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The Issue With The Deadlift

What You are getting yourself in for

Word Count - 1000 Words

Reading time - 5 Mins

Topic - Deadlift

The Deadlift, in my opinion, is a superb exercise. Why?

  • Learning it WELL will cross transfer into a lot of your other lifts.

  • For the posterior chain, I don’t think anything beats it.

  • It’s really damn fun pulling lot’s of weight off the floor.

However, the Deadlift, has some ‘baggage’ with it.

  • Injury risk is high, especially on lower rep ranges.

  • It’s MASSIVELY taxing on your CNS.

  • It’s massively taxing on your low back recovery.

  • It’s more often than not, performed absolutely incorrectly.

 

Performing the Deadlift

A lot of the time, people will set up the Deadlift well, they will pull the first rep, but from there, in my eyes, it can all go wrong. It’s in the name - DEAD-Lift, we are lifting a DEAD weight, it’s not called a BOUNCE-lift, we want to get strong at pulling weight from the floor, in a dead-stop fashion.

Now I’ve ‘been there, done that’ with the bouncy reps on Deadlifts… And I’ll tell you what it did.

  • Cause technique breakdown.

  • Low back pain and issues.

  • Struggling to get stronger as I was only as strong as the bounce.

  • Never getting the most out of the exercise.

So PLEASE, take away the ego, set up the Deadlift in a fashion where you hit the floor, re-set and pull again, you are now deadlifting, and you’ll gain all the cool benefits of doing so!

Other queues I like to think about when Deadlifting are -

  • Bringing the bar close to shins, but not directly on them.

  • Having the bar in line with my scapula.

  • Shooting hips up, stretching hamstrings and then placing them in position.

  • Hips should only be set at a level where they DO NOT shoot up when you initially go to pull.

  • Place pressure through the mid-foot (some people like the heel, but I find for most this tilts them too much back and hips too low).