 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Learning the Deadlift Part Do. Today, we're going to progress from this top-down learning pattern that we've been going through to figure out how to deadlift without hurting our back and just, you know, figure it out in general. And we're going to move to the bottom. So, with the deadlift, one of the difficult portions of this is actually that you don't start with stretch under load. You have to start with a push, a concentric push, off the ground. And so, it's very difficult for some people, especially flexible people, to feel where they're at when they're on the bottom, or when they're at the bottom of the lift. That's why I like to start from the top, because we can start from a normal standing position and then ramp up some stretching as we bend over. Getting lower is kind of... I don't like going straight to the middle portion of the lift. I like to just start, like, knee up, just because it keeps everything simpler. Because at some point, you're going to have to bend your knee a little bit. And if I go right to the middle, you're only going to bend it just a little bit, and then it's just kind of weird. So what I instead like to do is we go to the bottom, and we learn how to push off the ground, that little first push, to initiate some leg drive and initiate a deadlift picking the weight up. So I got my little quarter turn here. We're going to pretend I'm not holding any weight. There's a weight down there. We're going to take a bow to practice good RDL form. Use everything as an opportunity to practice. You'll get more reps in. And I'm going to RDL as much as I can to get a stretch in my hamstrings. And I actually feel some in my hips as well. So as I get that stretch, I feel my heels in the ground, and I'm just going to maintain it, okay? And that's what I like to cue for people. I want you to... Do you feel that stretch in your hamstrings? Okay, hang on to that and slowly squat down. Until you reach the weight, okay? And then we're there, and then I can say, Okay, now undo it, and every time I say that, everyone loses their stretch and they pick it up like this. But then that's an opportunity to say, Okay, you lost your stretch, find it again. And then we got to find this RDL position. That is the secret. That is the transition point. So we start from the top down so that you can understand how to stretch and how to feel with your leg muscles. A good stable position here that holds yourself up or holds a weight in your hands without stressing your back out too much. So you can talk on camera, for example, and it loads your legs a little bit more. Now, I happily don't feel that in my back, but that is difficult, so I'm starting to sweat. Okay, as we come down, no, as we come up, we want to find that position again. So what I like to do is I like to just work this bottom spot here. And so if I have a kettlebell, my feet might be a little bit wider here. I don't like to go. I'm not teaching anyone a sumo deadlift right away. I'm going about shoulder width, toes slightly towed out. We get our bend. I got my hamstrings and then we squat down. I'm holding onto my hamstrings. Okay, the handle's right about here. I feel pretty good about that. Now let's pick it up and hang on to it. And then I'm just stopping. Once my hands get to my knee, I'm stopping and I'm coming back down. Okay, and I say, okay, do a couple of those, two, three. There's a third. Now on your fourth one, finish the rep. And then we start to get into the middle portion of the lift. Same principles apply for where people mess this up. Just like starting from the top, just like our last video, video number one, we have too much arching in our bottom position. You'll see the knees shoot forward. It'll look more like a squat and they'll load their quads. Maybe not in a bad way, but more than we want to. Like if I'm deadlifting with a barbell, I can't get a whole lot of quad loading just because of the mechanics of where the bar goes. It's going to run into my shin. So I like to teach people how to bend over as much as I can. But if your goal is just fitness, I might let you squat a little bit. That, you know, it's okay as long as your joint angles are good. It's just a way for you to get a little bit of exercise. And then, you know, maybe later on, since this is a difficult movement to learn, maybe we wait a little bit. And I, you know, introduce it to you maybe next month or the month after. And once you've kind of bought into my system, and once you have decided that I'm giving you what you're looking for. So you could arch too much. The big, let's just run through some big breakdowns here at the bottom. So squatting too much, push your butt in the air. That's my favorite one. Sometimes I'll put my hand right down here. Not on the butt, because that's a no-no, but up top kind of in the low back SI area. And I say just push into my hand and then they do this. Okay. And then I say, do you feel your hamstrings? Yes, I do feel them. Good. Hang on to them. Okay. So same principles. We got to find the hamstrings and we got to hang on to them. So squatting too much. That was fault number one. Fault number two. Maybe I'm shifting forward. And in that case, I might just stand in front of them and say, I need you to shift back. I need you to feel your heels on the ground. And if they shift back, but they do something like this, I'll say, okay, keep your toes down though and bend over a little bit. Stay over your feet. And that is, that's actually the most helpful cue that I've found for keeping the toes down. You have to say keep the toes down, but then you say, stay over your feet or stay over the bar or stay over the weight. And then they kind of get that. They understand the, the bending thing. Too much squat. Too much shift forward. There could be some knee caving as well. Those things kind of go together. As I shift forward, I put more weight on the insides of my feet, my big toes, and I can compromise my knee position. So in that case, I can first make sure that I'm shifting backwards enough. So if I'm here, shift backwards enough. Sometimes that just fixes. Sometimes it's not quite enough. And I'll say, okay, just bring your knees out a little bit apart from each other. And that little cue is usually enough. So you could squat too much. You shift too far forward. You could collapse your knees in too much. Same idea. You know, we talked about the top down stuff arching your back too much. Again, I'm just going to say, okay, tuck your hips a little bit more. You feel your heels more in the ground. Good. Hang on to them. And then rounding. So if I'm rounding, it could be that they don't have the mobility to get down there. It could be that you just, you know, you haven't found a position that you can maintain, or it could be you don't have the tissue extensibility. Sometimes people are pretty stiff in the back of their hips, and they won't be able to get all the way down to the ground. Oftentimes, most often it's the motor control portion of this. It's that they don't know how to find a position that allows them to have mobility. But sometimes there is some stiffness that needs to be overcome. Oftentimes you can train that. You can fix that just with the deadlift itself. As long as you're not, you know, just lifting really, really heavily, you have to say, as you're doing this, do you feel a stretch? Yes, I do. Okay, I want you to push into it. I want you to lean into it. I want you to steer into it. I want you to not avoid it. So as I, if I'm here, I'm rounded back. That's again, I might just say, I want your back. Your back is rounding like this. Flatten it out for me. And that's usually enough. The hard part of this is that you usually don't have one of those issues. You usually have multiple of those issues. And so you have to kind of decide which one you're going to address first and go from there. Usually I'm going to say, if I'm rounded, I need to fix that first. And then I'm going to say, if I'm shifting my weight forward or backward too much, I'm going to fix that next. I can usually fix those right away. That shouldn't take very long. You just got to have a good cue. So straighten your back out and shift your weight back. Okay, and keep your toes down if you need to, if that's how you end up compensating. After that, then you have to try to get towards this good spinal position while you're picking the weight up. And so you got to learn how to drive through your heels. You got to learn how to find and feel your heels throughout the movement. And again, you got to move slowly because otherwise you're not going to be able to feel anything. After you move slowly, then you have to worry about the transition. And that's when we get into the middle portion of the lift. So this was the bottom portion of the deadlift part two in our three part learning series. If you have any questions, let me know. I know that's a lot.