Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2122: Deadlift Masterclass

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin lay out everything you need to know to perfect your deadlift. The deadlift, is one of the MOST valuable exercises you can do. (1:38) Bulletproofing your back with the deadlift. (4:56) The root of the controversy surrounding this exercise. (6:27) Breaking down the two distinct versions of the deadlift. (9:21) The different grip types and the value of each. (12:59) Requirements to perform the deadlift. (22:07) Priming movements to prep for deadlifting. (27:45) Cues to be aware of before you perform the deadlift. (31:27) Common errors when deadlifting. (36:44) Give yourself time! (42:06) Proper rep range, programming, and why you should avoid going to failure. (42:38) Advanced deadlift techniques. (48:03) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit State & Liberty for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code PUMP10 at checkout for 10% off** July Promotion: MAPS Starter | MAPS Starter Bundle 50% off! **Code JULY50 at checkout** How To Start Deadlifting (REGRESSIONS) – Mind Pump TV How To Sumo Deadlift (The RIGHT Way) | Jordan Syatt – Mind Pump TV HOOK Grip vs MIXED Grip?? Which Will INCREASE Your Deadlift More?? (Jordan Shallow ) How to Increase Grip Strength For Deadlifting – Mind Pump Podcast How To Hip Hinge Properly (Fix THIS!) – Mind Pump TV Correcting Upper Cross Syndrome to Improve Posture & Health– Prone Cobra – Mind Pump TV Scorpion Stretch Made Better - Stick Mobility Exercise MAPS Prime Pro Webinar ‎Bar Path on the App Store Ben Pollack Shares The Proper Deadlift Setup (AVOID MISTAKES) | Mind Pump What Is The Prerequisite For The Deadlift? - Dr. Jordan Shallow Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Ronnie Coleman (@ronniecoleman8) Instagram Chris Bumstead (@cbum) Instagram Stan “Rhino” Efferding (@stanefferding) Instagram Jordan Shallow D.C (@the_muscle_doc) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, it's a master class on the deadlift. So everything deadlift in today's episode. Now it's brought to you by one of our sponsors,

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MAP Santa Balkan MAPs Prime called the starter bundle. That's also 50% off. If you're interested, go to MAPsFitnessProducts.com and then use the code July 50 for that discount. All right, here comes a show. All right, today we're going to talk about the deadlift, everything about the deadlift. This is the masterclass. So I talk about one of the best exercises for your body, how to do it, prerequisites, queues, everything. So welcome to the deadlift masterclass. Yeah, all right.

Let's go. Yeah, let's do it. You know, these masterclass videos we've been doing, we've been doing a lot of really good reviews, a lot of people saying they're benefiting from them, both trainers and clients and everyday people alike. So we did body parts and it makes sense that we would talk about some of the exercises that we think to be the best ones that are out there. Yeah, dude, this is a bigger and deeper dive into this subject.

Absolutely. But yeah, the deadlift is known as one of the big three or big four, big five exercises. You'll hear people refer to strength, chain, exercise, like that. And it's always in, it's always in a list, right? It's always one of the big lifts. And the reason for that is because people have identified now, because people have been deadlifting for decades. It's not a new exercise. It's one of the oldest exercises out there. But people have identified that it's incredibly valuable for almost any goal, or if I can't think of a goal it wouldn't be valuable for. It's definitely valuable for real world strength, muscle building, and then fat loss as a result of the metabolism boost that comes from functionality,

And then fat loss as a result of the metabolism boost that comes from functionality, mobility, it's just across the board, it's valuable to valuable exercises, one that everybody should do. And if you can't do it, get to a place where you can do it. Well, I think that the squat has been touted as the king of all exercises for the long time, but I would like to argue that the deadlift is. I think that you get as much of a full body activation. You get just as big of bang for your buck when it comes to CNS and overall total body.

And then on top of that, when we understand as trainers, one of the biggest things you're trying to combat is posture issues with people, like with the rounding of their shoulders, the forward head, the rounding of their shoulders, the forward head, the closing of their body and the weakening of all the muscles in the posterior chains. So that's what that's caused from, right? You get really weak muscles in the posterior chain.

You get this over usage tightening and shortening of the muscles in the anterior, so in the front of the body, and we're rounding for it's why when you look at people that are 70, 80, 90 years old, they've got these walkers and they're rounded over. And a lot of that is because that posterior chain is just destroyed. It's weak. It's completely weak. They're disconnected from it. And the deadlift is the best exercise for the entire posterior chain.

So I would argue that it is a more important and even better exercise when you talk about the King of all X-rays. Yeah, it's definitely debatable for sure. I think you get people who would agree with you. I think they're both extremely valuable exercises definitely top two and you could switch them if you want But I would say in terms of Application to modern life every day life. I would agree because You're more likely a to pick things up like that. Well, I would agree, because you're more likely A to pick things up like that. Well, that's, yeah, that was kind of the direction I was going after that was like, you're

going to find yourself in a situation where you got to lift something heavy, like in terms of load squats, you're going to do probably more frequently in terms of a movement pattern. Like getting up and down from a chair, like, you know, to a toilet. Yeah, but using not with load. And so in a loaded situation, we're actually have to pick something up and have the strength and organize your body in a situation to do that mechanically sound. Deadlift teaches you how to do that. Yeah. And when we refer to the posterior chain, that literally is referring to pretty much all the muscles of the back of your body. Okay. so think of your back, then think of your glutes,

your hamstrings, and your calves. So from your ankles up to essentially the bottom of your neck, those would be the muscles of posterior chain. And they are, most of the muscles in our bodies are underused in modern societies. But the posterior chain in particular isn't used very often. And the most common complaint for pain,

if you look it up, revolves around the back and in particular, the low back. Deadlifts, if done appropriately and properly and trained properly, there isn't an exercise that would bulletproof your back, your low back in particular like deadlifts. So long as it performed properly, this is one of the best exercises you could do

well into old age that would strengthen your back to the point where you would really prevent low back injury, which almost everybody at some point will complain over or suffer from. My healthiest advanced age clients could deadlift well. Always, yeah. The fittest advanced age clients that I had had a healthy, strong lower back and they had a healthy, strong lower back because they had the ability to deadlift.

Whether they gain that ability later in age because they were taught and they developed that strength or something that they kept throughout their entire life, either way, you could definitely narrow down the healthiest, fittest, strongest advanced age clients I had, were deadlifting. They had that ability. Now, you'll almost never hear the argument that deadlifts aren't beneficial for athletics. I think athletes and strength coaches realize it's benefit

or at least a version of deadlifts. Well, now they do. They do now. That used to be a lot of discussion and debate in the programming of athletic sports. In terms of that being something that's gonna make a more muscle bound or whatever the excuse was at the time was that they didn't find the relevance of deadlift

in terms of moving fast or they did squat. Yeah, having an explosive strength. But these days, you mean everybody probably will, of course. Of course. Or some version of it, right? But in the muscle building world, they're still, necessarily to me, they're still sometimes a little controversy over the other.

Only in the bodybuilding world. Yeah, like it's not the best back exercise to develop the back. And I'm gonna tell you where the roots of that come from, 100%. The roots of that do not come from the fact that bodybuilders have noticed it doesn't build a great back. It's false. Bodybuilders who performed edilists will tell you this is one of the best muscle building

exercises. It comes from bodybuilding, workout planning and programming itself because it is not an easy exercise to plug in to a body part split routine. Where do I put it? Back day, leg day. I don't do back and legs on the same day. Like, how do I, so they all, and it works so many muscles and it doesn't isolate something. It's hard. And it's hard. And so I can row, I can pull, I can do all these other back exercises. It's totally below me. It's funny too, because the most, some of the most winningest champion bodybuilders, we'll talk about how deadlifts were so great at developing the back.

For the average person, the Ronnie Coleman, the C-Bum does them now. C-Bum, like your best, some of your best bodybuilders and physiques deadlifted, which is really weird to me, Stan Effort. You have these people that are famous and they all did that, that yet there's this culture in the last decade or two that have decided to eliminate deadlifting in their bodybuilding programming.

It's so wild to me. Yeah, no, personally the best gains I ever made were when my deadlift got stronger, always. And with my clients, and I trained everyday people, I didn't train a law, I trained very few people who you would consider hardcore. It was always average people. And I had all of them deadlift, every single one deadlift, that could deadlift, and the ones that couldn't work towards the ability to do so. And it didn't matter their age. And all of them, when they got stronger on the deadlift, it was pronounced in terms of their posture, the strength, the muscle, I would see fat loss. So, you know, we're making the case essentially for why this is included as one of the most important

exercises. Now, there's two, when we say deadlift, this is one of those few exercises where there's two distinct versions, but they're both referred to as a deadlift. And sometimes people use them interchangeably and say, I deadlift, I deadlift, and then you have to ask them specifically, well, how do you deadlift as a conventional or as a sumo? This is because of powerlifting. The sport of powerlifting, one of the major lifts, because they compete with three lifts,

bench press, deadlift and squat. The deadlift can be performed both sumo or conventional, and it doesn't matter which one you do, you can pick, and that's the deadlift version that you do, and your weight counts, just like someone else's weight counts regardless if they do conventional or sumo. There's definitely some similarities, but I don't consider them to be the same exercise. They're different enough.

No, I think they're a lot different. I think it's almost as different as comparing a back squat to a front squat. Yeah, I can see some of that. You have obviously you have some of the same muscles that are activating, but they're different enough. of the same muscles that are activating, okay? But they're different enough that, I mean, it's that different. Anybody who's done a back squat and a front squat, how different they feel. That's probably the different crew pattern that you're firing off for each one of those exercises.

Now, both are very posterior chain heavier, posteriorly. Yeah. So people ask which one to pick. That's where I was going. And I think everybody should do both. I do. I think you should practice both of them. You will find that one of them will be better at than the other. And this is why people have favorites. Some people do better than one.

Some people do better than other. But I think it's a good idea to probably practice both. My general advice for clients, regardless if you're in the powerlifting community or not, is you have one that you're naturally going to be better at everybody's going to, right, that's just going to feel more natural. So you spend 80 per year sitting your time trying to get strong in that, because getting stronger in that lift is going to have so much bang for its buck that I wouldn't intentionally be switching back and forth all the time with

the two, but I would interrupt it 20% of the time with the opposite. That's a good number. So it's just a kind of generic advice that I give somebody. It's like, there's so much value and they're different enough that to not do the other one just because you're not good at all, you're missing out on some potential gains. So at least, introduce it enough that it interrupts the way that you choose to do it most of the time. So essentially a conventional deadlift

is your hands are outside your feet, some more narrow stance and a sumo, your feet are outside of your hands and it's a wider stance. Some people can go real wide. I would say for general training purposes, a kind of moderate wide stance, sometimes people go crazy to limit the range of motion

for competition purposes. Personally, for me, Adam, I've gotten through a few sticking points with my conventional by getting better at the sumo. So I noticed obviously that I got stuck here. Let me practice sumo for a little while, went back to my conventional and I was able to break through the plateau.

This is an area, this is also why I compared it to the front and back squat. I feel the same way about that. Like there's been times when I've been back squatting and back squat. I feel the same way about that. There's been times when I've been back squatting, back squatting, back squatting. And then I'm like, you know what, I haven't interrupted that with a good training cycle

of front squatting. And then let me, since I'm stuck at this back squat right here, let me get really good at front squatting, see what happens, and many times what ends up happening is I get strong on the front squat, I go back to the back squat, and I see myself get strong again. I feel the same way about whatever way you, whether it's conventional or sumo that you traditionally in the front squat, I go back to the back squat and I see myself get stronger. And I feel the same way about whatever way

you, whether it's conventional or sumo that you traditionally do the most with. When you hit a plateau, one of the great ways to kind of break through that plateau is to switching to the other for enough of a cycle that you watch yourself get stronger in that one and then come back over and there is carryover. Now this is the probably the only exercise

I can think of where the grip really becomes a conversation as you get stronger at this lift. Now, when you first start out, not a problem. You grab the bar, practice your deadlifts, get better at it, and not an issue. But because the strength potential for the deadlift, for most people, okay, most everyday people working out strength training, following traditional exercises, the most weight you'll lift will be in the deadlift. Your potential for strength is probably highest,

I say probably because there's the outliers, but you're probably highest with the deadlift, and that means that you have to hold on to most weight you could possibly lift with your hands. And so the grip, which is usually the limiting factor for a lot of people, for a lot, especially nowadays because nobody nobody challenges their hands anymore So they go to pull a hundred pounds off the floor not a problem gets up to 200 300 now all of a sudden

I think I could lift it but my hands can't hold it type of deal So aside from allowing your grip to strengthen over time, which is important There are a couple strategies one is known as the over-under grip, and this does dramatically increase the amount of weight you can hold onto. So this is where you'll see a power lifter where one handle will be facing forward, and one handle will be facing back.

And that improves the increase the amount of weight you can lift because it prevents the bar. The bar doesn't roll out, essentially, is what's happening, and you're able to lift more. Now, the consideration with that is, make sure you alternate, which hand is facing forward, every set. I made this mistake as a lifter,

because I felt stronger with my right hand supernated, and then eventually, that's where I did all my heavy sets. You favor it at that point, right? And I developed an imbalance in my back, which I could actually visibly see and feel. And it took me, I don't know, I don't know, two and a half, three years to be able to reverse that imbalance.

So if you do an over-under grip, make sure every set you alternate. So you don't end up developing a balance because it will develop an imbalance if one hand is always supernated. For GP, I would say, I would just tell that person to just do double overhand. I don't see a lot of value in that, unless there's, unless we're chasing a PR that week or something like, let's say I have a client, right?

That is, that I'm really trying to, let's say it's one of my female clients, who I'm really trying to encourage her to lift heavier, lift heavier, lift heavier. And, you know, we've been training, you know, deadlifting for a while, and the limiting factor tends to be her, you know, double overhand grip, and like she's, she can't hold on the bar.

Maybe that client, because I'm pushing that message so hard, you know, I have a set where I let her do the over under. But for most clients, like, I don't see a lot of value. It's when the grip becomes an issue. Yeah. And I mean, and Justin has said this before, plenty of times, you made a case for it.

I was the one when I was bodybuilding that was utilizing straps and that's a whole nother conversation on like where that is applicable, but for the average person who is just trying to get in shape, get strong, get fit, I would encourage trying to get strong, double overhead. You're going to have the least amount. As far as you can go for it. Yeah, as far as you possibly can and get technique down, there's no reason.

If you're just learning the deadlift at your first year of doing it and you're already doing switch grip and adding wraps, it's just like you have so much potential to get stronger and to work on all those things first before implementing something like that, just to increase, say, 25 to 50 pounds in the bar for the Dell F. That's just my- Yeah, if you're, if you've got good mobility and you're able to progress consistently, I would agree with you.

You probably have at least six months to a year before you'd have to use any kind of grip strategy. Then you can do the over under hook grip. That's what I prefer now, because there's no way to be to develop an imbalance because both hands are facing forward. And it's a hook grip is what Olympic lifters use is where you wrap your finger around your thumb.

Uncomfortable. Difficult. Yeah, that takes a lot of practice. I try to get good at that. Did you ever get good at that? No, never good. I've practiced and practiced and practiced. It's just one of those that never stuck.

I've gave up every time. Every time that I wanted to do it. Try to stick to it for a while. I just being honest I didn't stick it out because it just hurt it hurt and I sucked at it. I'm like, oh, I don't know if I want to. Yeah, so I used to suck it out for a year. I do it. I do it every single time. I still you didn't know before. No. When we first met, you were over under. Now, truth be to say, this was now you're looking at, I've been practicing now lifting heavy with the deadlift hook grip probably for about five years, six years. And still, if I want to go to my top, top, top set, over under, I can hold more weight still.

In fact, yesterday or two days ago, I tried a deadlift and I was pulling five, I was trying to go for five, 85 or five, 70. And I tried double overhand with a hook, and I lost the bar at the top, but I could have held it with a run. I see. So even now, that's still my shoulder.

So has the hook grip ever, has it got to a place where it's comfortable for you, or is it uncomfortable still, right? I mean, it doesn't like, if not like when I first did it, where I was like, oh, this really hurts. Yeah. Still not comfortable. It's still not super comfortable now, but it doesn't like, it's not like when I first did it, where I was like, oh, this really hurts. Still not comfortable.

It's still not. It's still not super comfortable now, but it doesn't hurt, but it does take practice a lot of practice. And then we talked about straps, wrist straps. I don't like wrist straps for most people, because most people should be able to use either one of the strategies we talked about

or develop a stronger grip. I could see high volume bodybuilding training. That's the only place you can do that's the, that's the place when. That's the play. When I was training twice a day, seven days a week, and I'm doing all these sets, and I'm targeting very specific small muscle quite as high either.

Yeah, and I'm targeting a very specific muscle group. I don't want the forearms to get involved in it all, or maybe I'm fatigued from the day before, from going really heavy, and I don't want that to hinder my rear delt work. And so, yeah, I used straps a lot when I was bodybuilding, but it wasn't just so I could get a heavier deadlift.

It was for that purpose. It's like, I don't want my forearms to limit me from these other things that I'm doing and I had so much training volume. And at that point, I don't care. When I get up on stage, the judges don't go, hey, how's your grip strength compared to that guys? They are looking at your body. And if that gave me an advantage to sculpting my body, I was going to use that advantage.

Even if I know that for real world strength, overall help, general population, that's not ideal. That's where the exception to the rule. And also it also does change a little bit of the recruitment pattern up in the kind of shoulder area. People think that's not that big of a deal and not that important. Well, if you're a everyday average person and you can develop more grip strength, I don't think it's a good idea to go that route. To develop recruitment patterns where your body learns how to lift more weight without

necessarily using its grip the way it should type of deal. This is why I would say the bodybuilders would probably only play it. Yeah, and you're creating a weak stress point. Yep. That is going to be completely not ideal in the real world. If you're grabbing something that is equal and weight to what you normally would lift with like a strap, you know, where is all that going to go right to your stress point that's going to break?

You know, something that we don't actually talk a lot about in regards to getting, you know, doing this like grip overhand for deadlift and the real, like some really cool benefits. The strongest I ever was in like total lifts, all my lifts, was when I had the heaviest and I was the strongest deadlifter. And I attribute some of that, at least some of it, to I had the, that was when my greatest grip strength was. And I got the best development in my grip, just simply lifting heavy deadlifting.

Not doing a bunch of crazy cool. Not doing a bunch of forearm exercises that we know that are out there that will help your grip strength. I didn't do any of that stuff. I just got held onto a heavy ass bar and I did it frequently for over a year consistently. And I watched all my overhead press,

my bench press, all my other exercises came up with that. And you have to think that having a really, really strong grip has carry over into all lifts that you hold onto a barbell or dumbbell. Think of any upper body exercise. They say hammer the foam, right? Think of any upper body exercise envisioning yourself doing it. I don't care what it is. Curls, press downs, overhead press, bench, whatever.

Now imagine you having a weak grip on the bar. Now imagine having a strong grip on the bar. You're just more connected. You're able to lift more weight, you're able to do more power output. Your hands connect you to the world. This is what humans are most known for, right? Our opposable thumbs and our ability to articulate our fingers and manipulate objects. Very strong, capable hands translates across the board.

And for that reason, that's enough reason to stick to the double overhand, get strong because I would rather lift a little less weight, double overhand, but have stronger forms than use straps or have to go over under just so I could say my deadlift is stronger. I care more about that my over my forearm strength because then that was going to contribute to all the other movements. Yeah, and your hands will catch up, it just takes a little bit of time, that's for sure. So let's talk a little bit about the requirements or kind of things you want to be able to do or have to be able to perform a deadlift. Number one, you want to be able to what's called hip hinge.

Okay, so most people who've never deadlifted, they know if I say something like, don't lift that with your back, lift it with your legs, or lift it the right way. They can picture like their dad what they told them to do or whatever, or you kind of keep your back straight and stick your butt out and bend over rather than rounding your back. That's kind of what we mean by hip hinge. You can bend over by hinging at the hips, or you can bend over by rounding your spine. You do not deadlift by rounding your spine. You deadlift by h your spine, you deadlift

by hinging at the hips. This sounds to some people like, oh, that's cool, no big deal. I'm gonna tell you right now, it was one of more challenging things to get a person to understand who didn't work out. When I get a new client, oftentimes we'd have to really practice

and feel what it feels like to actually hinge at the hips because most of us don't do that throughout the day. Well, yeah, you have to point out that, you know, if you're most people, if they pick something off the floor, they do not hinge, they round. Yeah. So if there was, there's, and which by the way, this is like some of the most common

injuries in clients was like picking a shampoo bottle up, pulling a little weed out, and it's the, and that's that rounding. They weren't loading the hips to pick a shampoo bottle. They weren't loading the hips to pull a little weed out and that's that rounding. They weren't loading the hips to pick a shampoo bottle. They weren't loading the hips to pull a weed out so they're rounding it the back and jerking us on with that and then ends up hurting themselves.

So it's actually a really unnatural thing to do for most people unless you have been taught proper hinging, most people, one of my favorite ways to teach this and hopefully the guys when they do the edit right here We'll show this video because I know I did a YouTube video a long time ago on my pump TV And that's the PVC pipe. Yeah, yeah, right that was fine that technique I don't remember where I got that from first or who taught that to me But was such a game changer because there's so many cues involved

That you're trying to tell a client who doesn't understand how to hinge, who also can't see or really feel their body like that way, and that you're trying to tell them that they just learning that, there was such a struggle. The first three to five years of my career trying to teach a hinge was so difficult.

That many times I abandoned it because I was not good at teaching it. That PVC pipe really brought it all together with me and that's where you run that PVC pipe down the spine and they keep the head up or back and low back all connected to the PVC pipe as they bend over. And if they just concentrate on those three points, they'll have to get the nodule, get between the shoulder blades, you get down there, you know, kind of near the butt cheeks. And you just try to maintain those contact points.

And it teaches them to keep that nice firm back and everything kind of accounted for. But yeah, it's such an unnatural thing. You're either gonna get them rounding the back to pick something up or they squat, this weird squat down where their heels will come up. And then their knees will protrude forward. And so, you know, like you kind of have to work through

all of that, like, you know, keeping the knee kind of in a locked position and supported, but now we're like sliding our hips back. One of my cues was like to karate chop those hips so we're just imagining somebody kind of like chopping your hips back. And the next one would be to have a stable and strong core. Why?

Because what you don't want with a deadlift is to have a really, really weak core and really, really bad low back support. This is where you hear the horror stories of people hurting their low backs when they deadlift. Now, I want to be very clear if you perform a deadlift properly and appropriately, in other words, you got good technique, good stability. You're using a weight that's appropriate for your strength, level, and mobility. It's very safe. It's perfectly safe exercise. But it's one of those exercises where if you deviate outside of

that, especially because of the potential for load, now the risk of injury goes up considerably. And oftentimes when people don't know how to do this right or use a wrong weight or don't have good technique and good stability, it's the low back that ends up paying the price. So make sure you have a core that's stable and strong. You don't wanna deadlift after, you know, you just had a baby necessarily where you need to get the connection back

or you just had some kind of surgery or whatever. You feel like you can't activate your core. Like you wanna be able to activate that. You're also highlighting one of my favorite parts about learning and getting good at deadlifting is it's incredible for developing the core. Oh yeah. Because in order for you to hinge the hips,

like we're talking about, keep those three contact points at just the time. You have to keep a very neutral spine while you do that. In order to keep a really neutral spine, you have the core muscles that wrap around that spine. In order to keep it rigid and tight, it works like this vacuum where it sucks in, and it tightens up around the spine to keep it that way.

So if you learn to hinge properly, you're already getting core activation. If you then load that movement, you have to strengthen that. And as you continue to increase weight on the bar, the core is just gonna get stronger and stronger and stronger, which is hence why you have it bullet proofs to the low back. Everybody was ever had low back pain,

what does the doctor almost always default to, work your core, train your core. So if one of the best ways to develop and strengthen your core is getting a really strong heavy deadlift, well that's one of the best ways to bullet proof your low back. So- Yeah, and you're teaching it it to like repeat these patterns whenever there's an opportunity for a heavy load, it's like it's like this automatic response.

That's why we train and we do repetitions with it with that type of good form where you're bracing and you're going down and so it's like that way when it's presented to you, you're not going to be in a relaxed position where you're compromising your spine. Yeah, all right. So let's talk about priming. People would refer to this maybe as warm up. We don't like the term warm up because priming is more specific.

Priming is helping you to connect to the muscles that you need to connect to, giving you the kind of mobility that's required for the type of exercise you're gonna do. And so these are, we're gonna go over some general priming movements that you could do before you deadlift. That will apply to most people. Now the best priming is always individualized,

but for most people, these ones will help quite a bit. Now the first one I liked this a lot for a deadlift, I would do this a lot with clients, was Prone Cobra. Prone Cobra really helps a person activate and get in touch with the muscles that tighten the back, that squeeze the shoulder blades back, that stick the chest out. It really helps them feel what it feels like to be able to activate that upper posture you're changing, right?

To brace and strengthen and tighten. So a good few sets of prone crow, but I think Tens is set that up. Yeah, no, I like that. I like combat stretch and then a supine scorpion like that. And really like with those obviously ankle mobility is important. And I just getting good foot control activation. And then the supine scorpion with the the hips, getting the hips like woke up. So really so like and I've sup sometimes it's been supine scorpion. Sometimes it's been 90 90. Sometimes it's some legs wings. Windmill windmill to give you a similar time.

Windmill, there you go. Yeah, rotational. And all of them are doing something similar and that's kind of really waking up and activating all those stabilizer muscles in your hips, which are extremely important when you are heavy dead lifting. One of the common injuries you see somebody is to see, you're lifting a heavy barbell and there's a little bit of shift in those hips. That's when you hear those QL issues going on or low back stuff that people have a problem because side to side and and a lot of that It's just because they didn't prime they didn't prime and wake the hips up and get them firing and activated before they go into this big Heavy movement and so I think any of those that we just listed are

You know good to add into your arson now something like aine scorpion, the average person might look at that and think, oh, that's a twisting stretch on the floor. No, no, no, no, you have to bring your leg over, you have to bring your leg back, using your core and your body. If you just sit in a stretch, you actually might set yourself up for more risk of injury. You want to be able to activate and fire muscles

that rotate you at the lumbar, a little bit at the thoracic, wake up the QL, wake up the erector spinae muscles, a little bit of hip activation. You have to move yourself through it. That's what priming is. It's not holding a stretch, holding a stretch, not a good idea. That goes for the combat stretch as well. If you look at that, it looks like you're just down there stretching. No, you're not.

When you get down there, you want to try and pull the toes back with your own strength, right, or push down, activate all those muscles in that position so that they actually help you stabilize. You don't want to turn them off. Yeah, and I think a lot of people might be going like, well, combat stretch, that's doesn't, you don't really need a lot of ankle mobility for deadlift, right? You're more in a stiff, rigid position, not, because it's not like the squat, right? But you also get the benefits because it is an active stretch of waking up all the muscles

in the foot. Like that's important. And when you are grounded, like one of the things one of the cues you'll hear is like grip the floor with your feet. Like be grounded or drive your heels through the floor. When you get into that combat stretch and you activate, you wake up all those muscles and get those primes. So there's a lot of benefit to doing the combat stretch before you're in a deadlifting.

It doesn't seem like it'd be one of those exercises. Your feet are anchoring you. I mean, that's where you're able to, if you get really good at that type of a cue where you're really grounding yourself good, you get that strength and your feet, you can increase your force production substantially. So it's like you can lift more weight. So it starts at the feet. 100%.

All right, so here's some things to kind of pay attention to. Trainers would call these cues. But really just things you want to pay attention to when you're doing an exercise like this. We talked about hinging, so you want to be able to pay attention to be able to hinge back, stick your butt back, bend your knees as you go down. That's the deadlift itself. You want your arms to be totally straight, okay, stick your butt back, bend your knees as you go down. That's the deadlift itself.

You want your arms to be totally straight, okay, when you start to lift. This is a cue that a lot of people mess up. A lot of people mess up because they'll start the lift with the arms slightly bent and then they'll try to pop up and that slack, that little bit of pop, that's where an injury start to happen. So lock your arms out. You want no slack in your arms when you're about to lift the weight. I also

like to tell people to activate their lats. What does that look like? Pull your shoulder blades down and back like you're bending the arm. And also, yeah, you imagine you're bending it outward in a sense, but obviously you're gripping it tight and you're just kind of putting that pressure there. Yeah, you're essentially you're starting in a tight, safe position when you're about to lift the weight off the floor. The bar should be over midfoot. That's the starting position. Now some people will feel like they're hitting their shins when they come up.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's not something necessarily you should aim for, but there's nothing wrong with that. Some people do that, but you want to start with the bar over the midfoot. If it's too far in front of you, now you're bending over too much. If it's too close to you, oftentimes with people, depending on their leverage and their body type, it looks like they're doing a squat, not necessarily well, you're a little bit more, you're flirting with inefficiency. Yes, because the bar line, the bar path actually matters in terms of lifting something heavy. You

want the straightest line possible to get from point A to point B. By the way, I forget the name of the app bar path, is that the name of the app? Oh, I think so. That's such a valuable tool for that exact point that you're talking about right now because you can line the phone up and it'll show you that bar path. Before I pull, I really, what takes the slack

at the bar, the slack arm, I like to have, I'll get in my position where my hips are supposed to be and my lats locked all in. And then I'll get kind of like where my hips are supposed to be, my lats locked all in, and then I'll get this little jerk on the bar, just so I can feel the slack come out of my arms, the slack come out of the bar. You want everything, because this is a lever type of exercise, it's not, you're not picking the bar up,

you're leveraging the bar up. You want everything to be so tight and rigid before. You don't want any slack, you want to feel tightness in your hips and butt before you go, you want everything to be so tight and rigid before you don't want any slack, you want to feel tightness in your hips and butt before you go, you want to feel tightness in your arms, you want to feel tightness in your lats, everything should feel rigid and then you're just firing those hips forward. In fact, when I did lift, I'm before I do the lift, I'm lifting 10 pounds off the bar anyway.

I don't start from zero to whatever because otherwise it looks like a pop You're not popping the weight up, okay? That's that's a totally different type of lift You are lifting the weight and you want it to start from a good clean position So even before I go for a lift there's probably 10 pounds of lift already on the bar that I've already produced Yeah, you like I love when you see kind of a little bit of a bend in the bar before the bar comes up. You want to be able to really feel that you know it reminds me of is I don't know if you guys have ever like gone to a drag racing event and been in the pit And you see how these cars kind of warm up before they really like you know punch it

Well, they they spin them out. They warm the tires up and all that and they kind of roll back up to the line Well, they have to they have to have one foot on the acceleration. It's already the foot pedals already going and it's on the brakes at the same time, keeping it from, so it's just coaching force. So it just goes. Yeah. That's kind of how I look at that. Yeah.

Also another cue is to rather than lift the bar, imagine you're holding on to the bar and you're pushing your legs through the floor. Yeah. This just helps with the technique of a lift. This has helped a lot of my clients when I watch their forum and I tell them this cue, all of a sudden, it just looks a lot better. And it helps me too when I'm going for my heavy lifts, sometimes that's that own vision that I'm just pushing my legs through the floor.

Yeah, I mean, one of my, once you get into the position, which I think is one of the hardest things is to get in the perfect, proper position. Once you're there, then the cue of driving the heels to the floor, thrusting the hips forward to me is the best cue. It's like that. That is exactly what you're doing. You are pushing your heels in the floor

and thrusting the hips forward, and that's what lifts that bar up. And there's a lot of value. We didn't talk our list this, but there's so much value in when you kind of figure this out is to create a ritual. And I know there's a lot of people like that tease like our friend Lane Norton the way he comes up and so like that.

The reason why I don't talk shit and tease him because like complete 100 like if you ever watched a baseball player and golfer and you become so these are all very technical sports technical movements to swing a baseball bat, a hundred mile an hour baseball, is it unbelievably? To hit a golf ball this small, 300 something yards, incredibly technical. And so these guys create these rituals

on how they walk up to the plate, how they walk up to the ball. So, and it just helps you get into that perfect position. And so, there is a lot of value. And I don't care if it's quirky or people make fun of you. If it helps you, get into all these cues that we just said. Do it and do it the same every time. It will help you over time because before you know it,

you'll be able to just get right in that movement just by kind of doing your ritual. Which is where I'm at in my life now, but it took me years to get there. 100%. All right, some common errors, all right? The most common one is a rounded lower back. Your low back should stay neutral.

Now notice I said lower back. The upper mid back can have some rounding. You will see some rounding oftentimes in a experienced dead lifter in that kind of thoracic area. That's fine. It's the low back you want to have, maintain strong and stable. Now experience lifters sometimes I'll have a little bit of rounding, but what they're

not doing is rounding to their end range of motion. Now beginning lifters and immediate lifters, you want to maintain neutral low back. You do not want any rounding whatsoever. I think a good example is to compare your deadlift and my deadlift. I think you have that kind of upper rounded back when you go in and it's not bad for you. You see that you still stay neutral the entire way. There's no movement going on there. It's just, you know, way you're posh to your starts, you start. Jordan Shallow does it too, really. Well, you can see Jordan Shallow really accentuate his rounding as he comes over before he rolls the bar up. So that's just like, to me, that's like a technique that certain lifters like doing it that way. As long as there is no movement in that low back, you're completely fine

doing it. That's what you want to see, Ridge. Another issue is sometimes the hips will come up too fast. They'll do the lift and they'll lift their butt and then they'll lift the bar. You want the bar to come up with your butt and your knees to come up at the same time. So you want knees and hips and bar to move at the same time. So you've got this hips and bar to move at the same time. So you've got this nice smooth motion. You don't want a two-stage deadlift that totally changes the exercise.

And it gives you risk of injury. You want to drive it up. It almost seems like they forget the pull at the same time as they're really focused on really driving their legs up to get that locking out position. So this is a challenge sometimes for me and I think sometimes taller people with this, the hips rising first.

And a lot of that is you go through the motion of taking the slack out of the bar, the slack out of your arms, but you don't take the slack out of your hamstrings and your glutes. So that's the low, those in your tight arms. That's what you gotta look. So that's what's going on there.

You're taking the slack out of your arms, you take the slack out of the bar, your lats are all acted, you're all tight up front, but then your hips aren't tight, your hamstrings aren't tight yet. So you want to let those hips rise up to where the hamstrings and their super tight version, and then like I said, it's all thrusting forward.

If there's any slack there, that what will happen is when you first initiate the movement, the hips will come up, to get rid of the slack, and then you'll see the deadlift. And it's just this slight little shift in a queue or you're starting position by sliding the hips back or letting them come up a tiny bit and getting that slack out of the hamstring.

Yeah, the other one, this was not as common, but you'll still see this sometimes as people will squat too low. Where the butt is so low that you'll notice that their arms are not, you should have a straight line from your shoulders down to your hands. If your shoulders are further back than your hands, you're squatting too low and you've changed the bar path and made it less.

Their leverages in is helpful. Yeah, and so it's less common, but if you see it, you know it. So you want that straight line. Shoulders to hands should be completely straight. This is common in watching a bodybuilder do a deadlift for the first time. They want to squat the bar up. They pick, they want to pick it up. And that's where they're not understanding the leverage

or the way you're kind of create a lever for deadlifting. And that's, so if you are dropping your hips too low, what you're thinking or what you're doing typically wrong is you're thinking about picking the bar up. You're not picking the bar up in a deadlift. You're leveraging it up. And so that thought process is different. That's normally where these people are off is,

they are visually looking at someone lift the bar up and they think that person's picking the bar up off. They're trying to muscle it up with the arm. And it's a very body-golder. Yeah, a little bit of slack in their elbow. And then it's a bicep, heavy exercise at that point. It's all problematic. And then another one is you see some shifting from side to side. and then it's a bicep, heavy exercise at that point. It's all problematic.

And then another one is you see some shifting from side to side. Now if this happens to you, go lighter and slow down. That's just the bottom line. If it keeps happening, you practice one-legged versions of this and find out what side is so much stronger than the other and try to balance them out. But shifting left to right on a deadlift

is an injury waiting to happen. So if that happens, take it seriously, because that's probably, aside from a super rounded lower back, probably the most common reason why somebody hurts themselves on a deadlift is that they get the shifting. I mean, that's where I hurt myself. Yeah, and a lot of that is, you know, you, it's common because guys and girls that get really strong

in the sagittal plan are lifting, in deadlifting squatting, just doing that. They neglect multi-planar movements and they don't have a lot of stability from left to right. And so, or unilateral work, they don't do as much. And so, that's all it takes. It's a little bit of shift to the left right. They have no strength and stability there. They're holding on to 500 pounds, so it doesn't take much for something to go. Yeah, and again, this stresses the importance of focus as well. That's the reason why I injured myself with that was just, there was something going on

over to the right of me. And so my focus went over there, and there was a shift, and then tried to over-correct, and then, yes, it was all bad. Look straight ahead. Look straight ahead, yes. Focus completely on the task. Yes, 100%. Actually, we didn't even talk about that.

That's actually a common mistake too. When people deadlifts, is they look up and they arch their neck, you should actually keep your chin tucked as you come down. So you're forward and tucked as you deadlift up. A common mistake is people look up as they deadlift and you actually want to keep the chin tucked as you... You have the most looks straight ahead, but don't do this up up.

You know, look at everything. Oh yeah, don't do that. Now when you're deadlifting, take your time. Take your time and slowly work yourself up to your work set. The stronger you are, the longer this should take. Give yourself time to work up to your heavy sets. This is a, don't try to rush through this

so you can do other exercises for two reasons. One, it's a complex lift, but two, this exercise is so effective, it takes the place of four can do other exercises for two reasons, one, it's a complex lift. But two, this exercise is so effective, it takes the place of four or five other exercises combined. So if you don't have enough time to do these other movements, it's totally fine, the deadlift did, brought you more value anyway. So slowly work your way up.

This is also one of those lifts where there are rep ranges that tend to work better for it. Low reps tend to work better for a deadlift in high reps. Now that's not to say you can't do high reps, but high reps with a low back starts to get fatigued, form starts to break down much faster. Low reps, when I say low reps, it's like anywhere between one to like eight,

tends to be better with the deadlift and with other extra-sides. I mean, to the extreme even, right? That it's one of the few exercises that I've ever with other extra sizes? I mean, to the extreme even, right? That it's one of the few exercises that I've ever trained in my life where I might do a day of nothing but singles or doubles. There's not a lot of exercises that I would go to the gym and go, oh, today I'm gonna do nothing more than two reps

of this with a bunch of sets, right? I'll do six sets of doubles or triples. There's not a lot of other exercises. Maybe the squat, I do that. But the squat definitely not even as much as I would. Deadlift is one of the few movements where there's a lot of value in training, singles, practice triples.

Yeah, just practicing lifting really heavy one or two reps for lots of sets. It gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Well, I mean fatigue, obviously, that's gonna play a factor with your mechanics and how that's gonna affect that, but also to my earlier point of focus, like if you have a drawn out amount of reps,

let's say like anything over 10, at that point, you're just gonna kind of try to feel like you're getting in the zone, however, this lift isn't the greatest for not being present, let's just say. You have to account for all of these moving parts However, this lift isn't the greatest for not being present, let's just say. You have to account for all of these moving parts because it has that bit of a risk factor. Yeah, now for the most part,

we tell people to avoid lifting the failure just across the board. We only have really one program where we program in failure. There is a proper way to do it, but deadlift the failure, almost always a bad idea. There's definitely cases in advanced people that can do this, but it's an exercise where, if you're formed deviates, you know, a few degrees outside of perfect, the risk factor starts to go up to, and going to failure, that type of intensity, the deviations and forms

become much more common. So it's just, it's one of those movements you probably don't want to go to failure on more than other exercise. No That's where this school where the single double triple advice comes in with this looks like is pick a weight That's heavier than what you can do five reps for and then practice singles and doubles That's it. That's how you're gonna get some really good value from that and then you're you're training it a higher a higher volume And a more weight than you're used to training with With an exercise and you're

just reducing the amount of reps. And you'll see strength go up like that. That's right. This is also an exercise. There are versions where you don't necessarily do this, but for most people, most of your values, you can come from pausing the weight on the floor every rep. Okay. So there are touch and go deadlifts and you'll see some people do these.

For most people, it's better, just across the board results, risk of injury, all that stuff. To avoid the touch and go. Yeah, it was a personal experience. Was touch and go everything before CrossFit? Yeah, body builders would do touch and go sometimes and some power lifters would do it,

but it wasn't a staple. It really wasn't a staple. Yeah, I don't remember seeing, you got popular with CrossFit, because CrossFit is a good place. They for sure did. Yeah, because they do a lot of like a matter where they do a lot of a lot of work. They do a lot of deadlifting stuff in circuits and for time.

And so that's where you see a lot of touch and go. But I never taught touch and go. I don't there's not a lot of benefit to doing touch and go that you're going to get that's greater than actually pausing between each rep. And a pause looks like this. You bring the way down to the floor. touch and go that you're going to get that's greater than actually pausing between each rep. And a pause looks like this. You bring the way down to the floor, set it on the floor for like three, four, five, 10 seconds, and then lift it back up.

Literally sit it on the floor. That's where the term dead and dead lift comes from. So it's not like hit the floor, come up. That's actually the shouldn't go. Have any movement. No, burn it down. It's just pause. Totally stone cold.

Get your, yes, get your technique, get your form, tighten your lats, brace your core, get in position, burn it down. Pause. Totally stone cold. Yes, get your technique, get your form, tighten your lats, brace your core, get in position, lift it again. And by the way, for the people that are going that might be thinking, Oh, well, what about, you know, the time and our attention and the value that you get from that. I mean, that's what the Romanian deadlifts for. That's what you do in exercise like that, where you, where you are, you're keeping consistent tension on that exercise, save that constant tension through the reps for a movement like a Romanian deadlift, but a conventional or a sumo deadlift, I think there's more value setting the bar down, resetting,

and then learning to explode it off the ground. Totally. Now, how many days a week should you deadlift? For most people one day a week, but you can do two days a week, but if you do two days a week, one should be hard and one should be easy. I don't think it's a good idea to have you deadlift twice a week.

I don't know very many people that could do that for very long without overtraining. It's one of the most taxing exercises on the body. It taxs in a squat, people say barbell squats. They are taxing, but I can barbell squat way more frequently than I can deadlift. Deadlifts, that's one where if I go too often, it starts to hurt my body in a different way. You know, when I was chasing after you, and I made the greatest gains in my deadlift,

I was deadlifting twice a week, and it was, one day was a very heavy day, one day was a technique day. So one day I would push the weight, I would really get after it, really stretch myself then towards the end of the week or so, or about three days later, I would do it again, and when I did it again, this was higher rep,

much lighter load, and it was like bar speed and stuff like that. I would start it again. And when I did it again, this was higher rep, much lighter load, and it was like, like, like bar speed and stuff like that. I would start to work on techniques for you. Or this might be, yeah, this might be, I know we're going to talk about the Vance techniques. This is where I would get into chains bands and, and things like this are deficit debts or things like that. It's like the second day a week would be much lighter load and utilizing tools like that. Yeah. So for advanced lifters who are trying to get past plateaus, you're already pretty strong, you've been practicing the deadlift for a while. Bands are phenomenal at giving you that kind of progressive resistance.

Chains also give you progressive resistance, they're just more damaging on the body. I prefer bands overall, but you can also use chains. And then deficit deadlifts are great for people who have a sticking point on the floor. What is a deficit deadlift? You're literally standing on like a plate or instead of using 45s to say you use 35 so the bar is lower. You have to get lower to lift the bar. Now I will caution people with a deficit deadlift go much lighter than you think if this isn't something that you've practiced very often. It is that extra four inches of range of motion, maybe don't seem like they're a lot. It's a lot, especially when it comes to safety.

So go much lighter when you're doing those deficit deadlifts. And then lastly would be speed deads. And speed deads literally the way you, speed deadlifts are not touching go. I've seen people do this. Oh, speed deadlifts, I'm gonna bounce the bar. No, no. Speed deadlift is you get a lightweight, you get tight, you get ready, and then you come up

with really good control power. It's all acceleration. Yeah, at the top. Speed deadlifts with bands have been one of my favorite ways to increase my strength in deadlift. Oh, because it's my favorite. You're working on technique, you got a light enough load

so the risk isn't as high. and learning to rip the bar off the ground faster and more efficiently Really carries over into the just that when you get that heavy loaded is because a lot of that is that ability to call upon that All and summon all that strength and that instant to get that bar off that and I think Banded speed pulls is like one of my favorite loads And then it loads the strongest part of the lift. So yeah, it's a less risky way to do the speed. Right. Totally. Look, if you like mine pump, head over to mine pump media on Instagram. And for under $5 a month, you'll get a workout set up for you.

We actually post workouts every week there under $5 a month. It's pretty awesome. You can also find all of us individually on Instagram. Justin is at mine pump. Justin. I'm at mine pump. dollars a month. It's pretty awesome. You can also find all of us individually on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump. The Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

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