1 – Holding your feet too close.
Your not Lamar grant as much as you might want to believe it. Some people try to advocate a close stance on deadlift because you can get better drive from the floor. Ever notice that when you get good drive from the floor lock out is hard as fuck?
That’s because your rounding your low back like fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
You need to create some room to sit your hips into from the floor if you want to pull your back straight for the majority of lifters this means a shoulder width or slightly wider stance. Most lifters should look more like this at the start of the lift.
A good cue to before you start the pull is to push your knees and thighs out against your arms this will help you get as much from your leg drive off the floor as possible.
2 – Not setting your back before you pull
The above is how a lazy lifter starts a deadlift with the hilarious and back breaking result. Here is a check list before you start to pull the bar from the floor.
- Set your stance and grip symmetrical
- push your weight on your heel
- Pull your shoulder blades back like you want to explode your rib cage
- Squeeze your low back inwards like your trying to snap your spine inwards
- Set your head back or neutral.
- Now your ready to break the bar off
3 – Attacking the bar before it’s free off the floor.
Speed is king on deadlift you have read it a million times what a lot of lifters miss though is point 2 in this little article and results are similar to the video above. You can only really start to accelerate the bar from the floor once you have broken the inertia of the bar and it is moving.
Once you are ready to break the bar off the floor build pressure through your legs and once the bar starts to move fucking attack it.
I like to think of the deadlift kind of like this.
- The Initial part of the lift is a leg press with the bar in your hands where you try as hard as possible to keep your posture.
- The second portion when the bar moves around knee height is just cheating the lock out by brining your hips forward.
I find when I have these two kinds of cues put together deadlift feels natural and easy.
There you have it three quick tips for the deadlift hopefully these can help you load up on this exercise and not end up on the physio table.
Marc