight hip extension at the peak of the exercise is crucial to completing a deadlift rep, but far too many people overextend, causing their spines to fold backward. Avoid doing this.There is no need to risk injury by continuing past lockout since you have already completed the lift.
Top Benefits of Deadlifts
Compound Movement
As a compound movement, or multi-joint exercise, deadlifts require the cooperation of multiple muscle groups for optimal performance. These are some of the best workouts for developing muscle and strength throughout the entire body. More precisely you’ll strengthen your posterior chain, back, and legs—particularly your hamstrings and glutes—while also severely taxing your central nervous system. For this reason, you can refer to the deadlift as a leg-day or back-building exercise.
Train the Posterior Chain
One of the best exercises for developing your posterior chain—the muscles on the back of the body that are crucial for everyday movement, athletic performance, and spinal health—is the deadlift. For the deadlift, the erector spinae, glutes, hamstrings, lats, and traps are important members of that group. You’ll notice improvements in your posture (upper back/traps) and your ability to perform strong, athletic movements (glutes and hamstrings) as a result of strengthening them.
Everyday Function
In real life, you might not be picking up a barbell, but you’ll probably find yourself reaching down to get heavy objects off the ground. When you take anything, such groceries, luggage, or even just picking up your small children and pets from the floor, you repeat this motion. In addition to teaching you how to do this properly, the deadlift helps you develop a foundation of strength that will allow you move anyway you choose when you’re not in the gym.
Heavy Weights
For most people, the exercise in their strength training arsenal that allows them to load up the greatest weight is the deadlift. It’s not only your pride that matters in this. Building strength and, to a lesser extent, muscle requires working with increasingly bigger loads.
Grip Strength
If you perform the deadlift using the conventional, pronated (overhand) method, it’s a great way to strengthen your grip. It will be difficult for you to maintain your grip on the hefty bar the entire time. You might switch to a mixed (or alternating) grip and reach for wraps or straps to help you hang on once you start training for pure strength and poundage (and you’re not in a strict competition situation). If that’s not the case, though, try to utilize the conventional orientation for as long as you can.
Muscles Trained By the Deadlift
Once more, the deadlift will target the posterior chain muscles. These are primarily your erector spinae, glutes, hamstrings, and the muscles in your upper and mid-back (the lats and traps). But other muscles are also used in the process of holding the weight. Your forearms play a crucial role in grip, particularly when you employ the pronated position. If you brace to stabilize your spine and lift the weight, you’ll also work your front core muscles, which include your obliques and abdominals.
Why Proper Deadlift Form Is Important
Maintaining proper form is crucial for both increasing the amount of weight you can lift and, more significantly, protecting your back and spine. When it comes to deadlift technique, there aren’t as many differing opinions as there are with other lifts because the same thing matters whether you learn from a powerlifter, bodybuilder, or performance coach. Although there are many different kinds of stances, techniques, and signals, you’ll discover that they all originate from the same fundamental movement framework that is intended to build strength through hip extension.
However, some people even completely shun deadlifts because they believe the exercise is too risky to incorporate into their routines. When done correctly, deadlifts can be a safe and effective way to gain strength and size for almost everyone. Avoidance of that kind is more a matter of personal taste based on individual anatomy than a rigid rule for everyone.
Additionally, there are several possibilities for the implement that you may use, so individuals with various anatomical needs can choose a version that suits them. However, you should definitely know how to perform deadlifting correctly even if you’re not worried about safety.
How to Add the Deadlift to Your Workouts
Samuel advises newcomers to the form to start with three to four sets of six to eight repetitions while using modest weights. As you advance, you can start training with lower rep schemes and increasing the load to develop strength. Since the deadlift is a challenging compound lift, you should usually perform it as your first exercise in your lower body, back, or whole body focused workouts. This will ensure that you get the most out of the exercise and avoid fatigue.
Common Deadlift Variations
The deadlift comes in a lot of forms because it is such a fundamental exercise. For a somewhat different experience, try switching up the tool (dumbbell, kettlebell, or trap bar deadlifts), your stance (sumo, single-leg, or sumo deadlifts), or even your range of motion (Romanian, stiff-leg, or single-leg deadlifts). Each of these choices has a specific role in a strength training regimen.
As a seasoned content writer specialized in the fitness and health niche, Arun Bhagat has always wanted to promote wellness. After gaining proper certification as a gym trainer with in-depth knowledge of virtually all the information related to it, he exercised his flair for writing interesting, informative content to advise readers on their healthier lifestyle. His topics range from workout routines, nutrition, and mental health to strategies on how to be more fit in general. His writing is informative but inspiring for people to achieve their wellness goals as well. Arun is committed to equipping those he reaches with the insights and knowledge gained through fitness.