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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Adaptive Athletes and First Crossfit Experience

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I showed up for an Adaptive Athlete Workshop. First of all, the workshop was held at a Crossfit gym. This marked the first time I ever stepped foot into a legitimate Crossfit facility. Second, this was, as the title implies, an adaptive athlete workshop. Along with Crossfit, here was something else about which I knew next to nothing about.

For those you who don’t know, an adaptive athlete is any athlete who has a disability, whether that’s a missing limb, a congenital/acquired condition, or anything that prevents them from training in a “traditional” sense. I say “traditional” because having a disability doesn’t really exclude them from participating in athletic activities. More on that later.

The workshop started off with a discussion about what adaptive training is and some considerations that apply when working with a group of people who have disABILITIES. One of the biggest takeaways I gleaned from the whole experience was to avoid asking myself why something cannot be accomplished, and to ask instead how it can be accomplished. The possibilities are endless. The only thing that keeps you from finding a solution that will make an exercise work for someone is a lack of creativity. Any client who comes to a facility like the one where I attended the workshop is more than ready to put the work in that’s required; it is up to you as a coach to provide the knowhow and make sure it’s safe.

After the talk we got into the workout, aka the workout of the day (WOD). Never have I ever completed a WOD before! To top it off, the rule when completing the WOD was to perform it as if you had a disability. In this case, that meant performing the exercise either with one arm or without the use of your legs. You got to perform the exercises with a partner and the workload was split 50/50. The WOD consisted of:

400 Meter Run

100 Seated Wall Balls

80 Dumb Bell Single Arm Snatches

400 Meter Run

60 Single Arm Burpees

40 kcal Erg/Row (No Leg Drive)

400 Meter Run

10 Single Arm Clean and Jerks

To say the least, the WOD was very challenging. Putting myself in someone else’s shoes and performing the exercises with restrictions was incredibly awkward and demanding of my body. The hardest was definitely the clean a jerks at the end, performed with a barbell. This experience gave me a whole new appreciation for adaptive athletics. If you ever get the experience to do so, give it a try. Getting to experience this opened up my eyes to all the opportunities we can offer clients who may not be able to train in a “traditional” sense. There are many ways to accomplish a task and make an action doable. It just takes a little collaboration and creativity, and some determination to get the job done. I got to meet some awesome people, got a challenging workout, and had a great learning experience! 

Ryan Goodell, CSCS

For consultation/personal training/coaching inquiries email: ryangoodell@weightsandstuff.com

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New posts every Sunday! 

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