Thoracic Rounding, New Deadlift Form

Hey peeps. I’m currently 5 weeks back into training from an MCL tear. I am playing around with different starting position, a bit more rounding in the upper back like KK/Lilly/Rubish/Hall. It has always been a super comfortable/natural/powerful feeling start position but always avoided it due to safety concerns. After a ton of research I decided to use it in my next few training cycles. Was hoping I could get some feedback on what it is looking like so far.

Also switched back to mix from hookgrip, which is why I held it for so long at the top (want to make sure my grip is still up to par)

585 Deadlift
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvcyeInAfyu/

Neutral is a range.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu7PYU5B5T9/

I’d be more concerned with the exaggerated lean back at the top.

Yeah for sure, i’m just making sure I don’t seem to be overdoing the “range”.

Also, think the angle is just bad because I didn’t over extend the back at the top, just softened the knees a bit to do an extended hold.

I don’t see any rounding that screams “spinal shrapnel”

Alright, thanks bud. I’ll keep an eye on form as I increase volume.

It doesn’t look like you have a whole lot of thoracic rounding going on, and even if you did it’s relatively safe anyway. It’s hard to tell from that angle but it looks like you have a bit of lower back rounding, which is quite a bit more risky. You obviously didn’t start lifting last month, if you haven’t had any back injuries from deadlifting and you back feels fine then you can probably get away with it.

Overall your deadlift looks fine to me, only possible concern is lower back rounding and soft knees at lockout but if you are just doing that because of the long hold then obviously it isn’t an issue.

My experience is that back issues arise more from form breakdown in higher rep sets, i.e. sets where you start the first 3-4 reps with good form and then it breaks down and you continue to push for more reps. A single high weight rep with less than ideal form is unlikely to cause the same level of problems of multiple reps and sub max weight with crap form.