I am posting this here hoping that someone else can benefit from this scenario. Recently I’ve included deadlifting in my routine again on regular bases. This time I was determined to (after reading Cressey’s articles) to move the majority of the load to the upper back. Worked a lot on glute activation and thoracic rom to get there.
After the first session I felt a huge pump in my lower back even with the new tricks (thoracic extension with flexing the glutes) my form was good as a friend checked it for me. Puzzled as to why my lower back was still doing so much work I tried the RDL. Funny thing is my lower back did no work on it (or minimal I felt no pump and no soreness).
After playing around with my deadlift form the day after the session I came to a very simple realization my hips needed to be slightly higher. Now my hips were not so low that the form looked bad but somehow it recruited the lower back more lifting the hip just a little bit higher allowes me to recruit the upper back and the lower back gets minimal work. Now after my deadlift session my upper back, hamstring and glutes are fried.
Now the thing to know here is that my form was good in all other aspects no rounding anywhere slight tight arched maintained throughout I pushed the hips forward. But my hips being an extra inch or two lower somehow made it a lot of lowerback. I am sure I can’t be the only person that was annoyed with their lower back doing the majority of the work and hope that this slight trick of getting your hips higher to be benificial.
Btw I found that the best way to get the hips to the position of little lower back work was to get the bar under the shoulder blades not the shoulders.