Master the Deadlift

One of the most beneficial foundation moves, the conventional deadlift requires a great deal of technical skill. Here are 6 common mistakes to look out for.

The conventional deadlift is one of the difficult movements to master. But because it’s so important to building foundation strength and the heavy loads can stress your discs, nailing your form is time well spent.

Let’s address a handful of mistakes that commonly creep in that not only compromise your gains but also can sideline you with injuries.

1. Squatting Too Low

This isn’t a full squat, so starting with your knees parallel to the ground simply pushes your knees too far forward. As you lift the barbell off the floor, your shins are going to get in the way of the bar. That requires you to maneuver the barbell around your knees, predisposing you to injury and reducing the amount of weight you can lift.

It’s much more efficient to establish a higher-hipped, half-squat position at the start. Exactly where, however, depends on your body type. In general, the longer your legs are, the higher your hips will be in the starting position. Hip position is critical to a good deadlift.

2. Your Hips Are Too High

This is horribly common as trainers turn the conventional deadlift into a Romanian deadlift, a single-joint exercise. By keeping the legs nearly straight the entire time and simply bending over, you totally take the quad and leg drive out of the movement, which makes your hips and back handle the entire load. You won’t be able to go as heavy, and your risk for back injury increases. Learn to descend into a half-squat position.

3. Overexaggerating the Lockout

Too often, beginners lean too far back at the top, while others mistakenly roll their shoulders forward. Both techniques increase the risk of injury and offer no benefit in terms of strength or aesthetics. Your best option is to stand fully erect with hips and knees locked. That’s how you do it in powerlifting competitions and that’s also how you should do it in the gym.

4. Taking a Stance That’s Too Wide

In the powerlifting seminars I do around the world, there’s one fix that I’d recommend to just about everyone: taking a narrower deadlift stance. For whatever reason, and maybe’s it’s watching the world’s strongest men deadlift as their massive size requires more space, it’s all too common to see deadlifters using a suboptimal foot position.

Here’s a trick I recommend for finding the right hip distance for you. Do a few standing vertical jumps, and pay attention to how far apart your feet are before you start each jump. For most of us, this is about hip-width apart. That’s a good starting place for your deadlifts, and move your feet out a little bit each way until you find the perfect width for you.

5. Doing Too Many Reps

If your goal is to become as strong as possible, you need to let go of your 6- to 12-rep sets and start training very heavy. After all, strength is measured by how much weight you can lift in one all-out effort, regardless of time.

One technique that helps you do just that is called cluster sets. That is, instead of doing three sets of 8 to 10 reps, you do 8 sets of 3 reps. It’s the same volume, but 5 more first reps! Cluster sets give you more first reps and help you increase your deadlift max and get much stronger.

6. Your Grip Is Weak

To lift the big weights, you’ve got to have a strong grip. Too often, a weak grip becomes the limiting factor holding back your deadlift gains. That means specifically working on exercises for your grip.

Training with a thicker barbell or hand grippers requires equipment you may not have, but there’s also the farmer’s walk, heavy reverse-grip pull-down isometric holds for sets of 15 seconds, and other specific grip movements. Make sure you do any such exercises at the end of your training session.

Remember, getting your form down requires practice, and then tons more repetition to reinforce the movement until it becomes second nature before adding more challenging loads. If you keep repeating the same bad form over and over, it’s going to be even harder to break those bad habits.

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