The Way To Building A Solid Deadlift Without Hurting Yourself

So are deadlifts the key to success or the pathway to injury? 

The deadlift- an exercise that uses all muscle groups in one lift! The exercise that builds the most strength and is the biggest foundation of lifting. Is this not the best movement? Should we not all be doing this exercise or a variation of this exercise at least once a week? Let’s dive a little deeper into why we should be doing this exercise consistently and why some people avoid it…

Deadlifts work every muscle!

The deadlift targets multiple muscle groups in a single lift, developing strength in your hamstrings, glutes, core, back, lats and the list goes on! Building muscle helps increase your metabolism too, which in turn helps you lose more fat long-term as we are working so many muscles at once.

Deadlift training generates huge improvements in strength and stability, protecting your joints from unnecessary stress and future injury.

Deadlifts help improve your posture.

 A strong back can absolutely help with your posture, but another way deadlifts help fix bad posture is by helping correct it. To perform deadlifts properly, you need to make sure your form is right—and good form during deadlifts often translates to good posture.

You can expect a noticeable change in walking upright and sitting without rounded shoulders after regularly performing this lift, which is especially important for those of us who spend a lot of time hunched in front of a computer screen.

Deadlifts make you stronger in everyday life activities!

Instead of working on purely cosmetic gains, deadlifts involve movements and muscle routines that are a huge part of our daily lives. This means deadlifts will make it easier for you to perform basic tasks, which directly contradicts the assumption that bodybuilding style training doesn’t actually prepare you for the real world. Deadlifts are highly functional. Increasing strength by deadlifting will prepare you for situations like carrying groceries, picking up someone who fell or helping a friend on moving day.

Deadlifts help to prevent injury.

Some might avoid deadlifts out of fear of back injury, but studies have shown that deadlifts can be beneficial for reducing low-back pain in some cases.

The deadlift requires total control of the deep abdominals, the hips, and the pelvis, which is paramount in the treatment and prevention of low back pain. Because the deadlift trains the posterior chain—which includes the spinal erectors, lats, rhomboids, glutes, and hamstrings, it helps to prevent injury in muscle groups that are typically ignored.

Deadlifts are easy to incorporate into your workout.

You don’t need access to a barbell to use deadlifts, but it definitely doesn’t hurt. Dumbbells or kettlebells can be used to do the exercise, especially variations like the sumo or Romanian deadlift variation.

You can do deadlifts in many different set variations as well- high rep and low weight in a conditioning workout or heavy weight and low reps in a strength set, plus much more!

 Why do people avoid deadlifts?

There is a lot of controversies that deadlifts are good for you, but the real question is, what are you doing with your deadlifts that are making them “Bad” for you?

Here are some reasons why you could have had a bad experience with deadlifts:

Too much too soon!

The real reason here is not the deadlifts themselves, it’s the weight you decide to put on your bar. You can really ramp up your strength in a short amount of time, being able to add more and more weight or rep’s week after week. The muscles develop and adjust quickly to lift the weight, which makes people believe that they can keep lifting heavier and heavier. BUT, just because the muscles are allowing you to lift this weight, doesn’t mean the smaller muscles, ligaments, and tendons are ready or strong enough too and this is the problem.

People are adding weight/volume/intensity way too quickly and yes your body may be able to lift the weight, but it needs time for ALL the small muscles to adjust as well. It’s about small increments and slow progression to be able to maintain and build optimal strength for all muscles. It’s like changing your diet, if you cut everything out straight away, you may get results really fast, but I can guarantee it won’t last long and you will drop straight back into a binge. Small steps are more maintainable and in the long run, achieve bigger results.

Poor Technique

 The second reason also ties in with the first. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to lift more or beat your competition leads to a sacrifice of form for that last bit of strength. As form is lost you will round your spine, straighten your legs more and rely more on your lower back muscles. This posture puts your intervertebral discs under an incredible amount of pressure and predisposes you for an inevitable disc prolapse!

Now some of you by this point may be saying “well what if I wear a weightlifting belt?”- Are you competing in a competition? Are you going for your 1 rep max? If you answered no to these question’s, then you do not need a weightlifting belt! They are masking the poor technique! It doesn’t take the point away that you have let go of your form and are relying on the lower back to do the work! They are also training you to disengage your own belt called the transverse abdominis (TVA). Eventually, you will come to pick something up without wearing a belt and your TVA will not engage and you back will just “go”, leaving you in pain!

Another form of poor technique is the miss conception of what the main lifting cues for a deadlift are, so here are our top 3 cues:

• Engage lats, shoulder blades and core to keep the bar close to body and back flat.

• While maintaining all activated muscles, think about pushing the ground away with your legs to activate your glutes, hamstrings, etc.

• At the top of the lift, do not drop all muscle activation! Push hips back, keep the bar close to the body- slide down legs and bend knees slightly as bar lowers past knees.

Did you warm up properly?

 Have you ever come to the gym and got straight into your deadlift sets because you don’t have the time or can’t be bothered to warm up? Think about the saying- “Going straight from boiling hot to freezing cold will make you sick?” Well, this is the exact same with deadlifts, your body is in no state to start lifting heavy loads if you haven’t warmed your body up and prepared your muscles for what’s to come- which usually results in some sort of pain during or after deadlifts.

Warming up specifically for deadlifts is essential. Starting off with some sort of light-moderate cardio helps with getting some blood flow through the muscles to warm them up. Dynamic stretches such as leg swings, arm circles, bend and bows (bending with straight legs then standing up tall), calf pumps, etc. to stretch out and switch on the muscles are important- making sure they are awake and have good mobility to start to add weight.

After dynamic stretches, we suggest using a resistance band or an empty barbell to move through the deadlift movement, further preparing the body for a heavier load. Once you have spent roughly 10-15min warming up, we suggest adding a few warm-up sets for your deadlifts at around 50%, 75% and possibly a third warm-up weight at 90% to what weight you are planning to lift for your sets.

Basically, deadlifts are the unicorn of the fitness world. They’re a great way to get a whole host of results without spending a lot of time in the gym, and even fitness newbies can utilize them. As you can see, there are a few ways people can go wrong with the deadlift if done incorrectly, but by some simple education and tips, the deadlift is an exceptional exercise that should build the foundation of your training.

To ensure your technique and program are in good shape, we recommend working with a fitness professional to get started if you haven’t done deadlifts before.