 Welcome to part three in learning the deadlift. In part one we went over starting from the top. In part two we learned how to find a good bottom position and initiate a push off the ground. And now in part three we're gonna work on the middle portion of the lift transitioning from the bottom to the top to the bottom to the top. So let's start from the bottom. This, you know, I don't really have a system here. Sometimes we'll start from the top, sometimes we'll start from the bottom as we're progressing here and learning this transition zone, this middle zone. Just kinda depends on how I feel. So take your bow, you got your heels in the ground, you're gonna squat down. I still have my hamstrings good. Push through your heels and make sure that you're hanging onto your hamstrings. Now, this is where I wanna start talking about how are we directing these forces? So to pick the weight up, my feet have to push into the ground and I can't leak any of that energy before it gets to the weight. And so this energy leakage is kind of a good way to look at these things. So oftentimes people will initiate their deadlift like this and you see my butt comes up but my shoulders didn't move at all. So I didn't pick the weight up very much. I'm exaggerating it a little bit because usually the weight comes up a little bit but the butt still comes up too high. And so if you think about the leakage or you think about what's happening with the energy, my butt comes up, energy leaks through there, it just straightens my knees out and then I can use, I have a longer lever on my back and oftentimes I'll just feel it in my back there. So what we need to learn is how to push evenly without losing our back position, right? So I'm here at the bottom. I have my hamstrings, my heels in the ground and as I push, my back angle stays the same until I get to the knee. And that's why we start with the RDL again because this is now a different movement. We have the RDL coming in. And for the RDL, we just bring the hips forward and let the shoulders rise up with us. So that's kind of fault number one in this transition zone. It's where the butt comes up and I pitch over. Make sure you are, like my favorite thing for this one is just a tactile cue. If you have someone, like if you're just trying to learn this on your own, say, hey, could you come over here and see what my back is doing here? I'm trying to pick up both my butt and my shoulders at the same time. I want them to rise at the same time, but I tend to bend over a lot. My butt comes up and then my shoulders come up. So can you just put your hands there and make sure that I'm rising them at the same time? And if I'm not, you push into me, okay? And so if they're picking their butt up too much, I'll push in and I'll say, no, go back down, try again. No, go back down, try again. No, go back down, try again. And that's better, try again. That's better, good. And you have to get those reps in because you're gonna forget it. It's so complicated, right? So the hand cue is really good and that kind of leads us into the second fault. If I'm pitching over, that's one thing, but I could also be leading with my shoulders this way, okay? You'll see the knees shoot forward a little bit. You'll see the back arch, maybe. These people will really feel it in their back. When muscles move, that's generally when we're getting the sensations of stuff turning on. And so when I arch my back, then my back muscles are moving, they are shortening, and they just give more feedback to the brain. So same idea, tactile cues, except now the shoulders are coming up too quick. So I say, try again, nope, try again. Nope, that was better, try again. Oh, there you go, try again, there you go. And so all of this is just learning how to get from the bottom position to the knee, okay? This middle ground, this transition stuff, we could just break this into a top and a bottom portion of this lift, but I like to think about it as a middle, like as a transition. So as I come up, I want the back, I wanna get my hamstring stretched, there we go. And then I want the back to rise, the back angle not to change with the ground respective to the ground, okay? So this is just helping you identify what we're looking for, okay? And I should feel my hamstrings more and more and more as I start to figure it out. If I lose them, then I can say, okay, I'm getting too tired, I need to stop. So first two faults, butt comes up too quick, second fault, shoulders come up too quick. Once you figure out how to not do those and both your butt and your shoulders rise at the same time, and you can get to a good RDL position not from the top of the movement, but from the bottom of the movement, then we need to transition to what we might call an Olympic weightlifting, the power position. So this is where your power comes from, it's like a jumping position. So we need to learn this transition here. Now this doesn't really look like how you normally see power lifters deadlifting, but I do like to teach it this way because it gives me kind of three very distinct movements that you have to learn, you have to learn this, you have to learn this, and you have to learn this. Okay, so we gotta learn how to, again, transition. So when I'm here and I have my heels, I need to keep the heels as I start to come back up, but I also need to push my butt forward because as I stand up, I don't want this because I lose all my leverage this way. The bar is away from me, I'm bent over, I have a lot of pressure on my back, okay? So we're holding onto this, we got hamstrings, and then we come up here. And now this is more of a position that I could jump from, right? Jump from, or I could do a jump squat or jump shrug because that's the transition, that's how we get into Olympic weightlifting. You have to understand how to break down this deadlift. Big things there, it's the same stuff, you're gonna try to arch your back too much, you're gonna try to shift your weight forward too much. So as I'm here, if I shift my weight onto my toes and I see my heels come up, I see a lot of ankle bend, I don't want that, okay? So I'll say, okay, that was pretty good, but not so much. Keep your heels down, okay? Keep your heels down, keep your heels down. Sometimes if you can't feel them, I'll come over there and I'll tap them while they're on the ground, I'll just bring my foot and kick them. Keep your heels down, right here, yep, right here, yep. So we just learned this transition. Oh, I got my hamstrings this whole time, and so now we start to learn not just how to stretch the hamstring, but how to engage it to come back up. Oftentimes I'm not gonna say engage your hamstring, I'm just gonna say, do you still feel them? Are they getting tired? Because hopefully they are, and if they're not, they give you something else to work on, or it gives you some kind of end goal to focus on. What else have we got? This is deadlift, man, there's so much. So we're at the knee, we transition up here. You're shifting forward, that's what we talked about. So now, what if you're not shifting at all? You don't see the knees bend at all, and you just do this. So this is like the top portion of the RDL, I'm arching too much, it's the same idea. Keep your hip tuck, let your knees bend a little bit, and that'll help you straighten out. So we got that, and usually the only time someone's gonna round their back here is if they've misinterpreted one of your cues. So if you start to see someone do something like this, then say, okay, what are you thinking about? And then they'll give you an answer, and then you say, okay, stop thinking about that. And I messed you up, I just want you to keep everything straight, go a little slower, and just try to feel it out, try to feel the hamstrings. I don't want you to crunch so hard, because that's gonna round your back, it's gonna put you out of the position that we're trying to get you into. I think that's it. We didn't even talk shifting, because sometimes when you RDL, you'll shift to one side, or maybe to the other, or you'll twist, or when you finish, you'll twist, all sorts of stuff. The key to the deadlift is to figure out the sagittal plane, figure out how to hinge at the joints. That's why we call it a hip hinge. We gotta figure out how to use the hips and not the back. We gotta figure out how to keep our heels in the ground, and not lose our balance, our control of our center of mass. I hope that's helpful. I know that's like 30 minutes of me deadlifting and sweating in my Lulu sweatpants in my living room. So hopefully that wasn't unbearable. If you have questions, I think I covered a lot, and I covered most of what I will do. There are some nitty gritty tips and tricks that we're gonna get into later on down the line, but this is my general overview of how I'm trying to teach the deadlift to someone who's totally new to it.