The Deadlift
Deadlift is just a great exercise to
• Build muscle mass in the posterior chain
Gain strength in the posterior chain
Reduce your risk for injury and that’s a
Functional lower body movement that supports many human movement patterns. But if you do it with proper form
Muscles That Deadlift Activates
First Is “vestus medialis”
The vastus medialis is one of four heads of the quadriceps muscle. You can find it on the inside of the knee. This muscle helps you extend your knee like during a leg extension.
Second is “vestus intermedius”
The standard deadlift also hits the vastus intermedius, which also helps with proper knee extension although it’s tougher to see in an aesthetic way. It’s dead center on the quad.
Then the “VASTUS LATERALIS”
The vastus lateralis is on the outside of your knee, and it helps with knee extension. This is another muscle targeted by deadlifts.
Then the “RECTUS FEMORIS”
The traditional Deadlift also hits the rectus femoris, which can also be found on the front of the leg but it’s unique because it has an attachment above the hip, which aids in flexion.
BICEPS FEMORIS
The biceps femoris is a part of what most people think of as the hamstring muscle. You can find it on the outside of the hamstring, and it helps with knee flexion like when you’re doing a leg curl. This muscle is one of the main muscles to be targeted by deadlifts.
SEMITENDINOSUS
The deadlift exercise also targets the semitendinosus, which favors the inside of your hamstring, and it also helps with knee flexion.
GLUTEUS MAXIMUS AND MEDIUS
Of course, the standard deadlift targets the glutes! Aside from the obvious aesthetic reason, it’s important to focus on developing your glutes because glute maximus is an important hip extender and it also helps with slight external hip rotation.
Also deadlifts activates the lats and lower back and traps it’s just great compound exercise.
Warming up: Stretching the Adductors before The Deadlift
But you need to properly warm up before you do a deadlift. All good deadlift sessions start with how you get into a setup position to prepare your body to do the exercise.
After setting up deadlifting station, I want you to take a wide stance and put your feet up against the insides of the plates.
We are going to use them to stretch our adductors in our groin. Why?
As I mentioned deadlift activates adductors as well so we need to have adequate flexibility through your adductors to perform the deadlift.
ENGAGING THE HAMSTRINGS AND PELVIS
Next we need to practice engaging our hamstrings and putting our pelvic in the right position.
Lean forward where you would normally grab the bar and try to get yourself into an anterior pelvic tilt.
Keep your hands on the bar and your head up as you rotate your pelvis all the way down until it’s facing the ground. Look straight ahead and feel the stretch in your hamstrings.
I want you to really focus on the stretch in all those attachment points in your pelvis.
DEADLIFTING IN SECTIONS
I want you to do it before you will approach a heavy lift on your every deadlifts.
First get your body in position with feet shoulder width apart. And hip hinge and slide your hands down from the hips to the knees only. Do not bend your knees.
That's a dynamic stretch. All this stretches will help us to hip hinge very easily. That’s why we are doing it. Do 10 of these.
From here, maintain a strong low back and keep the lumbar spine neutral. Let your hands drop straight down by bending nothing but the knees. Again do 10 of these.
First move of the bar to your knees should feel more like a leg press.
HOW TO DEADLIFT: THE DEADLIFT SETUP
Now we are ready to approach the bar and setup for correct deadlift form.
Avoid heavy weights first practice good form with lighter weights and then load it up but load it smart so that you can perform heavy lift with good form to avoid injuries.
The starting position begins with your feet in standing position.
There are actually two things you want to focus on when setting up your feet: width and depth.
FEET WIDTH
How far apart should your feet be for deadlifts?
The width of your feet for the deadlift should be the width of your hips.
You just want to make sure that your feet are hip width apart for deadlifts.
FEET DEPTH
Can you see your laces on the other side of the bar? If the bar is covering your laces, then you have to adjust.
Once you can see your laces on the other side of the bar, your shins should be about one inch away from the barbell. This is the proper position.
TYPE OF GRIP
Now ones we are in this position we need to focus on the grip and we have options here a double overhand grip,
a mixed grip one under and one over,
I like to use double overhand grip because this mixed grip is yes a good grip because on the overhand grip ones grip is getting weaker bar goes to our fingers but in the mixed grip we hold it from the back but the problem with mixed grip is that it will create muscle imbalances in the shoulder girdle which I don’t want.
HOW WIDE YOUR HANDS SHOULD BE ON THE BAR
And now the width of the hands don’t go too wide the ideal position of the hands is just one inch outside of that hip width feet, You want to have enough room here because you don’t want to have your hands dragging up the sides of you thighs you want to have bar dragging up but not hands because extra friction can make the exercise more uncomfortable.
LOWER BACK POSITION
So we have hands in place feet in place now we need to focus on the position of the lower back because if you get it wrong all dangers of your lift will come to you and one of those is a lumbar disc issue we don’t want it. So what you need to do ones you are here. You need to drive your chest forward up and out and you want to drive your hips down. Lats will get activated when you will pull yourself in that position. Get that position of the lower back flat , you don’t want rounded lower back. And don’t worry about how angled your torso as long as your lower back is in the position you are in the good spot.
THE LIFT
So now it’s time to lift it and I want you to think about first phase of your lift when bar is getting at the level of your knee as if you are doing a leg press you are pushing with your legs until your hands at the level of your knees. Obviously keeping lower back in right position, etc. so when you got that bar to the knees you need to make sure that this bar is dragging up those shins every inch on the way, staying in contact if you will start seeing space between the bar and your shins you are not engaging your lats. By keeping bar in the contact with shins it will make your torso tight and stable. Then when that bar is at the level of your knees your hips need to keek of and you need to drive through your hips by making this an incredible lower back exercise and posterior chain exercise.
Put it all together timing is very simple so it looks like this.
I hope you found this information helpful.
Watch video version of this topic: https://youtu.be/eURXzq_tgcg?feature=shared
Thanks for your time.
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