 All right, today we're going to talk about the deadlift, everything about the deadlift. This is the masterclass. We're going to talk about one of the best exercises for your body, how to do it, prerequisites, cues, everything. So welcome to the deadlift masterclass. Yeah. All right. Let's go. Yeah, let's do it. You know, these masterclass videos we've been doing, they give a lot of really good reviews. A lot of people saying they're benefiting from them, both trainers and clients and everyday people alike. We did body parts and it makes sense that we would talk about some of the exercises that we think to be the best ones that are out there. Yeah, dudes, the bigger and deeper dive into the subject. Absolutely. But yeah, the deadlift is known as one of the big three or big four, big five exercises. You'll hear people refer to strength training exercises like that. And it's always in a list, right? It's always one of the big lifts. And the reason for that is because people have identified now because people have been deadlifting for decades. It's not a new exercise. It's one of the oldest exercises out there. But people have identified that it's incredibly valuable for almost any goal or if I can't think of a goal it wouldn't be valuable for. It's definitely valuable for real world strength, muscle building, and then fat loss as a result of the metabolism boost that comes from functionality, mobility. It's just across the board, it's valuable. It's a valuable exercise. It's one that everybody should do. And if you can't do it, get to a place where you can do it. Well, I think that the squat has been touted as the king of all exercises for a long time. But I would like to argue that the deadlift is. I think that you get as much of a full body activation. You get just as big of bang for your buck when it comes to CNS and overall total body. And then on top of that, when we understand as trainers, one of the biggest things you're trying to combat is posture issues with people, like with the rounding of their shoulders, the forward head, the closing of their body and the weakening of all the muscles in the posterior chain. So that's what that's caused from, right? You get really weak muscles in the posterior chain. You get this over usage, tightening and shortening of the muscles in the anterior, so in the front of the body. And we're rounding for it's why when you look at people that are 70, 80, 90 years old, they've got these walkers and they're rounded over. And a lot of that is because that posterior chain is just destroyed. It's weak. It's completely weak. They're disconnected from it. And the deadlift is the best exercise for the entire posterior chain. So I would argue that it is a more important and even better exercise when you talk about the king of all exercises. Yeah. It's definitely debatable for sure. I think you would get people who would agree with you. I think they're both extremely valuable exercises, definitely top two and you could switch them if you want. But I would say in terms of application to modern life, everyday life, I would agree because you're more likely A to pick things up like that. Well, that's, yeah, that was kind of the direction I was going after that was like, you're going to find yourself in a situation where you got to lift something heavy. Like in terms of load squats, you're going to do probably more frequently in terms of a movement pattern. I might argue, like getting up and down from a chair, like, you know, toilet, yeah, but usually not with load. And so in a loaded situation where you actually have to pick something up and have the strength and organize your body in such a way to do that mechanically sound. Deadlift teaches you how to do that. And when we refer to the posterior chain that literally is referring to pretty much all the muscles of the back of your body. Okay. So think of your back, then think of your glutes, your hamstrings and your calves. So from your ankles up to essentially the bottom of your neck, those would be the muscles of posterior chain. And they are, most of the muscles in our bodies are underused in modern societies, but the posterior chain in particular is, isn't used very often. And the most common complaint for pain, if you look it up, revolves around the back and in particular the low back. Deadlifts if done appropriately and properly and trained properly. There isn't an exercise that would bulletproof your back, your low back in particular, like deadlifts. So long as they're performed properly, this is one of the best exercises you could do well into old age that would strengthen your back to the point where you would really prevent low back injury, which almost everybody at some point will complain of or suffer from. My healthiest advanced age clients could deadlift well. Always. Yeah. The fittest advanced age clients that I had had a healthy, strong lower back and they had a healthy, strong lower back because they had the ability to deadlift. Whether they gain that ability later in age because they were taught and they developed that strength or something that they kept throughout their entire life. Either way, you could definitely narrow down the healthiest, fittest, strongest advanced age clients I had were deadlifting. They had that ability. Yes. Now, you'll almost never hear the argument that deadlifts aren't beneficial for athletics. I think athletes and strength coaches realize its benefit or at least a version of deadlift. Well, now they do. They do now, right? That used to be a lot of discussion and debate in the programming of athletic sports in terms of that being something that's going to make a more muscle bound or whatever the excuse was at the time was that they didn't find the relevance of deadlifts in terms of moving fast or. But they did squat. Yeah. Having an explosive strength. But these days, you mean everybody probably agree or some version of it, right? But in the muscle building world, they're still, and this is silly to me, they're still sometimes a little controversy over the deadlift. Only in the bodybuilding world. Yeah. The best back exercise to develop the back and I'm going to tell you where the roots of that come from a hundred percent. The roots of that do not come from the fact that bodybuilders have noticed it doesn't build a great back. It's false. Bodybuilders who perform deadlifts will tell you this is one of the best muscle building exercises. It comes from bodybuilding, a workout planning and programming itself because it is not an easy exercise to plug in to a body part split routine. Where do I put it? Back day? Leg day? I don't do back and legs on the same day. How do I... And it works so many muscles and it doesn't isolate something. And it's hard. And it's hard. And so I can row, I could pull, I could do all these other back exercises. It's totally baloney. It's funny too because some of the most winningest champion bodybuilders will talk about how deadlifts were so great at developing the back. For the average person. The Ronnie Coleman's. The Arnold. The Arnold. Your best, some of your best bodybuilders and physiques deadlifting. Which is... Stanford. Which is really weird to me. Stanford. You have these people that are famous and they all did that yet there's this culture in the last decade or two that have decided to eliminate deadlifting in their bodybuilding programming. It's so wild to me. Yeah. No, the best, personally, the best gains ever made were when my deadlift got stronger, always. And with my clients. And I trained everyday people. I didn't train a law. I trained very few people who you would consider hardcore. It was always average people. And I had all of them deadlifed. Every single one that could deadlift and then ones that couldn't. We worked towards the ability to do so and it didn't matter their age. And all of them, when they got stronger in the deadlift, it was pronounced in terms of their posture, the strength, the muscle, I would see fat loss. So we're making the case, essentially, for why this is included is one of the most important exercises. Now there's two, when we say deadlift, this is one of those few exercises where there's two distinct versions, but they're both referred to as a deadlift. And sometimes people use them interchangeably and say, I deadlift, I deadlift. And then you have to ask them specifically, well, how do you deadlift? Is it conventional or is it sumo? This is because of powerlifting. There's sport of powerlifting, one of the major lifts, because they compete with three lifts, bench press, deadlift, and squat. The deadlift can be performed both sumo or conventional. And it doesn't matter which one you do, you can pick. And then that's the deadlift version that you do. And your weight counts, just like someone else's weight counts, regardless of if they do conventional or sumo, there's definitely some similarities, but I don't consider them to be the same exercise. They're different enough. No, I think they're a lot different. I think it's almost as different as comparing a back squat to a front squat. Yeah, I can see some of that. Definitely. I mean, you have, obviously you have some of the same muscles that are activating, but they're different enough that, I mean, it's that, that different that anybody who's done a back squat and a front squat, how different they feel. Totally different recruitment pattern that you're firing off for each one of those exercises. Now both, but both are very posterior chain. Yeah. Heavier, posterior loaded. Yeah. So people ask which one to pick. That's why that's where I was going. And I think everybody should do both. I do. I think you should practice both of them. You will find that one of them you'll be better at than the other. And this is why people will have favorites. Some people do better in one, some people do better in the other. But I think it's, it's a good idea to probably, um, you know, practice both my general advice for clients, um, regardless if you're in, in the powerlifting community or not is you, you have one that you're naturally going to be better at everybody's going to, right? That's just going to feel more natural. So you spend 80 per year setting your time trying to get strong in that. Yeah. Because getting stronger in that lift is going to have so much bang for its buck that I wouldn't, uh, intentionally be switching back and forth all the time, uh, with the, the two, but I would interrupt it 20% of the time with the opposite. That's a good number. So it's just a kind of generic advice that I give somebody. It's like there's so much value and they're different enough that to not do the other one, just because you're not good at all, you're missing out on some potential gains. So at least introduce it enough that it interrupts the way that you choose to do it most of the time. Yeah. So essentially a conventional deadlift is your hands or outside your feet, some more narrow stance in a sumo, your feet are outside of your hands and it's a wider stance. Some people can go real wide. Um, I, I, I would say for general training purposes, a, a, you know, kind of moderate, wide stance. Sometimes people go crazy to limit the range of motion for competition purposes. Personally, for me, Adam, um, I've gotten through a few sticking points with my conventional by, by getting better at the sumo. So I noticed obviously that I got stuck here. Let me practice sumo for a little while, went back to my conventional and I was able to break through the plateau. This is an area, this is also why I compared it to the front and back squat. I feel the same way about that. Like there's been times when I've been back squatting, back squatting, back squatting. And then I'm like, you know what, I haven't interrupted that with a good, like training cycle of front squatting. And let me get, and then let me, since I'm stuck at this back squat right here, let me get really good at front squatting, see what happens. And many times what ends up happening is I get stronger in the front squat, I go back to the back squat and I see myself get stronger again. I feel the same way about whatever way you, whether it's conventional or sumo that you traditionally do the most with when you hit a plateau, one of the great ways to kind of break through that plateau is to switching to the other for enough of a cycle that you watch yourself get stronger in that one and then come back over and there is carryover. Today's program giveaway maps power lift. Here's how you can win the program. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. And if you win, we'll let you know in the comment section, we're also running a sale on some workout programs this month. The first one is our, our beginner strength training program, map starter. That's half off. Then we have a bundle that includes maps, metabolic and maps prime called the starter bundle. That's also 50% off. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. Now, this is the probably the only exercise I can think of where the grip really becomes a conversation as you get stronger at this lift. Now, when you first start out, not a problem. You grab the bar, practice your deadlifts, get better at it, not an issue, but because the strength potential for the deadlift for most people, okay, most everyday people working out strength training, following traditional exercises, the most weight you'll lift will be in the deadlift. You're probably your potential for strength is probably highest. I say probably because there's the outliers, but you're probably highest with the deadlift and that means that you have to hold on to most weight you could possibly lift with your hands. And so the grip, which is usually the limiting factor for a lot of people, for a lot, especially nowadays, because nobody, everybody, nobody challenges their hands anymore. So they go to pull a hundred pounds off the floor, not a problem, gets up to 200, 300. Now all of a sudden, I think I could lift it, but my hands can't hold it type of deal. So aside from allowing your grip to strengthen over time, which is important, there are a couple strategies. One is known as the over-undergrip, and this does dramatically increase the amount of weight you can hold on to. So this is where you'll see a power lifter where one hand will be facing forward and one hand will be facing back. And that improves the, the increase, the amount of weight you can lift because it prevents the ball, the bar doesn't roll out essentially is what's happening. And you're able to lift more. Now, the consideration with that is make sure you alternate which hand is facing forward every set. I made this mistake as a lifter because I felt stronger with my right hand supinated, and then eventually that's where I did all my heavy sets. You favor it at that point. And I developed an imbalance in my back, which you could, I could actually visibly see and feel. And it took me, I don't know, two and a half, three years to be able to reverse that, that imbalance. So if you do an over-undergrip, make sure every set you alternate so you don't end up developing a balance because it will develop an imbalance if one hand is always supinated. For, for GP, I would say, I would just tell that person to just do double overhand. I don't see a lot of value in that unless there's, unless like we're chasing a PR or that week or something like, let's say I have a client, right, um, that is that I'm really trying to, let's say it's one of my female clients who I'm really trying to encourage her to lift heavier, lift heavier, lift heavier. And, you know, we've been training, you know, deadlifting for a while. And the limiting factor tends to be her, her, you know, double overhand grip and like she's, she can't hold on the bar, maybe that client, because I'm pushing that message so hard. You know, I, I have a set where I let her do the over-under. But for most clients, like I don't see a lot of value. It's when the grip becomes an issue. Yeah. And, I mean, and Justin has said this before plenty of times, you made a case for it. I was the one when I was body building that was utilizing straps. And that's a whole another conversation on like where that is applicable. But for the average person who is just trying to get in shape, get strong, get fit, um, I would encourage trying to get strong double overhead. You're going to have the least amount. As far as you can go for sure. Yeah. As far as you possibly can and, and get technique down. There's no reason if you're just learning the deadlift it's your first year of doing it and you're already doing switch grip and adding wraps. Like it's just like you have so much potential to get stronger and to work on all those things first before implementing something like that just to increase, say 25 to 50 pounds on the bar for the deadlift. That's just my yeah. If you're if you've got good mobility and you're able to progress consistently, I would agree with you. You probably have at least six months to a year before you'd have to use any kind of grip strategy. Then you can do the over under hook grip. That's what I prefer now because there's no way to be to develop an imbalance because both hands are facing forward and it's a hook grip is what Olympic lifters use where you wrap your finger around your thumb. Uncomfortable. Difficult. Yeah, that takes a lot of practice. I try to get good at that. Did you ever get good at that? No, never good. I've practiced and practiced and practiced. It's just one of those that never stuck. I've gave up every time. Every time I wanted to do it. I tried to stick to it for a while. I just being honest, I didn't stick it out because it was just hurt. It hurt and I sucked at it. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to stick. Yeah. You stuck it out for a year. I do it. I do it every single time. I still can. You didn't know before. No. When we first met, you were over undergotten. Now, truth be told, so this was now you're looking at. I've been practicing now lifting heavy with the deadlift hook grip probably for, I don't know, five years, six years. And still, if I want to go to my top, top, top set over under, I can hold more weight still. In fact, yesterday or two days ago, I tried to deadlift and I was pulling five. I was trying to go for 585 or 570 and I tried double overhand with a hook and I lost the bar at the top. But I could have held it with a whole rounder. Oh, yeah, I see. So even now, that's still my stronghold. So has the hook grip ever, has it got to a place where it's comfortable for you or is it uncomfortable still? I mean, it doesn't like, it's not like when I first did it where I was like, oh, this really hurts. Yeah. Still not comfortable. It's still not. It's still not super comfortable now, but it doesn't hurt. But it does take practice, a lot of practice. And then we talked about straps, wrist straps. I don't like wrist straps for most people because most people should either one of the strategies we talked about or develop a stronger grip. I could see high volume bodybuilding training. That's the only place that's the place. When I was training twice a day, seven days a week and I'm doing all these sets and targeting very specific small muscle. Not quite as high either. Yeah, and I'm targeting a very specific muscle group. I don't want the forearms to get involved in it all or maybe I'm fatigued from the day before from going really heavy and I don't want that to hinder my delt work. And so, yeah, I use straps a lot when I was bodybuilding, but it wasn't just so I could get a heavier deadlift. It was for that purpose. It's like, I don't want my forearms to limit me from these other things that I'm doing and I had so much training volume. And at that point, I don't care. When I get up on stage, the judges don't go, hey, how's your grip strength compared to that, guys? They are looking at your body. And if that gave me an advantage to sculpting my body, I was going to use that advantage even if I know that for real-world strength, overall help, general population, that's not ideal. That's where the exception to the rule is. And also, it also does change a little bit of the recruitment pattern up in the shoulder area. People think that's not that big of a deal, not that important. Well, if you're a everyday average person and you can develop more grip strength, I don't think it's a good idea to go that route to develop recruitment patterns where your body learns how to lift more weight without necessarily using its grip the way it should type of deal. This is why I would say the bodybuilders are probably the only players. Yeah, and you're creating a weak stress point that is going to be completely not ideal in the real-world. If you're grabbing something that is equal in weight to what you normally would lift with like a strap, you know, where is all that going to go right to your stress point that's going to break? You know, something that we don't actually talk a lot about in regards to getting, you know, doing this like grip strength again for deadlift and some really cool benefits. The strongest I ever was in like total lifts, all my lifts, was when I had the heaviest and I was the strongest deadlifter. And I attribute some of that, at least some of it, to I had the, that was one of my greatest grip strength was. And I got the best development in my grip just simply lifting heavy deadlifting. Not doing a bunch of crazy cool, not doing a bunch of forearm exercises that we know that are out there that will help your grip strength. And I didn't do any of that stuff. I just got held on to a heavy bar. I held on to a heavy ass bar and got, and I did it frequently for over a year consistently. And I watched my, all my, my overhead press, my bench press, all my other exercises came up with that. And you have to think that having a really, really strong grip has carry over into all lifts that you hold on to a barbell or dumbbell. Think of any upper body exercise, envision yourself doing it. I don't care what it is. Curls, press downs, overhead press, bench press, whatever. Now imagine you having a weak grip on the bar. Now imagine having a strong grip on the bar. You're just more connected. You're able to lift more weight. You're able to do more power output. Your hands connect you to the world. This is what humans are most known for, right? Our opposable thumbs and our ability to articulate our fingers and manipulate objects. Very strong, capable hands translates across the board. For that reason, that's enough reason to stick to the double overhead and get strong because I would rather lift a little less weight double overhead but have stronger forearms than use straps or have to go over under just so I can say my deadlift is stronger. I care more about that my forearm strength because then that was going to contribute to all the other movements. Your hands will catch up. It just takes a little bit of time, that's for sure. Let's talk a little bit about the requirements or things you want to be able to do or have to be able to perform a deadlift. Number one, you want to be able to what's called hip hinge. Most people who have never deadlifted, they know if I say something like don't lift that with your back, lift it with your legs or lift it the right way. They can picture their dad what they told them to do or whatever where you keep your back straight and stick your butt out and bend over rather than rounding your back. That's kind of what we mean by hip hinge. You can bend over by hinging at the hips or you can bend over by rounding your spine. You do not deadlift by rounding your spine. You deadlift by hinging at the hips. This sounds to some people like oh that's cool, no big deal. I'm going to tell you right now, it was one of the more challenging things to get a person to understand who didn't work out. When I would get a new client oftentimes we'd have to really practice and feel what it feels like to actually hinge at the hips because most of us don't do that throughout the day. I think it's important to figure out that most people if they pick something off the floor they do not hinge, they round. Which by the way, some of the most common injuries in clients was like picking a shampoo bottle up, pulling a little weed out and that's that rounding. They weren't loading the hips to pick a shampoo bottle, they weren't loading the hips to pull a weed out. They were rounding at the back and that was a really unnatural thing to do for most people unless you have been taught proper hinging, one of my favorite ways to teach this and hopefully the guys when they do the edit right here will show this video because I know I did a YouTube video a long time ago on Mind Pump TV and that's the PVC pipe. That technique, I don't remember where I got that from first or who taught that to me but was such a game that you're trying to tell a client who doesn't understand how to hinge who also can't see or really feel their body like that way and that you're trying to tell them that they just learning that was such a struggle. The first three to five years of my career trying to teach a hinge was so difficult that many times I abandoned it because I was not good at teaching it. That PVC pipe really brought it all together with me and that's where you run that back and low back all connected to the PVC pipe as they bend over and if they just concentrate on those three points, they'll have to. You get the nodule, you get between the shoulder blades, you get down there near the butt cheeks and you just try to maintain those contact points and it teaches them to keep that nice firm back and everything kind of accounted for but yeah it's such an unnatural thing. You're either going to get them rounding down where their heels will come up then their knees will protrude forward and so you know like you kind of have to work through all of that keeping the knee kind of in a locked position and supported but now we're like sliding our hips back one of my cues was like to karate chop those hips so we're just imagining somebody kind of like chopping your hips back. The next one would be to have a stable and strong core why because what you don't want with a deadlift is to have a really really weak core and really really bad low back support. This is where you hear the horror stories of people hurting their low backs when they deadlift. Now I want to be very clear if you perform a deadlift properly and appropriately in other words you got good technique, good stability you're using a weight that's appropriate for your strength level and mobility very safe, it's a perfectly safe exercise but it's one of those exercises where if you deviate outside of that especially because of the potential for load now the risk of injury goes up considerably and often times when people don't know how to do this right or use a wrong weight or don't have good technique and good stability it's the low back that ends up paying the price. So make sure you have a core that's stable and strong. You don't want a deadlift after you just had a baby necessarily where you need to get the connection back or you just had some kind of surgery or whatever you feel like you can't activate your core like you want to be able to activate that. You're also highlighting the favorite parts about learning and getting good at deadlifting is it's incredible for developing the core because in order for you to hinge the hips like we're talking about keep those three contact points you have to keep a very neutral spine while you do that in order to keep a really neutral spine you have the core muscles that wrap around that spine in order to keep it rigid and tight it works like this vacuum where it sucks in and it tightens up around the spine to keep it that way so if you learn to hinge properly you're already getting core activation if you then load that movement you have to strengthen that and as you continue to increase weight on the bar the core is just going to get stronger and stronger and stronger which is hence why you have a bullet proof of the low back anybody who's ever had low back pain what does the doctor almost always default to work your core, train your core so if one of the best ways to develop and strengthen your core a really strong heavy deadlift well that's one of the best ways to bullet proof your low back and you're teaching it to repeat these patterns whenever there's an opportunity for a heavy load it's like this automatic response that's why we train and we do repetitions with it with that type of good form where you're bracing and you're going down and so it's like that way when it's presented to you you're not going to be in a relaxed position where you're compromising your spine so let's talk about priming we don't like the term warm up because priming is more specific priming is helping you to connect to the muscles that you need to connect to giving you the kind of mobility that's required for the type of exercise you're going to do and so these are, we're going to go over some general priming movements that you can do before you deadlift that will apply to most people now the best priming is always individualized but for most people these ones will help quite a bit now the first one, I like this a lot for a deadlift and I would do this a lot with clients was prone cobra prone cobra really helps a person activate and get in touch with the muscles that tighten the back that squeeze the shoulder blades back that stick the chest out it really helps them feel what it feels like to be able to activate that upper posterior chain to brace and strengthen and tighten so a good few sets of prone cobra I think tends to set that up with the supine scorpion like that and really like with those obviously ankle mobility is important and just getting good foot control activation and then the supine scorpion with the hips getting the hips like woke up so like sometimes it's been supine scorpion sometimes it's been 90 90 sometimes it's some leg swings windmill to get the similar type of rotation and all of them are doing something similar and that's kind of really waking up and activating all those stabilizer muscles in your hips which are extremely important when you are heavy deadlifting one of the common injuries you see somebody is to see you're lifting a heavy barbell and there's a little bit of shift in those hips that's when you hear those QL issues going on or low back stuff that people will have a problem because side to side and a lot of that is just because they didn't prime they didn't prime and wake the hips up and get them firing and activated before they go into this big heavy movement and so I think any of those that we just listed are good to add into your arsenal now something like a supine scorpion the average person might look at that and think oh that's a twisting stretch on the floor no no no you have to bring your leg over you have to bring your leg back using your core and your body if you just sit in a stretch you actually might set yourself up for more risk of injury you want to be able to activate and fire muscles that rotate you at the lumbar a little bit at the thoracic wake up the QL, wake up the rectus spinae muscles a little bit of hip activation you have to move yourself through it that's what priming is it's not holding a stretch holding a stretch not a good idea that goes for the combat stretch as well if you look at that it looks like you're just down there stretching no you're not when you get down there you want to try and pull the toes back with your own strength right or push down activate all those muscles in that position so that they actually help you stabilize you don't want to turn them off yeah and I think a lot of people might be going for the combat stretch that doesn't you don't really need a lot of ankle mobility for a deadlift you're more in a stiff rigid position not quite like the squat but you also get the benefits because it is an active stretch of waking up all the muscles in the foot and ankle that's important and when you are grounded like one of the things one of the cues you'll hear is like grip the floor with your feet like be grounded or drive your heels through the floor when you get into that combat stretch and you activate just get those primed so there's a lot of benefit to doing the combat stretch before you go on a deadlift even though it doesn't seem like it'd be one of those exercises you would your feet are anchoring you I mean that's where you're able if you get really good at that type of a cue where you're really grounding yourself good you get that strength in your feet you can increase your force production substantially so it's like you can lift more weight so it starts at the feet 100% alright so here's some things to kind of pay attention to trainers we call these cues but really just things you want to pay attention to when you're doing an exercise like this we talked about hinging so you want to be able to pay attention to be able to hinge back stick your butt back bend your knees as you go down that's the the deadlift itself you want your arms to be totally straight okay when you start to lift this is a cue that a lot of people mess a lot of people mess up because they'll start the lift with arms slightly bent and then they'll try to pop up and that slack that little bit of pop that's where injuries start to happen so lock your arms out you want no slack in your arms when you're about to lift the weight I also like to tell people to activate their lats what does that look like pull your shoulder blades down and back like you're doing this imagine you're bending it outward in a sense but obviously you're gripping it tight and you're just kind of putting that pressure there yeah essentially you're starting in a tight safe position when you're about to lift the weight off the floor the bar should be over midfoot that's the starting position now some people will feel like they're hitting their shins when they come up there's nothing wrong with that it's not something necessarily you should aim for but there's nothing wrong with that some people do that but you want to start with the bar over the midfoot if it's too far in front of you now you're using too you're bending over too much if it's too close to you oftentimes with people depending on their leverage and their body type it looks like they're doing a squat not necessarily well you're a little bit more you're flirting with inefficiency because the bar line bar path actually matters in terms of lifting something heavy you want the straightest line possible to get from point A to point B by the way that I forget the name of the app bar path is it the name of the app that's such a valuable tool for that exact point that you're talking about right now because that you can line the phone up and it'll show you that bar path before I pull I really what takes the slack at the bar the slack on Mars I like to have like I'll get in my position where my hips are supposed to be and my lats locked all in and then I'll get kind of like this little jerk on the bar just so I could feel the slack come out of my arms the slack come out of the bar you want everything because this is a lever type of exercise right it's not you're not picking the bar up you're leveraging the bar up you want everything to be so tight and rigid before you don't want any slack you want to feel tightness in your in your hips and butt before you go you want to feel tightness in your arms will tell tightness in your lats everything should feel rigid and then you're just firing those hips forward in fact when I did lift before I do the lift I'm lifting 10 pounds off the bar anyway I don't start from zero to whatever because otherwise it looks like a pop you're not popping the weight up okay that's a totally different type of lift you are lifting the weight and you want it to start from a good clean position so even before I go for a lift there's probably 10 pounds of lift already on the bar that I've already produced yeah you like I love when you see kind of a little bit of a bend in the bar before the bar comes up you want to be able to really feel that you know it reminds me of is I don't know if you guys have ever like gone to a drag racing event and been in the pit and you see how these cars kind of warm up before they really like you know punch it well they they spin them out they warm the tires up and all that and they kind of roll back up to the line well they have to they have to have one foot on the acceleration it's already the foot pedals already going and it's on the brakes at the same time keeping it from so it just goes so just goes yeah that's kind of how I look at that yeah also another cue is to rather than lift the bar imagining you're holding on to the bar and you're pushing your legs through the floor yeah this just helps with the technique of a lift this has helped a lot of my clients when I watch their form and I tell them this cue all of a sudden it just looks a lot better and it helps me too when I'm going for my heavy lifts sometimes that's a little envision that I'm just pushing my legs through the floor yeah I mean one of my once you get into the position which I think is one of the hardest things is to get in the perfect proper position once you're there then the cue of driving the heels to the floor thrusting the hips forward to me is the best cue it's like that that is exactly what you're doing you are pushing your heels on the floor and thrusting the hips forward and that's what lifts that bar up and there's a there's a lot of value we didn't talk or list this but there's so much value in when you kind of figure this out is to create a ritual and I know there's a lot of people like that tease like our friend Lane Norton the way he comes up and stuff like that the reason why I don't talk shit and tease him because like if you ever watched a baseball player a golfer and he becomes these are all very technical sports technical movements to swing a baseball bat a 100 mile an hour baseball is unbelievable to hit a golf ball this small 300 something yards incredibly technical and so these guys create these rituals on how they walk up to the plate how they walk up to the ball so and just helps you get into that perfect position and so there is a lot of value and I don't care if it's quirky or people make fun of you if it helps you get into all these cues that we just said do it and do it the same every time it will help you over time because before you know it you'll be able to just get right in that movement just by kind of doing your ritual which is where I'm at in my life now but it took me years to get there 100% alright some common errors the most common one is a rounded lower back your low back should stay neutral now notice I said lower back the upper mid back can have some rounding you will see some rounding often times in a experienced deadlifter in that kind of thoracic area that's fine it's the low back you want to have maintain strong and stable but what they're not doing is rounding to their end range of motion now beginning lifters and immediate lifters you want to maintain neutral low back do not want any rounding I think a good example is to compare your deadlift and my deadlift you have that kind of upper rounded back when you go in and it's not bad you see that you still stay neutral the entire way there's no movement going on there it's just the way your posture starts Jordan shallow does it too it all really accentuate his rounding as he comes over before he rolls the bar up to me that's a technique that certain lifters like doing it that way as long as there is no movement in that low back you're completely fine doing it another issue is sometimes the hips will come up too fast they'll do the lift and lift their butt and then they'll lift the bar you want the bar to come up with your butt and your knees to come up at the same time hips and bar to move at the same time so you've got this nice smooth motion you don't want a two stage deadlift that totally changes the exercise it increases the risk of injury you want to drive it up it almost seems like they forget to pull at the same time as they're really focused on really driving their legs up to get that locking out position so this is a challenge sometimes for me and I think sometimes taller people with this the hips rising first and a lot of that is the slack out of your hamstrings and your glutes so that's what's going on there you're taking the slack out of your arms you're taking the slack out of the bar your lats are all active you're all tight up front but then your hips aren't tight your hamstrings aren't tight yet so you want to let those hips rise up to where the hamstrings and the glutes they're super tight first and then like I said it's all thrusting forward if there's any slack there you'll come up to get rid of the slack and then you'll see the deadlift and it's just a slight little shift in a cue or your starting position by sliding the hips back or letting them come up a tiny bit and getting that slack out of the hamstrings the other one, this was not as common but you'll still see this sometimes is people will squat too low where the butt is so low that you'll notice that their arms are not you should have a straight line from your shoulders down to your hands change the bar path and make it less your leverage isn't as helpful so it's less common but if you see it you know it so you want that straight line, shoulders to hands should be completely straight this is common in watching a bodybuilder do a deadlift for the first time they want to squat the bar up they want to pick it up they're not understanding the leverage or the way you're trying to create a lever for deadlifting so if you are dropping your hips too low what you're thinking or what you're doing typically wrong is you're thinking about picking the bar up you're not picking the bar up in a deadlift you're leveraging it up so that thought process is different that's normally where these people are off they're visually looking at someone lift the bar up and they think that person is picking the bar up off they're trying to muscle it up with their arms it's a very bodybuilder a little bit of slack in their elbow and then it's a bicep heavy exercise it's all problematic another one is you see some shifting from side to side if this happens to you, go lighter and slow down that's just the bottom line if it keeps happening to you, practice one-legged versions and find out what side is so much stronger than the other and try to balance them out but shifting left to right on a deadlift is an injury waiting to happen so if that happens, take it seriously because that's probably aside from a super rounded lower back probably the most common reason they hurt themselves on a deadlift is that they get the shifting that's where I hurt myself and a lot of that is it's common because guys and girls that get really strong on the sagittal plane are lifting deadlifting squatting just doing that they neglect multi-planar movements and they don't have a lot of stability from left to right or unilateral work they don't do as much and so that's all it takes is a little bit of shift to the left to right they're holding on to 500 pounds so it doesn't take much for something to go again, this stresses the importance of focus as well that's the reason why I injured myself with that was just there was something going on over to the right of me and so my focus went over there and there was a shift and then tried to over-correct and then it was all back look straight ahead focus completely on the task actually we didn't talk about that too when people deadlift is they look up and they arch their neck you should actually keep your chin tucked as you come down so you're forward and tucked as you deadlift up a common mistake is people look up as they deadlift and you actually want to keep the chin tucked at the most look straight ahead but don't do this up, look type of thing now when you're deadlifting take your time take your time and slowly work yourself up to your work set the stronger you are the longer this should take it's time to work up to your heavy sets this is a don't try to rush through this so you can do other exercises for two reasons one it's a complex lift but two this exercise is so effective it takes the place of four or five other exercises combined so if you don't have enough time to do these other movements it's totally fine the deadlift brought you more value anyway so slowly work your way up this is also one of those lifts where there are rep ranges that tend to work better for it but high reps tend to work better for a deadlift than high reps now that's not to say you can't do high reps but high reps with the low back starts to get fatigued form starts to break down much faster low reps when I say low reps it's like anywhere between one to like eight tends to be better with the deadlift than with other exercises I mean to the extreme even right that it's one of the few exercises that I've ever trained in my life where I might do a day there's not a lot of exercises that I would go to the gym and go oh today I'm going to do nothing more than two reps of this with a bunch of sets right I'll do six sets of doubles or triples there's not a lot of other exercises maybe the squat I do that but the squat definitely not even as much as I would deadlift is one of the few movements where there's a lot of value in training singles practicing lifting really heavy one or two reps for lots of sets it gives you a lot of bang for your buck well I mean fatigue obviously that's going to play a factor with your mechanics and how that's going to affect that but also too in my earlier point of focus like if you have you know a drawn out amount of reps let's say like anything over ten at that point you're just going to kind of try to feel like you're getting in the zone however this lift isn't the greatest for not being present let's just say like you have to account for all of these moving parts because it has that bit of a risk factor to you now for the most part we tell people to avoid lifting to failure just across the board we only have really one program where we program in failure there is a proper way to do it but deadlifts to failure almost always a bad idea there's definitely cases in advanced people that can do this but it's an exercise where if your form deviates a few degrees outside of perfect the risk factor starts to go up to high so if you're going to failure that type of intensity the deviations and forms become much more common so it's just it's one of those movements you probably don't want to go to failure on more than other exercise no that's where the single double triple advice comes in what this looks like is pick a weight that's heavier than what you can do five reps for and then practice singles and doubles that's how you're going to get some really good value from that and then you're training it a higher volume and a more weight than you're used to training with an exercise and you're just reducing the amount of reps so and you'll see strength go up like crazy this is also an exercise and there are versions where you don't necessarily do this but for most people most of your value is going to come from pausing the weight on the floor every rep okay so there are touch and go deadlifts and you'll see some people do these for most people it's better just across the board results risk of injury all that stuff I tend to avoid the touch and go is there a thing before CrossFit yeah bodybuilders would do touch and go sometimes and some power lifters would do it but it wasn't a staple it really wasn't a staple it got popular with CrossFit they for sure did they do a lot of ladder work they do a lot of ladder work they do a lot of deadlifting stuff in circuits and for time that's where you see a lot of touch and go but I never taught touch and go there's not a lot of benefit in doing touch and go that you're going to get that's greater than actually pausing between each rep and a pause looks like this you bring the weight down to the floor set it on the floor for like 3, 4, 5, 10 seconds and then lift it back up literally sit it on the floor that's where the term dead and deadlift comes from so it's not like hit the floor come up that's actually the touch and go it shouldn't have any movement no burn it down lift it again and by the way for the people that are going that might be thinking oh well what about the time and our attention and the value that you get from that that's what the Romanian deadlifts for that's what you do an exercise like that where you are keeping consistent tension on that exercise save that constant tension through the reps for a movement like a Romanian deadlift but a conventional or a sumo deadlift I think there's more value setting the bar down resetting and then learning to explode it off the ground totally now how many days a week should you do two days a week but if you do two days a week one should be hard and one should be easy I don't think it's a good idea to heavy deadlift twice a week I don't know very many people that could do that for very long without over training it's one of the most taxing exercises on the body and it tax you know squats people say barbell squats they are taxing but I could barbell squat way more frequently than I can deadlift deadlifts that's one where if I go too often it starts to hurt my body in a different way you know when when I was chasing after you and I made the greatest gains in my deadlift I was deadlifting twice a week and it was one day was a very heavy day one day was a technique day so one day I would push the weight I would really get after it really stretch myself then towards the end of the week or so or about three days later I would do it again and when I did it again this was higher rep much lighter load and it was like a bar speed and stuff like that I would start to work on techniques or this might be yeah this might be I know we're gonna talk about the advanced techniques this is where I would get into chains bands and things like this or deficit deads or things like that is like the second day a week would be much lighter load and utilizing tools like that yeah so for advanced lifters who are trying to get past plateaus you're already pretty strong even practicing a deadlift for a while bands are phenomenal at giving you that kind of progressive resistance chains also give you progressive resistance they're just more damaging on the body I prefer bands overall but you can also use chains and then deficit deadlifts are great for people who have a sticking point on the floor what is a deficit deadlift you're literally standing on like a plate or instead of using 45s to say use 35 so the bar is lower you have to get lower to lift the bar now I will caution people with a deficit deadlift go much lighter than you think if this isn't if this isn't something that you've practiced very often it is that extra four inches of range of motion don't maybe don't seem like that they're a lot it's a lot especially when it comes to safety so go much lighter when you're doing those deficit deadlifts and then lastly would be speed deads and speed deads literally the way used in the speed deadlifts are not touch and go I've seen people do is speed deadlifts I'm going to bounce the bar speed deadlift is you get a lightweight you get tight you get ready and then you come up with really good control power all acceleration yeah at the top speed deadlifts with bands have been my favorite ways to increase my strength and deadlift because you're working on technique you got a light enough load so the risk isn't isn't it high and learning to rip the bar off the ground faster and more efficiently really carries over into the just that when you get that heavy loaded is because a lot of that is that ability to call upon that all and summon all that strength in that instant to get that bar off that and I think banded speed pulls is like one of my favorite and it loads the strongest part of the lift that's right yeah it's the less risky way to do the speed right totally look if you like mine pump head over to mine pump media on instagram and for under five dollars a month you'll get a workout set up for you we actually post workouts every week there under five dollars a month pretty awesome you can also find all of us individually on instagram justin is at mine pump justin I'm at mine pump to Stefano and Adam is at mine pump Adam