- One of the best, most fundamental
and most indispensable exercises out there
is the deadlift.
But contrary to popular belief,
you do not need to spend all of your time deadlifting
with only a barbell.
There's actually a better way to do that
and a more natural way for your body to do that,
and that is what we're gonna show you today.
It is the trap bar deadlift.
It's gonna be a lot easier and a lot more natural
for you to pick up in the trap bar.
You're gonna be able to get explosive with this,
use it for power,
and still move some serious load.
However, we wanna make sure we create tension
as we go through the movement,
and we're gonna show you how to do that now.
The biggest difference
with the trap bar deadlift versus the barbell
is the position of the load.
So when we have the barbell,
obviously the whole weight the entire time
is in front of us,
and that creates a little bit
of a different pulling pattern.
Here with the trap bar,
Brett gets to be inside the trap bar.
The weight is around him,
and he's gonna be able to pick up a lot more naturally.
He's also not gonna have to go down as far
depending on the trap bar he's working with.
So the key thing first is Brett's gonna position himself.
You wanna make sure that your shins line up
right with the center of the bar.
Don't be behind it.
If anything, be a little bit in front of it,
because that's gonna help your leverage,
but do not be behind it
because then instantly,
you've got the weight out in front of you,
and we want that weight centered
so that all we can do when we deadlift,
all we have to do, is stand up.
That's step one.
Now Brett is going to push his butt back as far as he can.
And all we're doing here is setting up, keep in mind.
He's pushing his butt back as far as he can.
Once he can no longer push his butt back,
then he's gonna bend his knees.
And that's how he's going to get to the bar.
Critical in this is also how we grip the bar.
We want to be serious about this.
You want to take a very, very aggressive grip.
Don't let this hang in your fingers,
because you really, really need
all of that strength and stability
so that you can be in this proper setup.
Brett's head position is also key too.
You're gonna see some people look up.
That is not necessarily bad.
There are people who say that's okay.
It's a lot safer for your neck
to not be in that position of extension.
So look for something slightly in front of you
and try to keep that neck in neutral as much as possible.
You can even have somebody,
if you have a broomstick or a dowel at your gym,
have somebody put that right on top of you.
It's a good way to work on finding that line
and on staying in that position as you deadlift.
Now, once Brett's here,
we've gotta worry about the upper body,
because we want to protect our shoulders,
we want to protect our bicep's tendons.
And one of the issues I see often with the deadlift
is people don't create proper tension.
So Brett wants to squeeze his shoulder blade nice and tight.
And then he's gonna try to turn
the pits of his elbows forward.
What he's instantly done
is he's turned all of his rotator cuff musculature on,
he's turned his lats on,
and he wants to carry all of this tension into the deadlift.
But the last thing you wanna do
before you pick up that weight
is make sure that hips are lower than shoulders.
They've gotta stay lower than shoulders.
What happens sometimes,
and let's show them this position, Brett.
What happens sometimes is people get high.
They don't have proper tension.
And once you're in this position,
if your hips wind up higher than your shoulders,
then your back becomes the lever for the deadlift,
and we don't want that to happen.
We want our hamstrings and glutes to drive this motion.
And to do that,
we've got to make sure that hips stay lower than shoulders.
Now he's set up and he's got all this tension,
and from here, it's very simple.
All you do is stand up and squeeze your glutes.
Putting it back down is another matter.
When Brett's putting it back down...
Stand up again, Brett.
So putting it down, all Brett is going to do,
he's going to push his butt back again as far as he can,
just as we were doing when we were setting up,
and when he can no longer push his butt back,
that's when he bends his knees.
That's a nice, controlled lower.
You can do that quicker.
But at the initial, don't be afraid to treat this
a little bit like a focused, eccentric movement.
Take your time getting down there
so you can learn the motion.
Now, there's one other thing
we want to be very picky about when we're doing this.
We want to think about what we're doing
when we're setting the bar down.
Are we going to touch and go,
which is gonna require a little bit more core tension,
because we're gonna pick up right away?
Or do we just want to do a standard deadlift rep?
When you start out,
it's better to bring this bar all the way to the ground,
reset your position, even reset your lats.
Go ahead and turn the pits of your elbows forward
at the start of every rep, and then lift.
That's gonna help set you up
and teach you the proper deadlift fundamentals.
As you get better,
you can start to just tap the weight to the ground.
You're gonna have to use
a little bit less weight to do that,
but it's going to challenge your core a little bit more
and it's gonna teach you how to maintain tension over a set.
So those are the two differences.
One other thing you want to be very cautious of,
and this is probably the biggest mistake
I see when people deadlift.
Let's get down into the position again, Brett.
What people will do is they've got all this tension,
they did everything right,
but they'll dive down with their arms
and think they can pull up.
Now instantly...
Let's go back into that position, Brett.
Instantly, as soon as Brett has dropped his position,
he's doing it to try to create
a little bit more elastic energy.
But that elastic energy is not coming
from a powerful position.
Your arms are not gonna get a very big weight up.
It's your lower body that's gonna drive that.
So there's no point in doing that.
And as soon as he dropped that,
he lost his back position,
his hips wound up a little bit higher,
and all of a sudden,
he's lost all the tension he worked to create,
he's wasted everything he did before the rep.
So you've gotta trust your form and execution in this.
The other mistake you're gonna see people make,
you're gonna see their hips rise early.
And again, this is because they haven't created
that proper tension on the bottom of the deadlift,
and they haven't maintained that.
You should feel some tension in your hamstrings
when you're in the bottom of your deadlift position,
and you want to maintain that.
Hold that in there until you lift.
Don't lose that.
Those are your key deadlift points.
As long as you go through your steps,
you do not dive down,
take all of that tension into the motion
and keep your hips below your shoulders at all times,
squeeze your glutes as you stand up,
you will properly execute the trap bar deadlift
and you'll see those weights go up.
You're gonna see yourself get plenty stronger as you go.
So that is your basic trap bar deadlift.
And this is, once you master it,
one, you're gonna trap bar deadlift
way more than you conventional deadlift.
And two, it's gonna wind up being
the strongest move in your arsenal.
It's gonna be your real power move
to pack meat onto glutes, hamstrings,
and a lot more of your back than you'd think.
Keep the reps fairly moderate to start out.
Think of doing four sets of eight to 10
when you're learning the movement.
But once you have it mastered,
then we can start to do singles,
we can start doing really tight sets
of say, three to five reps.
You can do four sets of that,
take plenty of rest in between,
and you're gonna see yourself moving weight,
you're gonna see yourself getting much stronger,
and you're really gonna love this lift.
(smooth music)