Forgive me.
I “lifted weights” for several years, but I’m just now starting to squat and deadlift. With the deadlift, I have some questions about the execution of the movement. At first, I was basically locking my arms and just lifting the bar with my legs and the hip hinge/thrust. Now, I am “pulling” the weight with a slight bent over row as the weight is being brought up to assist my legs and hips. Is this right?
The reason I ask is that you can feel it in your rear delts, upper back and traps. Or is that the goal?
Forgive my ignorance. Too many curls in the squat rack I guess.
You should always be “pulling” the weight, but not in the way that you would in a row. Arms should be locked from start to finish, more or less. Your upper back will still be engaged during the lift, just not in the way that it would be for rows.
There are tons of deadlift critique videos on here. Take a look at the vids and the comments if you need an idea of the general way to execute a deadlift. If you’re still struggling, post a good video of yourself deadlifting, people are usually happy to chime in with issues they spot.
[quote]Brett620 wrote:
Forgive me.
I “lifted weights” for several years, but I’m just now starting to squat and deadlift. With the deadlift, I have some questions about the execution of the movement. At first, I was basically locking my arms and just lifting the bar with my legs and the hip hinge/thrust. Now, I am “pulling” the weight with a slight bent over row as the weight is being brought up to assist my legs and hips. Is this right? The reason I ask is that you can feel it in your rear delts, upper back and traps. Or is that the goal?
Forgive my ignorance. Too many curls in the squat rack I guess.[/quote]
Have you ever done a straight arm pulldown? my question is relevant
ok I’m no powerlifter, but when I started to do deads I had no clue at all how I should get the weight from point a to b. what seems to help me now is really concentrating on driving my ass towards the ground while standing up.
Here is a pretty good example of a deadlift with actual training weight, if you are doing conventional deadlifts they should look like this. You might “feel” your upper back etc more by bending your arms but you won’t be able to lift the same weight like that (you should be able to deadlift much more than you row)
Thanks for the replies.
Oh and I Deadlift Sumo-style. I don’t know if that helps. I do this because my mobility sucks, and I’m sure that’s a contributing factor to my poor technique.
Then it should look something like this:
