- The deadlift is the most fundamental key lift
in your exercise arsenal,
and one of the most underrated ways to do it
is something called the Sumo deadlift.
Once you master this,
this is great for people who have long legs
and it might actually be more comfortable for you.
You might find that you're stronger on this lift
for a variety of reasons.
We're gonna show you how to do that right now.
So the key difference between the Sumo deadlift
and other deadlifts,
is when we're doing that conventional deadlift
we have our hands outside of our legs.
Now we're gonna move our legs outside of our hands.
And this is gonna create a couple of advantages.
One of the key advantages is, we have a lot of freedom,
and this is why powerlifters very often
go to the Sumo deadlift.
You have a lot of freedom to
move over a shorter range of motion.
We get our legs wider.
We don't have to hinge through a quite as far.
You are gonna work in different ways
on the Sumo deadlift though,
because in order to get that leg position,
in order to find that width,
we have to really contract our glutes in a holding position
and maintain that squeeze as we're doing the deadlift.
That's why many people consider the Sumo deadlift
a really good glute builder,
even though the conventional and trap bar deadlifts
are gonna build your glutes as well.
So the key thing with the Sumo deadlift for Brett,
he wants to have his feet wide,
and what he essentially wants to do,
and it takes a couple of tries for this is you wanna find
a way to get your feet as wide as possible
and when you lower down to the bar,
you want your shins to wind up perpendicular to the ground.
That's gonna allow him to drive through the ground,
and he's not gonna be able to do that
unless his shins are perpendicular to the ground.
He walks up to the bar,
you wanna get nice and close to the bar.
That way you can lift up in a straight line.
And it's okay if it might actually skin your shins,
when you're lifting it up, that's gonna happen,
wear high socks or wear pants,
but you want that bar close to you.
He's got his feet wide.
And what he's gonna do is he's going to think about
pushing his butt back, reach down for the bar,
pull his hips down toward the bar.
When he's in this position again,
you wanna check with your shins, see he's a little wide.
So he might wanna come in a little bit because
you wanna be able to apply that force into the ground.
And the best way to apply to force into the ground
is by having your shins perpendicular to the ground.
And now we're gonna step through basically your process
and your essential set up for the deadlift.
Think of this as a checklist,
you wanna hit all of these marks,
regardless of whatever deadlift variety you're doing.
So again, Brett's got a nice and close up to the bar,
think about, and you wanna make sure
that you can see your toes.
On the other side of the bar,
your shins are maybe a half an inch away from the bar.
Once he's in this position, again,
he's going to push his butt back.
He's gonna squeeze his glutes as well.
By squeezing your glutes,
and this is key in the Sumo deadlift,
it's gonna help his knee get open,
it's gonna help his hip stay in the nice
external rotation position.
And it's gonna help him maintain
that vertical shin to the ground.
Now he's in this good position, he's grabbing the bar.
You wanna make sure that your grip is nice and tight.
You don't want to have this on your fingers,
but you're actively gripping a bar and squeezing it.
We wanna try to irradiate as much as we can,
get as much muscle working to do this lift as possible.
And now he's got one more step.
He wants to turn the pit of his elbows forward,
and squeeze his shoulder blades.
All of that turns on your back musculature.
That's gonna help protect your shoulders,
protect your biceps tendons as you're doing this deadlift.
Once we have all this tension, we have one final step.
What Brett's going to do,
and this is gonna help us get all the tension,
and really find the position
that we wanna be in for this deadlift.
What Brett's going to do is he's going to do something
called pulling the slack out of the bar.
Now this is very subtle.
Essentially there's that tiny little bit of space,
maybe a micrometer between the plate itself and the bar.
And we wanna pull that out.
We wanna pull that space tight,
and all that's done is now that set up
all this tension in Brett so that he can accomplish
this lift the way he needs to.
Now he's all set up to lift the bar.
So now Brett is set for the lift.
And from here, it is simple but nuanced at the same time.
The biggest thing is don't lose all of that tension
that he's already created.
So all he wants to do is from that position,
maintaining all that tightness,
keeping his hips lower than his shoulders.
He's just going to stand up and squeeze his glutes hard.
Now when he lowers back down,
we wanna be very nuanced about how we lower back down.
What we wanna do is continue to squeeze through our glutes
and think about opening up our knees as we lower it.
That's gonna help him return to that same
shin is perpendicular to the ground angle,
where he has the power he needs to lift for his next rep.
So let's do another rep Brett.
So think about this, don't be afraid,
especially when you're starting this lift
to let this be very slow and controlled as you lower.
And so you can really feel what your glutes are doing,
and you can feel what it feels like,
so you can understand what it feels like
to really continue to open your knees,
because that's critical to attacking the Sumo deadlift.
The one mistake you want to avoid making
is you don't want to create all of this tension
and then lose it.
So very often people are going
to drop their arms a little bit,
and then pull up
because they don't trust themselves in the lift.
That can work at lighter loads,
as you get heavier, you're going to miss the fact that
you didn't maintain all of that tension,
and you're not gonna be able to lift.
So get in your good habits now,
when you have 135, 225 pounds on there,
that way you can take those habits in
when you're hitting 315, 405,
and you're set up to attack 315 and 405 correctly.
So make sure you keep that tension there.
Other things you don't wanna do,
and this is a common problem in deadlifts in general,
you're gonna see people very often,
their butt starts to rise before anything else.
This is a huge problem because essentially now you've made
your lower back the lever, the driving lever here,
and you can't that you wanna make sure that your hips,
that your glutes and your hamstrings
are driving this motion.
And you do that by every single rep,
making sure that your hips are lower than your shoulders,
and finding that position,
finding all that glute tension and that hamstring tension.
The last mistake you will see on all barbell deadlifts
and something you want to avoid on the Sumo,
you're going to see people let this weight drift out
in front of them.
One of the reasons that we set our lats,
one of the reasons that we set our lats
is so that we could then lift in the straight line,
and our hips are driving the motion.
You don't want that weight to get away from you
because again, the farther that weight gets away from you,
when you lift the more, again,
you're back to comes to key lever,
that's a risk factor for your back,
and that's also not what we're trying to train.
So you wanna make sure that bar stays close
the entire time.
That is a Sumo deadlift, and that is how you execute it.
So that is the Sumo deadlift.
And once you master it, this is very likely going to be
the exercise where you move the most weight.
It is not a deadlift that you need to do
in every single workout.
You wanna think about playing
with all the different deadlifts
at some point in your training cycle,
and get comfortable with them all.
So you can use this for say four to five weeks.
Think about doing four sets of six to eight reps,
and moving weight, and don't be afraid to push that weight.
And then that's going to feed
into a stronger trap bar deadlift.
It's gonna feed into a stronger conventional deadlift
because you're exposing your body to these greater loads
that they might not have been able to hit
when you were doing the trap bar deadlift
and the conventional.
So there's a lot of potential here.
Get the Sumo deadlift in your arsenal and have fun with it.
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