Troubleshooting the Deadlift, for anyone who lifts weight... Options

[bigpoppaproppy]

This is a quickie, non-professional grade article I wrote as an eas to follow guide to help your deadlift. I wrote this for a bodybuilding site, so its not nearly as deep or well-written as I can get with it.




A question I see alot is "how do I increase my deadlift??" well it all depends on your specific weakpoint.

basically, there is one of a few places holding you back, or a combination thereof:
1) grip
2) off the floor
3) around the knees
4) lockout

here's a few things you can do to correct each:

1) Invest in chalk. Drop the gloves as you won't feel the bar as well, and because of the padding only make your grip thicker, which if anyone else has deadlifted with thick bars before knows, makes things harder instead of easier on your grip. Also do not depend on straps. Build your grip up. keep deadlifting and shrugging heavy with no straps, do some static BB and DB holds, farmers walk, etc

2) If you struggle off the floor when you go heavy work that area. Stand on a stepper, plates, etc to raise your ROM. In contest we called these "Bavarian Deadlifts". I personally use an aerobics stepper so that the bar is exactly on top of my toes. Deadlift as normal, this will help your power off the floor. Also, speed deadlifts will help your speed and explosion off the floor. SLDL will help strengthen the hamstrings which can help off the floor as well.

3) If you can get it off the floor but struggle to the knees and lockout areas, you probably simply lack the back to pull it up. Besides hypers, RH's, and GM's, the best single thing I ever found to help my deadlifts was 18" or silver dollar deadlifts(also called rack pulls). Basically set the bar 18" or so off the ground, should be just below the knees. Usually in a power rack this is about the bottom setting. Deadlift from there, concentrating on shooting the hips thru. THis will also help your grip as you will be able to go heavier than with regular deadlifts. For example, my deadlift(only a belt, nostraps, etc...RAW) is 425(til I max in about 90minutes he he he). However I have done 505 with no straps from 18" and 535 with straps. It takes work to get this up, but eventually it will be alot higher than regular DL, which serves a few purposes as I stated. Also like I said, heavy GM(good mornings), weighted hypers, and reverse hypers will help your back develop for deadlifts.

4) Varying off of the last idea, if you have trouble locking it out you mostly likely lack what holds me back, and that is hip strength. Again, this can be corrected in a few ways. 18" deadlifts will carryover here as well, but you can also set the pins ABOVE the knees to specifically work heavy lockouts, much like a powerlifter does with bench. Also, to get the hips up, use sumo-style deadlifts, wide-stance squats, and wide-stance good mornings. Anything wide like that will involve more of the hips