The "Do You Even Deadlift" Clinic

I'm really struggling with engaging the lats. I tried your suggestion of letting the shoulders relax versus pulling them down and back but feels like my lats arent engaged at all. Also, I can't get the hip positioning right. I try to keep my hips low and use more legs but they always end up rising before the actual pull. I have long legs relative to torso so i think thats a factor.

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Relaxing shoulders? No way. Pull your shoulder blades together when you pull. 50% of the deadlift is contracting your back muscles to hold the weight. That is the part that makes it a "back" excercise. You flex your lats and spinal erectors to keep your spine in a straight, neutral position while pulling.

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& stand tall at the top of it, locking the knees, letting the arms hang straight.

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Your shoulders are only relaxed when you're setting up and getting into position before you start pulling. It is so that your arms are as long as possible, and makes it easier to get into a good position. They're not relaxing and rolling forward, they're relaxing down. People who have too tight shoulders at the start only end up pulling with their arms or upper back, and get very little from the rest of the body.

To understand and practice what I'm talking about, try this. Pick up 2x kettlebells (around 24kg each will do) at the gym, stand up straight. While standing there, flex your lats (don't worry about your shoulder blades) while letting your shoulders be dragged straight down by the weight of the kettlebells. It's also similar to what your back and shoulders would naturally do if you were to do a farmer's walks.

At the start of the deadlift, right before you start driving the bar off the ground, you want your shoulders and back to feel like that.

Quote:Pull your shoulder blades together when you pull.

This will last precisely 0.005s when you pull a heavy deadlift. You can only do that with the kind of weights used for a barbell row. Take a look at the upper back of lifters in their competition deadlift (the youtube IPF channel is good for hours upon hours of viewing), you will never see this.

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First when I read about retracting scapulas it made sense, but then again when I thought about it it couldn't be made in practice. Last time I did 100 kg, which is probably two times less than most people lift here, even with that weight it was completely impossible to retract shoulders.

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(06-05-2018 02:08 AM)StrikeBack Wrote:  

Quote:Pull your shoulder blades together when you pull.

This will last precisely 0.005s when you pull a heavy deadlift. You can only do that with the kind of weights used for a barbell row. Take a look at the upper back of lifters in their competition deadlift (the youtube IPF channel is good for hours upon hours of viewing), you will never see this.

It's just a good cue for people who don't know how to simply "flex their lats." It's impossible to pull your shoulder blades together without contracting your lats so it's an easy way to explain it to someone.

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I just showed one effective way to engage lats in deadlift (the KB / farmer's walk drill), there are several other ways that are good too. Using the wrong cue to engage the lats is not helpful, as with the shoulder blades back cue, the lifter would lose that position right away, often before the bar even leaves the ground. I believe in an earlier post (near the start of this thread), I showed that it would actually cause bad upper back rounding with maximal attempts. It's never useful to get into an unstable position that you can't hold throughout the lift.

Your lat cue is very good for bench pressing, not deadlifting.

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Do I have wrong impression that way of deadlifting StrikeBack refers to as "american or Rippetoe way" teaches pulling the lats together (and having high hips) instead of letting lats loose in starting position?

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You don't need to worry about engaging the lats. They will engage automatically. If you look at a deadlift from the side, the shoulders will be slightly ahead of the vertical line created by the bar so that the arms are at a slight angle back towards the bar, rather than going down in a straight line from the shoulder joint to the bar. Without the lats engaging, this angle would simply be impossible to maintain and the arms would hang straight down from the shoulder joint.

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What is the hip kick StrikeBack talks about in lift off post? Is this what Rippetoe refers as an "error" when you drop down hips suddenly and at the same time pull the bar?

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Deadlift is the most useless lift ever


(But I still do it)

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(03-29-2019 01:41 PM)LexisNexis Wrote:  Deadlift is the most useless lift ever

I'd have to disagree with that.

I don't have the studies to back it, but I would bet it is very effective in facilitating weight loss. It's in fact a fairly safe lift to do with heavy weight, compared to squat, bench, ohp and the like.

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(03-29-2019 01:41 PM)LexisNexis Wrote:  Deadlift is the most useless lift ever

Heavily disagree there. Second only to the squat, it's the most natural and functional movement you can do with your body: picking something up off of the ground.





If you want to pick on compound movements, then pick on bench press.

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(03-28-2019 04:16 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  What is the hip kick StrikeBack talks about in lift off post? Is this what Rippetoe refers as an "error" when you drop down hips suddenly and at the same time pull the bar?

Rippetoe doesn't know what he's talking about if he thinks it's an error. It's way easier to show this in person than via words, but you can see this hip kick in nearly every IPF world class deadlifter if you go and view their Youtube channel, just pick any deadlift session. You do it while maintaining tension in your arms, lats, abs etc. It's usually accompanied by a big breath and a massive and sudden tensing of all the core muscles, feet static-stomping the ground and driving through. Basically you need a massive "oomph" effort to get the weight moving, and it's easier to do it from a small dynamic movement than a static position. Sometimes you see lifters do this while rolling the bar forward then back into the position and go.

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StrikeBack

I just want to say that after I read this thread and implemented things learned into my deadlift, I stopped having lower back pain, so a huge thank you for this!

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That's fantastic to hear, mate! Hope you keep smashing deadlift PRs!

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Rippetoe is wrong about some pretty major points so nobody should worry too much about what he says. For example he completely embarassed himself with that whole idea that Olympic lifters should use the low bar squat in place of high bar lol.

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(03-29-2019 01:41 PM)LexisNexis Wrote:  Deadlift is the most useless lift ever

obviously banned for knocking the most masculine of all lifts.

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Guys, what is your weekly volume and programming for deadlift? Do you go for low reps, pure strength or do you implement also some kind of pure hypertrophy work.
My current routine has it doing me 3x10, with lighter weights of course. I am not doing this program for long but it seems that this approach, which is new for me is maybe even better for me than lower volume, big weight deadlifts.

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Lately during this particular training block I have 1 deadlift day a week, and it generally looks like this:

Deadlift - 12-15 reps broken up however (typically 3 x 5 or 5 x 3 depending on intensity)

Deadlift variation (pause deadlift, deficit deadlift, or normal deadlift but lower intensity) - 24-30 reps (no less than 6 reps/set) superset with abdominal work

Rackpull above the knee - 30+ reps (no less than 8 reps/set)

Then usually a leg press and leg curl.

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