Hi everybody. To start off I have watched the video series on how to deadlift.
I noticed that when they do the deadlift it is an extremely fast motion. Almost like they are driving with there legs and then they shoot there hips forward to straighten out. ALmost like a fucking motion.
If I do it that fast I always feel a pain during the movement not really in my lower back, and not really in my ass. But where the two connect. It seems like it is where my spine starts. I have asked people at the gym to watch me and tell me if my back is flat throughout the movement and they have given me the ok.
Sometiems if I slow the movement down it doesnt hurt while doing it, but when I set the weight down, and stop the exercise it hurts when I stand up straight again.
When I am deadlifting this pain has nothign to do with the weight. It doesnt hurt any more or any less whether I am using 100 pounds or 200 pounds.
Does your form change when you do them fast? I know the feeling that you are talking about. It happens to me on GM or DL when I mistakenly lean forward and shift the weight more on my toes, which puts more strain my lower back. I notice that when I see people doing speed pulls their hips tend to rise too fast.
It is possible that when you pull faster than you are used too, your hips are coming way up pushing your shoulders in front of the bar and shifting your weight away from your heals before you actually lift the bar off the floor.
I need to add more info for things I forgot to mention in my original post.
The other day I did my leg workout, and I spent a solid half an hour afterwards doing static stretches for my hams, hip flexors, quads, and glutes. I tried doing 1 single DL with 135 lbs and I didnt feel any pain what so ever.
My hams and hips are EXTREMELY unflexible and then I thought I discover what my problem was right there. But later on during the day I was at the mall with my girlfriend and I noticed my lower back was getting a bit sore / stiff from standing.
It got me thinking that maybe the stretching didnt actually help the problem, but just covered it up? Or do you guys think that it did help the problem and the lowew back stiffness was from something else?
Oh… and by the way, when I say EXTREMELY unflexible, I really really really really mean it.
Just to let everybody know I am working hard on correcting the problem. When I am sitting infront of my computer I get up every half hour or so and do a couple of stretches, plus I stretch for about half an hour every couple of days.
How long have you been deadlifting? When I first started doing deadlifts I had some muscular pain in my lower back that would intensify when I would pull faster. I’m guessing that my body just wasn’t used to the motion or the load.
Since I stared doing DLs I have always warmed up with 135 just paying attention to form, and for the first month even 135 would give me pain if I went fast. However, after about a month my body adapted and in a few months my deadlift weight has gone up quite a bit and there is no more pain, even if I go fast.
[quote]Pemdas wrote:
Ok…how is your hip flexibility? Are you hyper-extending your back in order to lockout?
[/quote]
Well, my entire lower body is unflexible, including my hips. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that every time I bend over during the day to pick something up or whatever I never bend form my hips, it is always with my lower spine.
Recently I started doing hip stretches, but yah… my hips aren’t flexible. I am pretty sure I am not hyper-extending my back when I lock out. I think my spine is in a neutral position.
Although no one could be certain having not actually seen you deadlift, I bet it is a flexibility issue, especially if you have tight hips/glutes. There was a resent article that described the relationship between hip mobility and lower-back pain that you might find interesting.
My whole lower body used to be pretty inflexible. My hips used to hurt a little from squatting wide and deadlifting sumo. I actually started deadlifting sumo because I couldn’t comfortable get down using a conventional stance. After a few months of stretching and working on loosing up my hip, I no longer have any problems.
Stretch stretch and stretch. Also it would be a good idea to invest i na foam roller ($20) and look up some articles on here on how to use them to break up tight muscles and scar tissue in muscles. I stretch regularly and still had pain in the way you describe, and otehr places in my legs and as soon as i started foam rolling even twice a week, these problems went away.
The other posters are right you really need to stretch. But also, when you are pulling quickly, you have to make sure you are driving through the hips.
With the pain you are having it sounds like your trying to jerk the bar off the floor, you have to have some upward force on the bar before you pull, you cant just go from not putting pressure on the bar to yanking it up, there is too much of a difference between the two, and that is proba what causes the problem, at least in part.
[quote]Shadowzz4 wrote:
The other posters are right you really need to stretch. But also, when you are pulling quickly, you have to make sure you are driving through the hips.
With the pain you are having it sounds like your trying to jerk the bar off the floor, you have to have some upward force on the bar before you pull, you cant just go from not putting pressure on the bar to yanking it up, there is too much of a difference between the two, and that is proba what causes the problem, at least in part.[/quote]
Nice idea and great point! Definitely make sure that you kill all the slack between yourself and the bar and make sure that you are really tight before actually ripping the bar off the ground.
You should take a huge breath into your belly and push out hard on your abs.
Tight - you should be tight enough so that when you start to pull you are not jerking your body.
Think about holding onto a plastic bag with one hand on either side. When you jerk, it is like having your hands close together and then tying to pull the bag apart. At first the tension on the bag is really loose. It then makes a noise once you pull it tight violently. Now imaging that the bag is your back.
Instead you want to start with bag tight. Now when you pull there is no bad sound/(back breaking).
This is what meant by killing all the slack between you and bar.