How to Deadlift: The Set Up

In previous posts, I’ve discussed foot placement and hand placement/grips when setting up to deadlift. In this post, I’ll go over how to set up for the deadlift before you start to pull the bar off the floor. 

First, you want to place your feet and hands correctly on the bar. These placements should serve as reference points for the rest of your set up.  After getting your foot and hand placement right, you want to optimally position your body in order to pull the bar off the ground, with the best mechanical efficiency possible. To do this, you want your shins to be relatively vertical, your hips to move back, and your torso to lean slightly forward (figure1).  The deadlift is referred to as a “hip hinge” movement pattern.  This is not a squat, which is a knee-dominant movement pattern. A hip-dominant pattern like the deadlift requires you to use your glutes and hamstrings (a.k.a. your posterior chain) more than you would during a squat, which is more of an anterior chain movement, utilizing the quadriceps muscles to a greater extent. 

Figure 1: Deadlift setup

Relatively speaking, your hips will be higher at the start of a deadlift than the lowest point that your hips reach in a squat (figure 2). When deadlifting, your hips only need to get as low as necessary to get your hands on the bar.  Once you are in this position you will need to gather tension throughout your body before you start to pull the bar. This will allow you to better hold your position when you're lifting the weight, preventing you from rounding your back, tipping forward onto your toes, or compromising your deadlift position in some other way, shape, or form. 

Figure 2: Deadlift compared to a squat.

In order to gather tension in your body, you need to first set your lats. When setting your lats you need to imagine pulling the bar into your body/towards your shins. Doing this will help activate your lats and keep the bar close to your body later on when pulling the bar from the floor. 

 The next step to gather tension in your body is bracing your core. This is sometimes referred to as a Valsalva maneuver. A note on the Valsalva maneuver: if you are a healthy normal person and do not have high blood pressure, performing at Valsalva maneuver is not incorrect. In fact, it is the body's natural way of achieving spine stability as a protective mechanism so we don't injure ourselves. You can brace your core by breathing into your stomach and contracting your abdominals in order to create spinal stability and tension through your torso.

The next step is to slowly start to pull on the bar. This should not be an aggressive or violent motion that pulls you out of your position.  Doing this should allow you to start to turn on musculature that you have not turned on yet, helping you hold a better spine position and keep you aligned to lift the weight.

By this point you may not feel the most comfortable globally throughout your body. You're attempting to pull a relatively heavy weight off the floor while keeping your spine stable and lifting a weight that will help you get stronger, grow more muscle, and improve your physical performance.

Now you're ready to start to pull, the actual act of lifting the weight. We will go over this in the next post so stay tuned. 

As always, thanks for reading!

Ryan Goodell, PT, DPT, CSCS

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