Progressing Your Pull: 5 Key Deadlift Tips.

Last week I hit you up with some epic bench pressing content. This week I've had multiple questions about the deadlift, so I'm going to hit you up with 5 epic tips for progressing your pull, whether you lift conventional or sumo.

These are all pretty much constants in my programming for people who want a bigger pull, and things you can easily implement into your own programming to progress yours.

1) Deadlift Heavy Once Per Week

Deadlifting is slightly different to squatting and benching when it comes to the big three. It's the heaviest lift you'll often do, with the heaviest accessories to go alongside it.

And if you're combining it in your program with heavy squatting, you're looking at a huge recovery demand week to week. Because of this, we only deadlift heavy once per week.

This doesn't mean we can't deadlift twice per week, but if you do, one has to be significantly lighter and very technique focussed if you're anything above a beginner in terms of the weights you're lifting.

Increased frequency and volume specifically on the deadlift is rarely the first approach I'll take when looking to push someones pull forward.

2) Keep The Reps Lower

The biggest thing that will halt your deadlift progress is a cranky lower back, and I find the quickest route for most people to get a cranky back is going to heavy for too many reps.

So when programming I'll often stay within the 1-6 rep range, and if we're pursuing higher volumes of work, we will up the number of sets rather than the number of reps.

This can have an added benefit of helping drill set-up and create specific practice for heavy singles later in the programming, while helping keep the lower back happy throughout consecutive training phases to really start accumulating solid work.

3) Drill Technique

The deadlift is different again to the squat and bench in it's nature in that as you're lifting from the floor, you're starting the lift in the bottom position. This creates a greater challenge in creating the required tension and positions in a flexed position, rather than people able to set up and get tight in an upright or extended position (which is MUCH easier).

This means the deadlift can be more unforgiving to poor technique, and "muscling through" reps can be more problematic. So make sure that drilling technique is always a priority.

Your set-up position, bar path, and maximising your leverages can all pay off big time in both your strength, and your longevity when it comes to deadlifting.

4) Work The Weaknesses

Similar to the bench press, it's also essential to work on your weaknesses when deadlifting. A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and strengthening strengths can often only serve to highlight the weakness further.

When it comes to deadlifting, here are some really common weaknesses and some ideas on how you may improve them.

Technique:

If your set-up and bar path are your weak-point, we would generally reduce loads, and include tempos or pauses.

A slower eccentric helps a lifter find balance, which often leads to a smoother bar path, while still providing a big stimulus to the working muscles.

If the bar drifts away in a specific position, we may insert a pause at the point on the concentric to highlight the spot (1-2" off the floor, at the knee, etc.).

If there set-up is lacking, we will fully reset it each rep to drill over and over how to find that correct position.

Weakness Off The Floor:

If the lifter always misses by not even getting the bar off the floor, we want to either work leg strength (to help push the world away) through squats and other quad dominant movements, or we may utilise a deficit deadlift to over-emphasise the bottom position of the lift in some back-off or primer sets.

Weakness At Lockout:

There are two common reasons for struggling at lockout.

1. Weakness in the glutes (unable to fully push the hips into extension).

2. Weakness in the upper/mid back (unable to lock the bar into position optimally for lockout).

Both are improved with focussed work on those muscle groups. Glutes can benefit from hip thrusts, banded RDLs and hip extensions, the back can benefits from all kings of rows and pull-ups.

5) Remember The Deadlift Is General Strength

When classifying the deadlift we will often place it as a posterior chain exercise (working the hamstrings, glutes and lower back), which is true...

BUT...

More than any other lift it is a test of general strength.

Which means the requirements are more general than you think, so you need to build a strong lower and upper body strength base, and the impact is very general too.

They will create great general fatigue and stress, and also build great general stress, which is what makes it such a great exercise.

But just remember, to get so much benefit, you need to commit with so much energy, which does come at a recovery cost.

Thanks,

Ian.