deadlift variation ?'s

I am approaching a limit on my deadlift and have been curious about the different varieties. I can’t see a defference between Romanian Deadlifts and stiff legged deadlifts. where am I failing or missing the clue phone?

Stiff legged deadlifts are a much deeper movement that does work the hamstrings but also puts a lot of stress on the lower back. In Romanian deadlifts you don’t go down as far. Check out issue 182, the heavy metal section for Ian Kings description and you should understand.

Stiff legged deadlifts are a much deeper movement that does work the hamstrings but also puts a lot of stress on the lower back. In Romanian deadlifts you don’t go down as far. Check out issue 182, the heavy metal section for Ian Kings description and you should understand.

You know what a stiff legged deadlift is, when doing a romanian dl one bends their knees to a certain angle (close to straight) and maintains that angle and most importantly the back stays “flat” (or arched) throughout the execution of the lift (main difference). If anyone has a better description, help him out.

in regular stiff legged deads, you bend over. look kindof like this character - ^ but your legs are more upright. in romanian deads, you arch your back and stick your butt back. you look like the following character - <. you have a lot less range of motion doing romanian, when you stick your butt back the bar will bend to about your knees. more than that and you lose your form.

check out JV Askem’s website to see a good picture of a Romanian deadlift. In SLDLs, you allow the back to round, in RDLs you push the butt as far back as possible and go only as low as you can while maintaining your arch.

The main difference between the RDL and the stiff legged DL is that when performing the RDL, you maintain a slight bend in the knees, you do not lock them out. Focus on keeping your back flat, shoulders back, and your weight more on your heels.

Don’t worry, it’s easy to mix these two movements up because they’re very similar. The main difference is that in an RDL your knees are slightly bent in the bottom position, while in an SLDL your knees remain locked. In an RDL you want to go as low as possible while maintaining a flat back and good form. Folks tend to round their back a little at the bottom of an SLDL in order to get more ROM.

Stiff Legged Deads are performed with knees straight (soft lock out) and Romanians are perfromed with a 45 degree bend in the knee. You may want to look into Olympic Lifting as well. J.V. Askem’s homepage has some good exercise descriptions. Put his name into a search engine. He’s known as the “cable bar guy”. Thanks to Kelly Bagget for posting the link to J.V.'s site.

take a break form the deads for about 3 weeks! do only cardcore squats and leggpress for those weeks… Then… do 2 heavy dedlift workouts and rest for another 2 weeks and go on as usualy… That routine made me gain 40 ibs 1RM.

First of all RD’s and stiflegg are totally different, and work totally different muscles. The stiff legs are using your hamstrings and glutes primarily. The RD is a standard deadlift in competition. Your using any muscle you can to get the weight up. My deadlift when through the roof when I started taking my shoes off before I execute the lift. Trust me on this one. Second, doing grip excercises did a lot for me in every lift I do. When your grip is strong all the weights seem lighter. One thing I would recommend is good mornings.If you dont already do these they will improve your squat and dedlift.

Thanks T-dudes!. I think I have been doing a hybrid of both all along. I keep a rigid knee angle, bent oh so little and keep lower back arched, chest held high, using over/over grip. Not doing these for a while and striving for a full ROM is a real literal pain in the ass!