I remember a few years back when I was still coaching at Cressey Sports Performance another trainer who was there observing for the day walked up to make casual conversation and to ask a question he wanted my opinion on.
Him: “Hey Tony.”
Me: “Hey, what’s up?
Him:“Oh, not much. Say, I noticed pretty much everyone here only deadlifts using the trap bar.”
Me:“Indeed. We don’t feel the majority of people need to use the straight bar or anything. It’s a risk-reward scenario where we feel the risk isn’t worth any inherent (ego) reward.”
Him:“Huh, but don’t you feel you’re feeding dysfunction or that they’re cheating by using the trap bar only?”
And by that what I mean is that it took every ounce of willpower for my eyeballs not to roll out of their sockets.
Let me address each point separately.
“Do I feel I’m feeding dysfunction?”
Due to improved mechanics with regards to the center of mass (you’re inside the barbell) and axis of rotation (hips closer), the trap-bar deadlift is a safer, more user-friendly variation.
A deadlift is a deadlift is a deadlift.
So long as someone hinges at their hips, maintains a neutral spine, and then proceeds to lift something off the ground from a DEAD stop, I don’t care if it’s a barbell, a trap bar, or a Volkswagon.
My job as a coach is to do the best I can to “match” an exercise to the injury history, ability level, and goal(s) of the individual I’m working with.
Almost always the trap-bar is going to be the best option in terms of not only performance, but safety as well.
“Do you feel they’re cheating?”
Nope.
Unless you’re a competitive powerlifter or weightlifter, you don’t HAVE to use a straight bar. It’s not cheating.
I often tell people that what “connects” you to the barbell during the deadlift isn’t your hands.
Rather, it’s your lats.
Having the ability to engage them and firing on all cylinders during the set-up and execution has profound ramifications on deadlift technique and performance.
The thing is: For some trainees, asking him or her to “turn on your lats” is akin to understanding Klingon or, I don’t know, being able to perform long division.
In the most rudimentary sense the deadlift can best be described as an action where one bends over at the waist, wraps his or her’s hands around a barbell, and then “pulls” said barbell off the ground until they’re standing fully upright with their knees and hips locked.
Of course, there are a few important nuances with regards to back position to consider.
For brevity’s sake you can think of the setup as shoulders above the chest, and chest above the hips.
This.
Not This
Ya Heard
Anyway, you want to think about putting force into ground and pushing away, rather than just pulling the bar off the floor.
In my experience whenever I see someone’s back rounding or I see their hips come up a bit too early I find they’re not placing any emphasis on the PUSH (and using their quads to help with leg drive).
Another option is to think about “pushing the ground away from you.” This subtle reframing has made a profound difference with many of the lifters I’ve worked with.
When it comes to the setup, however, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
In this instance we’re all special snowflakes with varying limb lengths, torso lengths, and hip orientation… all of which will affect what will feel best and allow us to lift the most amount of weight.
That said, there are two tenets to the deadlift setup that applies to every lifter:
1. Use the Wedge.
Popularized by Dr. Stuart McGill, it’s a foolproof way to set yourself up for success and protect your back. Basically, when you bend over to grab the barbell, you want to use it as a counterbalance to “pull” your chest up and get the hips down, “wedging” yourself between the bar and the floor.
2. Now think, “Armpits over the bar, with maximal hamstring tension.”
In this one I discuss how to figure out your best stance for deadlifting success as well as some of my go to cues to help clean up deadlifting technique.
It even includes a 20-30 minute video of me taking Dani Shugart through the process.
If you missed the previous installments of this series from Massachusetts based strength & conditioning coach, Matthew Ibrahim, you can check them out in the links below:
One of the top priorities to focus on when warming up prior to performing your deadlift in training is to spend time in the ACTUAL hip hinge (deadlift) position itself.
Most folks tend to skip out on this and lose out on the benefits. It becomes super important to groove the hip hinge pattern with repetition in the warm-up if you plan to load it in training with your deadlift.
In addition to grooving the hip hinge pattern, here are some other key areas to target in your warm-up when preparing to deadlift: trunk stability, lat activation, hamstring tissue flexibility and hip joint mobility.
All eight exercises below provide your body with the opportunity to warm-up everything labeled above in an efficient and cohesive format:
1) Yoga Pike – x5
2) Walking Inchworm – x5
3) Alternating Bird Dog – x5 each side
4) KB Dead Bug – x8 each side
5) Band 1-Leg Hamstring Pull-Down – x10
6) Band Standing Straight Arm Pull-Down – x10
7) MB Hug Good Morning – x10
8) Cable Pull Through – x10
About the Author
Matthew Ibrahim is the Co-Owner & Lead Performance Coach of TD Athletes Edge in Salem, MA. He has been an invited guest speaker nationally in over 10 U.S. states, which was highlighted by his presentations at Google Headquarters and Stanford University, in addition to guest speaking internationally in Milan, Italy.
His work has been featured in Men’s Fitness, STACK Media and The PTDC. Currently, he is completing his masters degree at Rocky Mountain University with a direct track into their PhD program.
He is a big fan of interacting on Instagram and regularly posts about training, performance and recovery.
Today’s guest post come courtesy of Dan Edelman of The Brand X Method, which is a wonderful institution dedicated to improving youth sport(s) and fitness through professional youth coach education.
I love what they stand for and what the strive to instill in their coaches and athletes.
There’s no ONE set way to train anyone – youth athletes included – and oftentimes the larger, more pertinent approach is adopting methodologies for LONG-TERM health and fitness.
Not for ego.
Enjoy the read (and be sure to download the FREE guide “How to Reduce the Risk of Injury in Youth Athletes” below).
We hear that a lot. Mostly from a certain uppity corner of the powerlifting community and mostly owing to its shortened range of motion compared to the conventional deadlift.
Well, we love it. The Brand X Method™ loves the sumo deadlift.
And we’re often asked about this great love affair.
So yeah, why sumo?
When was the last time you set up in a conventional stance to pick up a cinder block, sack of dog food, a child? Never. The sumo stance is how we pick up stuff in the real world.
Over the course of 15 years, we have found that kids can learn a safe sumo setup more quickly and maintain a neutral spine throughout the movement more consistently. Could it be because our bodies are designed to pick up heavy stuff in this position?
The conventional stance requires more work from the spinal erectors (see, e.g., here). Should the erectors fatigue or fail under load—or be left holding the bag so to speak by primary mover fatigue or poor technique—the spine is at risk of injury. We train kids, which by definition means we’re training mostly beginner and intermediate lifters. The responsible approach is to minimize that risk.
Powerlifting guru Louie Simmons has said that training wide supports narrow applications but not the opposite. At Brand X – The Lab, we’ve seen people improve their conventional deadlift after training exclusively sumo—but, yeah, you guessed it—not the opposite.
To say the sumo stance is functional is to lose its significance in all the buzz around that overused label.
But it is functional.
Profoundly so.
The sumo stance is everywhere in the everyday world, from the backyard to the ball field, from the garage to the library.
When we train sumo, we enhance physical literacy, we improve our ability to engage with the environment. The more we are able to interact with the world and others around us in positive and rewarding ways, the healthier and happier we—and everyone around us—can be.
Imagine a world like that.
We do.
Never Say Never
So am I saying that we never train conventional?
Of course not.
We program conventional deadlift variations all of the time for our experienced lifters:
Single-leg dumbbell, deficits, rack pulls, RDLs… Conventional deadlifts make for great accessory and supplemental work.
Some of our experienced kids are committed competitive powerlifters. Our sports-specific programming includes conventional deadlifts because it makes sense to identify which position the kid best pulls from.
Is this a contradiction?
No.
We’re talking sport.
We’re talking kids who want to lift the most weight possible. That doesn’t mean we simply let the kid pull conventional. A TBXM™ program for a kid who can stand up with more weight in the conventional stance than in the sumo position also includes exercises that support the conventional stance to ensure that safety and efficiency are maximized during training and competition.
The conventional stance deadlift transfers to the power clean, a staple power-building exercise for The Brand X Method™.
Let’s optimize.
Occasionally anthropometry such as long femurs, long torso, and comparatively short arms call for us to explore a conventional stance for plateau-busting insights.
Individualizing our program is essential to our mission.
Frankly, variation is a fairly conventional strength training principle. And therein lies one of the great things about The Brand X Method™—our principles are sound; they are long-established, evidence-based, and proven. With that kind of foundation, we can forever explore and evolve best practices for teaching kids how to move more safely and efficiently for fitness, sport, and life.
If You Ain’t Cheating You Ain’t Trying
The Brand X Method™ wrangles with the constant tension between the goals of youth sport and the goals of our program.
The former wants high performance at all times (e.g., lifting the most weight, throwing the hardest, running the fastest) while we want to see the discovery, participation, and enjoyment of sport and other physical activities for all time.Thing is, the tension seems to come from the sports side and is almost entirely driven by an over-reliance on sports-specific training and a lack of knowledge about how our program should be viewed as essential to sports-specific training rather than some kind of extraneous “activity.”
We know that high performance and lifelong physical activity based on consistently good movement don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Our proof is in the USA Powerlifting—California state record book where our kids and teens (and even some adults) hold more than 100 records.
Imagine that—prioritizing safety and efficiency in the form of consistently excellent (and natural) movement yields record holders, champions, and national qualifiers, most of whom stepped onto the platform just for kicks.
High performance is a by-product of The Brand X Method™.
Sumo. What they call cheating, we call common sense.
What they snicker at, we find advantageous.
Efficient.
Safe.
Long-term.
We want our kids able to lift when they’re 40 50, 60, beyond.
A youth fitness program that is not thinking about lifetime fitness is not thinking period.
We’ll continue to train the most efficient, safest movement built on naturally intended, functional motor patterns and positions. We’ll continue to encourage kids to try different sports and then provide them the best strength and conditioning we can to keep them strong, fast, and durable. We’ll continue to imagine a better future for our kids. And we’ll continue to gather the medals, trophies, and records that come with it.
They say cheating. We say scoreboard, baby.
About the Author
Dan Edelman is a Brand X Youth Coach and has been a member of The Brand X Method staff for nearly a decade, principally as staff writer and editor. He is the current Director of Marketing & Communications and is co-owner of R Town Strength & Wellness – A Brand X Method Training Center in San Diego County, California.
About the The Brand X Method
Since 2004, we have been driven by a relentless pursuit of best practices in youth training. Our focus on motor pattern training and physical literacy enhancement optimizes kids’ fitness and elevates their athleticism. We help protect kids and teens against sports injury, boost their sports performance, and push back against the forces behind obesity.
The mastery, confidence, and motivation that kids develop in our gyms are the ingredients of freedom and fearlessness. The Brand X Method™ instills the essence of adventure, passion, and joy in kids and teens when playing their favorite sports, trying new things, and tackling life’s challenges so they can step out of our gyms knowing they can do whatever they set out to do.
One of my biggest pet peeves about the fitness industry are those people who tend to be absolutists about stuff.
They feel that just because something worked for them that it must mean it’ll apply to everyone, and you’re an idiot or inept if you feel otherwise:
You have to back squat if you want to get strong.
You have to follow a Paleo diet if you want to get ripped.
You have to wear pants when you’re training clients.
It’s all a bunch of hooey if you ask me. Nothing is set in stone, and nothing is going to apply across the board towards a diverse population with varying injury histories, goals, and ability levels.
This train of thought applies towards the deadlift as well.
There aren’t many exercises as maligned or misrepresented as the deadlift.
On an almost weekly basis I’m having a conversation with someone who offhandedly says “so and so mentioned to me how deadlifts are dangerous,” or “such and such said deadlifts are the worst thing ever for your back,” or “I heard deadlifts give you gonorrhea, is that true?”
Listen, deadlifts are no more “dangerous” than any other exercise that’s performed incorrectly (or with too much load/volume that surpasses any one individual’s threshold to recover from).
When performed well, and with the appropriate progressions in place, the deadlift is one of the best bang-for-your-training-buck exercises out there.
It’s also pretty freakin versatile.
Another popular fallacy of the deadlift is that it has to be performed with a straight bar, and that it has to be heavy.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Picking anything up off the ground – whether it’s a barbell, dumbbell, a bag of groceries, a baby, or Mjolnir – with the knees slightly bent, hips flexed, and with an upright torso, can be considered a deadlift.
Not so dangerous now, huh?
To prove my point check out this gem of a variation.
Band Resisted KB Deadlift
Who Did I Steal It From? – Strength & Conditioning legend, Vince McConnell.
What Does It Do? – I had my client, Jessica (who’s in the video above), perform this last night because we’ve been working on troubleshooting through some hip shenanigans.
To put it bluntly, Jessica is strong AF.
Her best deadlift is 350 lbs with a straight bar, and I’m pretty sure she’s undefeated in Fight Club. Thing is, though, she’s always had trouble feeling her glutes during a deadlift.
As with most people, she’s gotten really good at compensating, and every now and again she’ll get a bit of a back niggle.
Not necessarily an injury; but, you know, just an annoying “something.”
This exercise serves a few purposes:
Using a KB – so her center of mass is OVER the load – makes this exercise infinitely more “back friendly.”
Adding the band takes advantage of accommodating resistance where the load gets more challenging at a position where she’s strongest (terminal hip extension).
Too, adding the band, really helps with engaging the glutes to a higher degree at the top of the movement. I don’t know how better else to explain it other than “IT JUST DOES ALRIGHT. WHY DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO QUESTION ME?”
Key Coaching Cues – All I did was wrap a Jump Stretch band across two pegs at the bottom of my power rack and then loop the same band underneath the handle of a kettlebell.
Then Jessica lifted it.
And then it was Glute O’clock.
Normally I’m not a fan of high(er) rep deadlifts, but this variation lends itself to me breaking that rule.
Maybe I should do a 30-day series on Instagram and cover something cool?
30 Favorite Pictures of My Cat?
30 Days of Omelets?
No, no, no…30 Days of Jason Bourne Fight Scene Reenactments?4
As you can tell, I didn’t go with any of those choices. But if you want me to let me know.
I went with deadlifts.
And I took 30 – admittedly not in a row – days to cover everything from technique tips and troubleshooting ideas to program design and different deadlift variations I like.
It was a huge hit and people seemed to get a lot out of it. And it just so happens T-Nation reached out and asked if they could publish the series on their site.
Days 1-10 were posted today and they include all the videos I filmed in addition to some added (written) commentary.
Matthew Ibrahim is the Co-Owner & Lead Performance Coach of TD Athletes Edge in Salem, MA. He has been an invited guest speaker nationally in over 10 U.S. states, which was highlighted by his presentations at Google Headquarters and Stanford University, in addition to guest speaking internationally in Milan, Italy.
Since 2004, we have been driven by a relentless pursuit of best practices in youth training. Our focus on motor pattern training and physical literacy enhancement optimizes kids’ fitness and elevates their athleticism. We help protect kids and teens against sports injury, boost their sports performance, and push back against the forces behind obesity.
