Greetings gents.
My entire lifting career (which spans about 4 years), I’ve been a conventional deadlifter. Hated sumo from the start. It felt slow, and my hip mobility was terrible for it… queue the violin.
I’ve recently gotten back to lifting, after a 4 year break (so 8 years since i lifted my first barbell, wow time really flies) and went straight back (no pun intended) into deadlifting conventional. I’m pretty tall with fairly long legs, and it’s always been a problem for me to sit back with my hips and get leg drive. Instead I’d shoot up my hip and let my back do the work, since I was much stronger this way. Having a mild form of lordosis, conventional hasn’t always been a pleasant experience.
Last session a friend suggested that I tried the semi-sumo (for the first time). As the name would suggest, it’s sort of a hybrid between the two, a sumo with a narrower stance.
His reasoning was that it should allow me the best of both worlds. First, I’d have less angle on my back compared to the conventional, but at an angle where the back would still contribute significantly - and the narrow stance should put my hips in a position where they felt strong without having to shoot them up.
I was surprised to find out that he was right. Did 3 reps of 350 pounds, and on the conventional they were pretty hard. Worked my way up to 3 reps og 350 pounds on the semi-sumo and not only did I experience no pain, but I felt like I had both good leg drive and lower back activation. They felt lighter, and that was my first time doing them…
It could just be that my lower back was tired from all the squatting, which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. But that doesn’t really make sense to me, since I do olympic high bar squats. If anything, those would probably tire out the posterior chain before the lower back.
What do you guys make of it? I’m going back to the deadlift next wednesday to play around with it again, and see if it still feels stronger than the conventional. If it does, I’m sticking to it.