Deadlift Assistance 911

by Todd Bumgardner, MS – 4/06/2012

When I was a little kid, my parents once had to call 911 for me. It wasn’t for anything serious, though. I was going about my normal routine of being awesome – running like a maniac and jumping over stuff – when disaster struck. I fell into a hole.
My leg was wedged. My knee was pinned against the front wall and my foot against the back. It took two firemen to get me out.
I watched Rescue 911 for months waiting for my segment to air but it never did. I realize now, 20 years later, that a six-year-old stuck in a culvert isn’t exactly television worthy. But man, at the time, I was pissed at William Shatner.
A lot of deadlifts suffer the same fate – they get stuck in a hole. Sometimes the hole is deep and the entire movement needs an overhaul. But more often than not, a deadlift that needs saving is pinned in a shallow hole, not all that different from the one I was in. All that’s needed is attention to a weakness that’s pulling the movement out of balance.
This article will examine the pitfalls that can betray each phase, along with the best movements to save your deadlift. If you’ve felt your deadlift sinking slowly into a hole, here’s the answer to your 911 call.

Speed Off the Floor

The first question you should ask yourself when you’re having issues early in the pull is, “Am I tight enough?”
Check your grip, make sure you have the slack out of the bar, and secure a tight back – you can now confidently say that you’re tight enough. If you’re still slow off the floor, you need to develop speed and power.
Here are the best deadlift speed exercises.

Concentric-Only Jumps

Most jump training includes a full cycle of muscle contraction – eccentric on the down phase and concentric on the up phase. But the deadlift start is in the bottom position with limited stretch reflex, so we can’t count greatly on the elasticity of the myofascia.
Instead, we have to start jump training in the bottom position, using only the concentric phase to replicate speed off the floor. Remember that the stretch reflex can linger in the myofascia for close to a second, so when you prepare to do the following jumps make sure you’re holding in the bottom position for 2-3 seconds.

Box Jumps

As you sink into the bottom position to start concentric-only box jumps, run your hands down your legs and set up in your starting deadlift form. Hold this position for 2-3 seconds and jump.
The videos below show the body weight version and the loaded version that includes holding two dumbbells.

Seated Jumps

Starting in a seated position limits the stretch reflex and has the added bonus of a strong glute and hamstring contraction as you start to jump.
Here are the box jump and broad jump versions of the seated jump.

Swings, Hang Cleans, and Dynamic Effort Deadlifts

Though they aren’t concentric-only movements, swings and hang cleans improve pulling speed due to the violent hip extension involved in both exercises.
Performing both exercises, however, can be frustrating. If the O-lifts cause you performance anxiety, forget about it. Extend your hips violently from the hang position and drop under the bar. Unless you’re planning on mastering the movement to compete as an Oly lifter, it’s no big deal.
Swings, though, shouldn’t be butchered, as they are the simplest exercise in the world. Start with the kettlebell in front of you and then, while keeping your back flat, pull the kettlebell between your legs and extend your hips violently to swing it.
Tighten up as the kettlebell levels out at the top and don’t break at the hips until your arms hit your torso on the way back down. At no point should it look like a squat/front raise hybrid. The video below shows a great looking swing.

Dynamic effort pulls must be in your training if you’re slow off the floor. Jumping, swings, and hang cleans are great, but if you aren’t specifically applying speed to the deadlift, you’re a few shovels short of a digging party.
Unless you can pull over two times your body weight easily, don’t worry about accommodating resistance using bands and chains. Work on being fast with good form and bar weight.

Drive off the Floor

Remember back in college there was that skinny wide receiver that could jump through the ceiling but collapsed like a pile of laundry as soon as a bar was on his back? We want to avoid being the deadlift version of this guy.
If you’ve got hops and can pull a lightly loaded barbell with speed but still struggle off the floor with heavier weights, you need drive, which is where speed and strength meet to create power.
Great drive off the floor requires strong legs (especially quads) and powerful glutes. Squatting develops quads of strength and fury while building glutes that could crush walnuts, but when it comes to driving your deadlift off the floor, we can get more specific.

Anderson Squats

Paul Anderson was a behemoth and his ‘bottoms up’ squat method is the most devastating strategy to overcome inertia ever invented. Lifters have been using Anderson squats to get out of the hole of the squat for a long time, but they’re also killer for deadlift drive off the floor.
Both the regular and front versions of the Anderson squat are great for building deadlift power. That is, if your hips and knees move in unison and you don’t shift your hips forward to put the stress of the movement entirely on your quads. Check out the videos below for solid performance visuals.

Barbell Glute Bridges and Hip Thrusts

Bret Contreras hit the nail on the head with barbell glute bridges and hip thrusts. Not only do both exercises mold a derriere into something magnificent, but also they train for immense amounts of glute drive.
Get your glutes involved early in the lift to compliment quad drive and your deadlift will climb, and effective glutes are strong glutes. Do your bridges and hip thrusts, and do them heavy. See the video below.

Pulling Through the Mid-Range

The mid-range is the deadliest phase of the deadlift, the area most likely to send you back into the hole.
The good, and the bad, news is that most mid-range emergencies can be narrowed down to three problems: inability to maintain power off the floor, weak hamstrings, and loss of back tightness – with the former sometimes becoming the product of the latter two issues.
If it’s mid-range power you seek, check my article Half Pulls – Not Half Assed for ideas on adding accommodating resistance to partial range of motion deadlifts.
Weak hamstrings and a tight back need direct assistance work. There’s no complicated schematic; just picking targeted assistance work and using rep ranges that work for your body.
Hamstrings are best hit with glute ham raises and RDLs. I keep the reps around 6-10 for each movement, but you have to do what works for you. If you don’t have a glute ham raise at your gym, substitute lying leg curls or Russian leg curls on a lat or seated calf machine like in the video below.

Training for a tight back is accomplished by doing good mornings, both heavy and for reps. Focus on keeping your lats pulled tight and maintaining neutral spine. If you feel your back round you’ve either gone too low for your mobility level or didn’t keep your back tight.

Finishing the Pull

When I think about training to finish the deadlift, I think of Matt Kroczaleski. It’s been that way ever since I watched the video of him explaining how he developed Kroc rows. He couldn’t find anything that worked – until he trained the balls out of his lats using high rep one-arm rows and, like magic, he finished his pulls stronger. Finishing is all about the lats. Check out the video below.

Train your lats heavy and train your lats with high reps and you’ll get better at finishing your pulls. Also, don’t count out heavy barbell rows and other rowing variations done in the bent position. Rowing while bent builds strength through the entire posterior chain, which carries over to deadlifting. Keep the barbell rows heavy and use one-arm rows to train for reps.
Discounting our old friend the pull-up would be a travesty. Outside of the rowing variations mentioned, no other exercises are as effective for building thick and strong lats. Do them heavy, do them fast, and do them for reps.

Core and Grip

The deadlift is a core and grip exercise. But as you add wheels to the bar each can become a limiting factor if not up to snuff. Like any other weak point, you must address it during your assistance work.

Core Exercises

Rollouts

The deadlift is all about extension, yet one of the best core assistance exercises for the lift is based on anti-extension, the rollout. Being able to resist over-extension creates stability in the lumbo-pelvic complex, allowing you to recruit your glutes and pull like crazy. See the video below.

Front Squats

The front squat is a great exercise for building leg drive, but if you’re failing to hold extension as you pull, front squats also train you to stay tall by coordinating a hard abdominal brace with a contraction of the lats and upper-back musculature. Training for better T-spine extension while strengthening your abs will improve your deadlift.

Reverse Crunches

Reverse crunches don’t meet the badass quotient of rollouts or front squats, but they’re useful for creating lumbo-pelvic stability. Excessive lordosis of the lumbar spine caused by repeated extension limits stability and hinders recruitment patterns. Reverse crunches correct hyperextension and create balance.

Grip Exercises

Barbell Suitcase Holds

I labeled them as a grip exercise, but suitcase holds combine grip and core training. They present a serious grip challenge, training crushing strength and forearm leverage strength. At the same time you’re presented with a strong stimulus to avoid lateral flexion. Your obliques, lats, and glutes work like crazy to keep you from bending like a willow tree.

Fat Bar Cleans

I won’t piss on your leg and tell you that it’s raining – fat bar cleans are rough. Any barbell exercise done with a fat bar requires a grip commitment, but adding the wrist extension of the clean marries you to the exercise. A few sets of five at the end of your training session and you’ll be steering with your elbows on the drive home.

Kroc Rows

Kroc rows train you to finish the pull out of the deadlift hole while training your grip for endurance, provided you don’t use straps. Grab a heavy dumbbell and rep it for 30. It could be the shovel that digs you out of the hole.

Make the Call

There’s no hole that’s too deep to pull your deadlift out of, and it’s never too late to call for help. But for the best assistance, you have to know why you got stuck. Give your deadlift an honest assessment and then come back to this article and make the call.

Wikio

Wikio

Half-Pulls – Not Half-Assed

by Todd Bumgardner, MS – 12/20/2011

“Do it right or you’ll get a boot in your arse!”

That’s what grandpa used to say when I’d help him with the yard work. Admittedly, I was quite the lazy ten year-old, but when the threat of the boot came down I’d straighten up and get the raking and mowing done. Instead of a half-ass, I’d become a full-ass.
Partial range of motion deadlifts, unfortunately, often receive a similar half-assed treatment. That’s a downright shame as partial pulls can transform anemic deadlifts and skinny hamstrings into impressive full deadlifts and a posterior chain that gets noticed. It’s time partial pulls get the respect they deserve.

Educating the Hips

Most of us have stupid hips. Sitting all day kills our hip IQ. It’s like the old egg in a skillet as your brain on drugs metaphor. “This is your ass. This is your ass after eight hours in a chair.” For normal working stiffs that just hop in the car and head home after work without a thought of deadlifting, that might be okay (although, it probably isn’t).
But we’re out for pulling dominance, so we need to reeducate our hips to recruit the right muscles at the right times.
Unfortunately, postural issues such as anterior pelvic tilt dominate many of us. This results in short (and usually weak) hip flexors, weak/inhibited glutes, and hamstrings that bail on us like a Kardashian with a pre-nup.
Without strong hamstrings to pick up the slack when our quad drive dies out, we’re left incapable of pulling the bar past the knee barrier – too low for our glutes (if they’re firing well) and lats to finish off the pull.
Basic partial-range pull variations like the rack pull and deadlift off blocks are great for taking the glutes and hamstrings to deadlift school. Because the bar is set anywhere from low on the shins to just below the knees, the involvement of the quads is limited. This gives the hamstrings a chance to let their true colors shine. Rather than hanging the glutes out to dry, the hamstrings get back to keeping the weight moving through the mid-range of the pull, provided we use weight that keeps us within the confines of good form.
As a bonus, we can also position our hips advantageously (with good hip-hinge mechanics) to recruit the hamstrings and glutes while the bar moves through the mid-range. Some coaches take exception to this notion, arguing that “pulling from an advantageous position doesn’t carry over to the full range pull,” to which I respectively say, “bullshit.”
A good coach teaches movements in segments so their clients and athletes learn good form through each portion of a movement before being subjected to the Full Monty. This is referred to as a top-down training progression. The deadlift is no exception.
Teaching the hips to pull from different starting points gives the body a memory to draw on when the going gets tough and form starts to break down. And this lesson isn’t just for the newbies – we veterans also need refreshers. Training for longer periods can often lead to subtle bad lifting habits. Breaking down the deadlift helps prevent these habits from becoming major issues.
Check out the video below for a rack pull refresher.

Notice that my hips are positioned where they would be if it were a full range deadlift. The glutes and hams squeeze the weight off the pins and the lats finish it off.
Below is an example of the deadlift off blocks. While they’re less convenient than rack pulls, they more closely replicate a deadlift off the floor as the plates are resting on an elevated surface rather than the bar resting on pins. As you initiate the pull, the “slack” will come out of the bar and you’ll get an inch before the weight starts moving, much like a full range deadlift.

The hip positioning is similar to a rack pull and deadlifts off of blocks can be loaded intensely. But if you’re planning on training with Jim “Smitty’ Smith of Diesel Strength, don’t make the mistake I did. Start out with a hook grip, not an alternated one.
Smitty recommends the double overhand grip (with or without the thumb hook) because it’s safer. Many athletes and gym goers alike stand with excessive internal rotation at the glenohumeral joints and kyphotic upper-back posture. This suboptimal posture puts stress on the biceps of the supinated arm during an alternated deadlift grip, thereby increasing the chance of a tear.

Finishing Power

Speed-strength (high velocity low load) and strength-speed (high velocity high load) are both important for maximal strength. There are many technical terms that can be used here: rate coding, motor unit synchronization, and rate of force development are a few. But the important take away is the faster you move – or attempt to move – a weight, the more motor units you’ll recruit. It’s about hot, nasty speed.
Speed off the floor is necessary for a successful pull, and training for speed-strength can raise a deadlift number steadily, at least for a little while.
But where do we go when speed deads are no longer effective? When we’ve exhausted dynamic effort deadlifts versus bands and chains? When pulling from a deficit is no longer stoking the flame and heavy pull attempts are again failing at the knees, there has to be another strength catalyst. Thankfully, there is: the rack pull versus bands.

Rack Pulls Versus Bands

With speed deads being an application of speed-strength, rack pulls versus bands work well as an application of strength-speed.
Training speed-strength will take you a long way, but as the weight you’re able to move becomes heavier, strength-speed must become a focus. When max effort attempts become slow grinders it’s strength-speed that maintains the power you’ve generated off the floor. Having good levels of strength-speed means you’ll be able to keep the weight moving at a constant rate, rather than feeling it slow down as it approaches your knees.
Bands provide accommodating resistance by overloading the lockout, forcing bar acceleration throughout the entire pull. When training for speed, a standard rack pull won’t cut it because deceleration will take precedence over acceleration as the bar approaches lockout.
The bands also keep us honest. Rather than slapping plates on the bar with typical meathead disregard, we have to account for the tension of the bands. Add too much bar weight and you’ll be left doing the involuntary shakes when the bar hits mid-thigh.
To generate the most speed off the pins you must concentrate on tension and breathing. Make sure you’re belly breathing, setting your grip as hard as possible and bracing your core hard (lats pulled tight, abs contracted). Also, reset between each rep. This will make the exercise safer and give you a chance to produce more power. If you’re doing a set of eight, treat it like eight sets of one.
Like regular rack pulls, rack pulls versus bands can be done with the bar set anywhere from low on the shins to just below the knees. Just remember that the higher up your shins the bar is, the more band tension required.
Here are two examples of rack pulls versus bands; one mid-shins and one just below the knees.
Mid-shins:

High:

Serious Back Mass

What if your goal isn’t to pull as much iron as possible? Maybe you just want bigger, thicker lats and traps; perhaps an upper-back that makes shirt collars scream uncle? Partial range deadlifts can help build a yoke that would turn an ox green with envy.
The “how-to” is relatively simple and follows the normal rules of muscle hypertrophy. More weight plus more time under tension equals bigger muscles.
Rack pulls, along with other partial range deadlifts, can be loaded at a higher intensity than a full-range deadlift can be, creating greater amounts of muscular tension. Since the range of motion is decreased, we can also work with higher loads for a greater amount of reps, increasing the total time under tension.
So rather than being able to pull 400 pounds for 1-2 reps with a rack pull, you can rip it for a set of 6-8. It’s a perfect equation for fantastic lats and traps, with the bonus being that the weight is moving mainly through the top half of the deadlift motion, where the lats are increasingly active.
Strong guys know that burning out your nervous system and diminishing your ability to recover by hitting high rep, full deadlifts isn’t necessary. Keep the full range deadlift sets heavy and for low reps (1-5) and then add in partial range pulls during your assistance work for higher reps (6-8). If you want to get your back big in a hurry, high-rep rack pulls are a tool you can count on.

Pulling into a Partial Range Cycle

A little while back I went through some deadlifting woes. Although it was a long, frustrating ordeal, it did allow me to experiment with my training. I eventually came up with a partial pull progression that had a great deal of carry-over to my conventional deadlift. If your deadlift is in a bad way, this cycle could be your guide back to the right track.
Check it out:

Week	Exercise	Sets	Reps
1	Reverse band deadlift	7	1*
2	Mid-shin rack pull	5	2-3
3	High Bartley pull	4/2	2/1
4	Reverse band deadlift	4	1*

* working up to a max

So how the hell did reverse band deadlifts sneak into this cycle? It’s supposed to be a partial range of motion cycle, right? Well, I count reverse band deadlifts as a partial range deadlift movement because the full effect of the weight isn’t felt until the bar travels to your mid-shins, or beyond.
Not familiar with the reverse band deadlift? Here’s a video demo:

Notice the bands going slack as the bar approaches lockout? Take another look at the video. Right before the bar gets to the knees the band tension dies, so does the assistance provided by the bands. I’m left by my lonesome to lock out the weight – but this is a good thing.
Again, the concentration has to be on bar speed. As the plates break the floor, the goal is to “race” the bands to the top. If you win the race you’ll generate enough bar speed to keep heavy weights moving when the band tension dies, thus training you to pull fast during the top half of your deadlift. Lose the race and you’ll be a hunched, frustrated man with iron in his hands that’s dangling in rubber bands.
This cycle is great for training the lockout because it progresses from an assisted movement (reverse band deadlifts) to a movement that uses accommodating resistance (high Bartley pulls), then allows for the realization of the training adaptation during the fourth week.
You get faster while moving heavy weights because the focus is always on bar speed. The reverse band deadlift during week four can be replaced with conventional deads if you want to take advantage of the bar speed you gained during the previous three weeks. When I used this cycle, however, I waited until week six to test my deadlift, using week five as a down week and stepping away from the bar.

Pulling it all Together

I’ve got a little too much of my grandpa in me, so I’ll never pardon a half-assed effort, be it in the weight-room or out in the real world. And considering partial range pulls can save your deadlift and kick-start some serious posterior chain development, you’re only shooting your skinny self in the foot by not doing them.
So roll up your sleeves and hit those pulls with focus and intensity, and free yourself from deadlifting mediocrity. But before you do, finish your yard work – those leaves aren’t going to rake themselves!

Wikio

Are You Ignorant When it Comes to the Deadlift?

by Mark Rippetoe – 12/06/2011

It’s not always apparent, and is often poorly understood. Stated succinctly, stupid is not your fault – you were born that way. You’re just dumb. You can’t learn.

Ignorance means you just don’t know. Ignorance probably is your fault, because you’ve failed to inform yourself. This is especially true since the advent of the internet has enabled the most universal and thorough dissemination of information in the history of human communication.

The obvious problem is that 95% of that information is wrong, which follows my popular maxim: 95% of all the shit that occurs everywhere is completely fucked up. The internet is no different.

But you can, with a little diligence, tease out the facts if you want to. If you’re interested in a subject, it eventually falls upon you to distill the truth from the bullshit.

This you’ll do gladly, if you’re interested enough to devote significant amounts of time and effort to it, because an intelligent person realizes that bullshit is a waste of time. A stupid person might not appreciate this, and therefore continue to be ignorant of the truth of a matter.

Take the deadlift, for example. It’s the most basic, obvious movement in barbell training, the one with the most carryover to everyday tasks and the easiest to learn of all the basic exercises.

You just step up to the bar with a vertical-jump stance width, with toes out and your shins about an inch from the bar, grab it just outside your stance with your knees still straight, then bend your knees forward and out a little bit until your shins touch the bar, squeeze your chest up until your back is flat, take a big breath, and drag the bar up your legs until you’re standing up straight.

See? One (admittedly run-on) sentence describes the whole thing.

But just because a task can be described simply doesn’t mean that there aren’t any important details. Fortunately, they can be built into the instructions, if the instructor is clever. Our one-sentence deadlift instruction carries a lot of important information, and if it’s followed correctly and intelligently, it’ll result in a perfect deadlift every time.

Let’s take it a step at a time and see what we can learn from this simple approach to an uncomplicated movement.

The Uncomplicated Deadlift

Stance Width

The stance width of a vertical jump is narrower than most novices’ deadlift, but it shouldn’t be. A push into the floor should have the mid-foot directly under the hip joint, and this is the stance width that allows you to push the floor without losing force to any shear that will develop along a laterally-angled leg (the sumo stance intentionally widens the stance to artificially shorten the legs, and trades the benefit of a more vertical back for the inefficiency of the angled legs – but we’re not sumo-ing right now).

Toes

Most people jump with toes pointed slightly out, and this toes-out stance is very helpful for the deadlift. It gets the thighs out of the way of the belly, which helps set your back flatter and it gets the groin muscles and the external rotators involved in the pull. Konstantinovs demonstrates this when he pulls, as have many great deadlifters through the history of powerlifting.

Bar Position

Placing the bar about an inch from your shins puts the bar directly over your mid-foot, precisely where the bar wants to be anyway, because that’s the point over which the load balances.

When you stand up straight with your feet even, where are you in balance? On your toes? On your heels? Bad idea. In either of these positions, you have to exert more effort to stand than when balanced in the middle. The mid-foot is the place that’s furthest away from both those positions of imbalance. This also applies to the deadlift.

An intelligent person will verify this by watching YouTube videos of heavy deadlifts where he’ll see that every heavy deadlift travels up in a vertical path, sliding up the shins from a fairly vertical shin angle. Even if the lifter starts with the bar forward of this position, the bar will roll back to the mid-foot before it leaves the ground.

Likewise, this same intelligent person will notice that the bar locks out at the top directly over the mid-foot. Why would you intentionally pull the bar from a position that’s horizontally different from the one you’re pulling it to? Well, you wouldn’t unless you’re stupid, so that’s where the bar starts.

Grip

Your grip should be designed to make the bar travel the shortest possible distance to lockout, and this means that the arms will hang parallel to each other when you grip the bar. This is accomplished by taking the narrowest grip you can without your hands rubbing your legs on the way up. So your grip will be where your hands line up with the widest point of your stance.

Most novices take too wide a stance, and therefore too wide a grip. Most elite lifters take a close grip. Verify this for yourself. If your stance is correct, your arms will hang straight down when seen from the front and you’ll have pulled the bar the shortest distance it can travel to lockout.

During the process of taking the grip you do not move the bar, because you just intentionally put it exactly where it needs to be, over the mid-foot.

Setting Up the Pull

You haven’t bent your legs yet, but now you need to drop your knees forward until your shins touch the bar. This motion places the shins at a slight forward angle that leaves the bar over the mid-foot while in contact with the shins.

If you drop your hips, your knees will travel forward and shove the bar forward of the mid-foot. So don’t drop your hips.

Remember, don’t move the bar. That would be stupid.

Just after you touch the bar with your shins, push your knees out very slightly. This keeps your thighs lined up with your slightly pointed-out toes and allows your groin muscles and lateral hip muscles to engage during the pull.

If you’re a bigger guy, you’ll immediately notice that it’s easier to get in position over the bar if your thighs are out of the way of your gut, as mentioned earlier. The knees-out motion takes full advantage of the toes-out stance, the smartest thing to do as you prepare to pull.

Chest Up, Back Set

Now comes the most important part of the procedure. Squeeze your chest up to set your back. Don’t drop your hips like everybody else does, and like you’ve been doing, too. Just leave your ass where it is after your shins touch the bar and set your back from the top down by squeezing your chest up into thoracic extension and letting that wave of extension carry itself down to your low back.

Watch Brad Gillingham do his 881-pound deadlift and you’ll see that it can be done quite effectively without a drop of the hips. It’s hard, because your back is fighting with your hamstrings for control of your pelvis and your back has to win. It may feel odd the first couple of reps, but as you warm up it will get easier. Regardless, the chest-up motion will always be the hardest part of the setup.

The fact is, if it’s easy, you did it wrong.

The Deadlift is Not a Squat

You must understand this: you’re not trying to squat the weight off the floor with the bar in your hands. This doesn’t work, as you may have noticed if you’ve watched enough deadlifting to be informed about what really occurs when heavy weights are pulled off the floor.

When the weight gets heavy, you can drop your hips as low as you want to and push the bar as far forward as it takes to make you happy, but what actually happens before the bar leaves the floor isalways the same: the bar comes back toward the mid-foot, the hips come up until the shoulders settle into position just in front of the bar, and the bar comes up in a straight line, if you haven’t fucked up the pull too badly.

The shoulders-just-in-front-of-the-bar position is a feature of all pulls that are heavy enough, whether deadlift, clean, or snatch. I take a shot at explaining why in the new 3rd edition of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training (hint: it has to do with the lats).

By now you’ve looked again at all the deadlift videos and seen this position establish itself every time, regardless of whether the lifter initiated the lift correctly or incorrectly (if the lifter initiated the lift incorrectly, the hips rise and the back angle changes until the shoulders are just in front of the bar anyhow).

You can identify this position because the arms don’t hang straight down plumb, but rather hang at a slight angle when viewed from the side. While you were looking at them again, you also noticed the bar travels a vertical path. In fact, if you fuck the pull up too badly (i.e. let it get forward of the mid-foot anywhere in the pull so that the bar path isn’t vertical) it won’t go up – unless it’s a sub-maximal attempt.

So squeezing the chest up as the best way to set your back merely incorporates the facts that you’ve gathered by watching the videos and informing yourself. If you set your back in the position it likes to pull from anyway, you minimize wasted motion before the pull and you create a simple procedure for doing it the same way every time.

The Lockout

All that remains is dragging the bar up your legs to lockout. “Dragging” implies contact, and contact all the way up ensures the vertical bar path; if you let it go forward as it passes your knees on the way up, you’ll have let it drift forward of the mid-foot, and thus gotten out-of-balance.

But if you’ve set your back correctly and started the pull with the bar over mid-foot, it will come up your shins and your thighs in a straight vertical line, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a mechanically pleasing configuration.

Less Bounce to the Ounce

Of course, you have to keep your back flat, and that takes strength in the lumbar erectors that can only be built with heavy deadlifts done correctly. It has become fashionable in random exercise/”functional movement” gyms to permit the use of bumper plates and a bounce off the floor for all the reps of a set of deadlifts after the first one.

This isn’t “functional” – no sane, responsible person picks up a heavy object by bouncing it off the floor because that might break something. An informed person knows that if you don’t use a muscle, you won’ttrain that muscle. Common sense dictates this fact, and no particular intelligence is required to arrive at this conclusion.

Simple observation tells us that people who bounce their deadlifts aren’t very strong off the floor. Experience informs me that if a 185-pound man with three years of barbell “training” comes to my seminar lacking the ability to deadlift 300 pounds with a flat back, he’s probably been bouncing his deadlifts.

The lumbar erectors are the muscles that hold the lumbar spine in extension. If you fail to use them for that purpose during a deadlift, they won’t adapt to this isometric task, and you’ll have turned the most basic back exercise in the gym into a ridiculous circus trick.

Let’s be honest: you bounce your deadlifts because it’s easier to do more reps that way. But you know this already, because you were never that ignorant.

Reset all your reps and make your low back get strong enough to hold itself flat during a maximum deadlift attempt. Even if more reps are the goal, a stronger back is the only way to achieve it.

There may be a slight tendency for the bar to drift forward as it comes off the floor. When this happens, it’s usually because you’ve rocked forward during the setup so that your weight is forward of the mid-foot. Shoes with heels can do this, as can a misperception of your start position.

If this happens, you’re probably too far forward, with your shoulders too far in front of the bar and your back too horizontal. To correct this, rock back off of your toes, reset your chest up, and think about actually pushing your mid-foot into the floor, instead of pulling on the bar.

That Wasn’t So Hard, Was It?

Deadlifts are one of the easiest lifts to learn and do correctly. It usually takes me about five minutes to fix an incorrect deadlift, and everyone I fix tells me that the movement feels “shorter.” We know that the trip from floor to lockout is pretty much the same distance, wrong or right, unless your grip is very wide, so what is responsible for this change in perception?

There are two components of the system – the lifter and the barbell. If the bar travels the same distance from floor to lockout, it can’t be the source of the difference in perception. It’s the lifter, whose ass is no longer waving around in the air before the lift starts. This decrease in body movement and increase in efficiency results in the perception of a shorter pull, even though the bar travels the same distance.

So, now that you’re not ignorant, stop acting like you are. Do your deadlifts correctly, efficiently, and with impressive weights. Usually, the simplest method is the smartest method to use.

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5 Simple Tips for Bigger Tugs

by Mike Robertson – 11/29/2011

I remember the first time I deadlifted “heavy.”

Granted, I’d pulled what I thought was heavy before, but I’m talking about my first legit grinding, eyeball-popping, “I’m glad I didn’t wear those white shorts Grandma got me for Christmas” kind of a pull.

It was October of 2000, and I was gearing up for my first powerlifting meet. It was also the first semester in my Masters program, so we had to train at six in the morning. Needless to say, this isn’t the optimal time for neurally demanding lifting!

Powerlifting seemed like a great fit since I was no longer active in any organized sports and I needed an outlet for my competitive juices. Although I had no clue what I was getting into, I knew I wanted to get stronger and learn more about lifting technique.

On this particular day, the goal was to determine what a good opening weight would be in our meet. I’d done a set of five at either 275 or 285, so I figured 335 would come up lightning fast.

It didn’t. Sure, I grinded it out, but “easy” wasn’t the word that first came to mind.

I learned a powerful lesson that day: deadlifting heavy is hard friggin’ work. It separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, and the serious lifters from the cable curl kids.

If you’re serious about your training and your physique, then the deadlift is an animal you need to tame. This article will help you do just that.

Here are five tips to help you take your pull to all-new levels.

1. Get Your Lats Tight!

Possibly the most common mistake I see when deadlifts get heavy is the bar drifting away from the body.

Many lifters assume that a deadlift is just picking the bar straight up, but this isn’t effective! As you pile on the plates, you need to think about actively engaging the lats and pulling the bar back into your body so that your weight shifts backward slightly.

If you find your lats are too weak, start performing some heavy upper back work, specifically vertical pulls (chinning/pulling) and horizontal pulls (rowing). Doing so will not only improve your pulls but also increase the thickness of your back, and probably bump up your bench press to boot.

This tip alone is worth the price of admission. Keeping the bar in tight helps ensure every pull is smooth and efficient.

2. Get Your Hips Down

Lifters often miss deadlifts because their lift is 100% lower back dominated.

We walk a fine line here. You don’t want the hips down too low – this isn’t a squat – but if there’s virtually no knee bend and the lift looks like two distinct motions (hips shoot up, lower back finishes), you need to get your hips down more.

The best deadlifters in the world make it look smooth. Their torso angle starts in a certain position and they get enough leg drive to keep their hips underneath them. It’s much easier to finish the weight this way than if you’re totally hunched over and reliant on your lower back.

The down side? Your weights are going to go down, at least for the time being.

However, in the long run, getting your hips down will not only give you more leg drive, it will also keep your back healthier. This is a true win-win.

3. Strengthen Those Hamstrings!

There’s no way you’re going to pull a ridiculously heavy weight if your hamstrings resemble over-stretched dental floss. The question is, what kind of hamstring assistance work is going to drive up your deadlift to newfound heights?

If you miss at the top, you’re probably weak in the hip extensor function of the hamstrings. To bring this up, focus on big-bang assistance lifts like good mornings, Romanian deadlifts, safety bar good mornings, and the like.

If you miss in the bottom, focus on developing the knee flexor function of the hamstrings. Start with ball leg curls to develop the pattern of maintaining hip extension while simultaneously flexing the knee, but eventually glute-ham raises should be a big part of your program. There’s simply so substitute for them.

4. Mix it Up

Specificity is critical if you want to move maximal weights in any lift.

For instance, if you want to squat a lot, you need to squat a lot. If you want to bench a lot, you need to bench a lot.

In other words, you need to practice how you play!

The deadlift is a slightly different animal. Even if you never have aspirations of lifting in powerlifting gear, employing chains and/or bands into your training can pay dividends and help you set some PR’s along the way.

When using chains or bands, you’ve got two options:

• Lifting against the bands or chains
• Lifting with the bands.

I’m sure some of you are wondering, “I’ve never used these before. How can I work them into my training?”

I’ve found two types of mesocycles with bands and chains to be effective:

The first option is a two-week rotation. This is a good choice if you’re already an experienced deadlifter, or if you need to rotate your exercises a bit more frequently.

In this case, pick one exercise and use it for two weeks. It looks something like this:

Exercise: Deadlifts against bands

Week 1: Work up to 75 or 80%, and then perform 3-5 singles.
Week 2: Work up to 90 or 95% for one single. No big psych-up or extra arousal here – save the ammonia snorting routine for another day. Use a belt if you typically use one.

In this variation you’ll simply swap exercises every two weeks. So for two weeks you’ll perform deadlifts against bands, and then the next two-week cycle you’ll pull against chains, or with bands, etc.

The key with this option is to not max out every other week. It will be tempting, but I suggest only going for a legitimate PR every 2-3 months.

For those less experienced with bands/chains or who need a bit more time to “learn” an exercise, here’s a better option. We’ll stick with our example of deadlifting against bands.

Week 1: Light technique work. Work up to 50-60%, hit this for 8-10 singles.
Week 2: Moderate technique work. Work up to 75 or 80%, then perform 3-5 singles.
Week 3: Bordering on Max Effort. Work up to 90 or 95% for one single. No psych up or extra arousal. Belt-up if needed.
Week 4: Deload.

Using this method you’ll simply rotate from month-to-month, or mesocycle to mesocycle.

Your months might look like this:

Month #1: Standard deadlifts
Month #2: Deadlifts against chains
Month #3: Deadlifts against bands
Month #4: Deadlifts with bands

Finish month #4 with a taper, and then test your pull. Chances are if your technique is on point and you’ve picked good assistance exercises, you’re going to set a serious PR!

5. Don’t be Afraid to Grind!

One of my biggest pet peeves is when new or young lifters fail to stick with a lift.

Look, there are times when you need to know when to bail. If the bar gets out in front of you, you’re horribly rounded over, or the weight is just too damn heavy, fine.

But what irritates me to no end is when someone hits the sticking point, holds the weight there for .23 seconds, and then drops the weight.

WTF?

Look, if deadlifting heavy were easy, everyone would do it. Instead, you’ve got to learn how to grind.

Want to know what a grinder really looks like? Here’s my training partner Lil’ Stevie. He’ll teach ya how to grind!

This weight was just too much. Sometimes it happens. But he can walk away from that attempt knowing he gave it everything he had, and next time around, that weight will be his.

Hopefully you can say the same thing.

Summary

In no way was this list meant to be all-inclusive – I could probably come up with another 10, 15, even 25 tips to improve your deadlift without breaking a sweat. But these five are my all-time favorite tricks for adding pounds to your pull today!

Take a moment to review these tips and see where your tugging game may be lacking. Then, leave your own favorite deadlifting tip in the “Comments” section below. I look forward to seeing what’s worked for you!

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