What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. Jesse Lacio, athleanx.com.
You could stay down here, I'm a little bit more comfortable down here with you down here.
Oh, the shorts? Yeah. So today we're going to talk about
the deadlift and maybe your deadlift doesn't look this bad, but when you do it, you've recognized
the fact that there's something wrong here, right? Either it doesn't look the way it's supposed to,
or you're getting stuck at some point in the lift. So what I've done for you today as I put together
five red flags that are going to define for you the muscle weakness that is causing the problem
that you're having right now. You see, only two things cause problems in the deadlift either you
learn the wrong form and simply ingrained that over time by adding more and more weight to the
bar on a foundation that was weak in the first place. Or you just don't have the muscle strength
to do the deadlift right. So for that, guys, we need to start where we always do, and that is
With a Jesse intro. Run it. No, no, no, no.
In a world where people pick things up and put them down. There's one man who picks things up
and puts them down better than the rest and still has an eight pack.
Listen, two things, number one, you're insufferable. And number two,
I got to give you props, that was actually a really good lift.
Thank you, I appreciate it. I owe a lot to your coaching.
Well, thank you. Can we get back to the video now?
I guess. So, we have to start with guys
the ability to actually hold on to the bar and that means what is your grip strength like?
A good grip is imperative to having a good deadlift because if you don't have a good
control of the bar, well, things like that are going to happen. So we need to fix that.
In order to strengthen our grip there are a few exercises that I really rely on the most.
The first is the Weighted Pullup and not only is this a great back strengthening exercise,
but it does require that you have grip strength to be able to hold on to that bar when you have
additional weight strapped around your waist. But if you don't have, let's say, the back strength
to perform the exercise but still want to see the benefits of the extra added grip strength,
you can simply do a Weighted Hang. Here, you're not having to pull up, but you do have to have
good shoulder stability, which is another benefit that's going to carry over into the deadlift.
The last exercise you could do is certainly the Carry, which is one of my favorite exercises for
a lot of different purposes. But you can easily mix it in to either the strength training portion
of your workout or into the conditioning aspect of any workout program you're on.
So let's say the grip is good, but now you struggle because you can't break these plates
off the ground, and to do that, you're going to want to have strong quads. That's right,
when you do the deadlift, pulling from the ground really means you need to have strong quads to get
it off the ground to break the bar off the ground. I talk about it all the time, the deadlift is a
leg exercise to start, at least to the level of the knee. Think of it as a Standing Leg Press
and to do that, what we need to do is be able to strengthen those quads. So the best way to do that
is to make sure you're doing the right exercises and your other parts of your workout.
And for that, we're talking about a Front Squat. We know the Front Squat gives us that preferential
ability to hit the quads a little bit more so than the glutes in the traditional squat. We also have
a Bulgarian Split Squat, which does not only a great job of giving you a chance to target the
quads better, but to do so in a unilateral way to expose any imbalances that might exist right
or left. And we also have a Reverse Lunge, which can be done with either dumbbells or a barbell,
as seen here. Being able to maintain that upright torso shifts that load once again,
just like in the Front Squat to have that strength to be better able to pull that
bar off the ground. But it doesn't stop there because in order to break the bar off the ground,
you have to be stable in the first place. And that all comes from up here. And that is
by having strong lats and a strong core. Because you need to create the tightness through the body,
through the body to be able to perform the lift efficiently. So the first thing is these
lats over here, can you pin your arms down to your side? While we have an exercise for that,
the Straight Arm Push Down and the best way to do this is either as a traditional sternum push down,
we were really trying to get your elbows tight to your sides and down as far as you can.
Or you can mimic more the requirements of the deadlift and perform asymmetrically like this,
which becomes more challenging as you stand up. That bar wants to drift away,
and you have to have that isometric strength in place. But whatever you do, make sure you're doing
some version of the Straight Arm Push Down. The second thing is the abs the core,
and that also needs to be tight and what we do. There is some version of a Carry,
preferentially a Unilateral Carry. When you hold that one heavy dumbbell on your side,
you're challenging your pillar strength and your torso to be able to maintain an upright posture.
And though you're doing a bilateral balanced movement here on the deadlift, you still want
to have the ability to keep a rigid, tight torso throughout the entire lift. If you want,
you can do it overhead variation as well. With the arms up overhead, you're introducing
a bigger challenge because of the momentum arm increase. Either way, incorporating them is going
to help you to build more of that strength that's necessary for your core to help and
assist you to maintain the tightness, to get that bar going off the ground in the first place.
So let's say you can get the bar off the floor, but then you struggle at that point
when I'm talking about is from here to here to and through the knee, not lockout out, but
just in that area from here to here. Well, that brings up red flag number three because again,
we have to look at the weaknesses that are putting you in this position in the first place. And the
muscles that are responsible for this are going to be the hamstrings here and more importantly,
the low back. But we have to choose the right exercises to do this because we don't want to
necessarily train the hamstrings from a flexed knee position, but more so from
a flexed hip straight knee position. Allowing the hamstrings to focus on that secondary role of hip
extension. So we're looking at exercises like the RDL, and not only does it share deadlift in its
name with the deadlift itself, but also shares a lot of the same muscle responsibilities in terms
of the hamstring activation. We could also take the deadlift again and perform it with lighter
weights and a deficit deadlift fashion, increasing the range of motion of the exercise, which is
going to increase the activation of the hamstrings in their participation in the movement.
And of course, we have to dynamically work the low back here too, and my choice exercise is the
Weighted Hyperextension. And what this is doing is allowing you to put a weight across your chest
and allow the hamstrings to operate again out of this elongated state. We're focused on the
hamstrings as hip extensors because that is what their role is during the deadlift. And of course,
the deadlift is a compound exercise, so it's not just to muscle groups,
the hamstrings and lower back contributing in this part of the lift. We have those stabilizers that
have to be addressed to and for that, once again, the lats and now the traps from lower
to middle and upper stability is incredibly important, especially important in this part
of the lift. To and through the knees is going to demand that you have good thoracic extension,
ability and strength. Think about it. You've seen people cave in through that thoracic spine
because they're succumbing to the weight of the bar in this position.
They don't have full glute participation here yet. That's going to kick in next. So they're
succumbing to that extra weight and load. You have to strengthen this as much as you can, and
that Strait Arm Push Down will do just that. But when it comes to the traps, we can work our
way from top to bottom. The heavy shrug is a great exercise for building up the strength of
your upper traps and for supporting that bar and the weight of that load as you start to lift it.
The middle traps are going to respond best to something like a row done at a better position.
In other words, don't allow your thoracic spine to round at all when you're doing a row. Make
sure that even if you have to use slightly lighter weights, you're performing them with
really good thoracic strength, meaning either neutral or slightly extended if possible.
And of course, we can work those lower traps with something as simple as the Face Pull with the
overhead element added at the end. All of these are going to provide more stability and rigidity
here so that you don't succumb to the weight of that bar. Because again, you'll see it even as
people start to approach those really extreme ends of their one rep max. They just can't offload that
because this area will never be stronger than the way that bar that you have there. But the better
you can fortify yourself by strengthening it, the more efficient this lift will become, and you'll
be performing correctly and properly through that to and through portion of the deadlift.
And that brings us to red flag number four, the inability to lock out the lift. And it's
the most frustrating part of a deadlift because you've done all the hard work, you've just got
to get those hips all the way through. And this is the part that we're talking about from here
to here. We're only talking about a matter of a couple inches. And again, it seems like all the
hard work is done, but some people will really, really struggle here. And your problem is glute
weakness and once again, low back contributing to that final portion of the lift. But what can you
do? Well we've got to make sure that we're working the glutes this way. If you can choose exercises
that train the glutes in this anterior posterior motion, you're going to have a better opportunity
to nail this lockout. And the exercise I love here is the Pull Through, and this is going to
isolate that hinge element of the deadlift, allowing us to use the glutes as the main driver
through that final stage of hip extension. And we can maintain those hinge mechanics,
but make the exercise a lot more explosive with something like The Swing. You're just going to
want to make sure that you use heavy enough weight here. So you're not making this a conditioning
focus exercise, but one that's going to have better carry over to the deadlift itself through
the heavier loads. If you want to go really heavy and really work on getting through that final
portion of hip extension, then the Barbell Hip Thrust is another great exercise to do. And again,
don't shortchange your range of motion here just so you can look good on Instagram with
a lot of plates on the end of the bar, you want to make sure that you're finishing fully through
hip extension to get the best benefits. And we mentioned the Weighted Hyperextension before
being a good way to recruit the hamstrings into the deadlift at that lower portion of the lift.
But if we simply allow that to carry up an extra phase here to knee flexion and most importantly,
full glute extension, the Glute Hand Raise now becomes an amazing way to
train all these functions and to tie in all the functions with the low back.
Well, that looks comfortable. Well, it certainly is.
All right. So let's say that you have everything in place. You've got a strong grip. You can rip
that bar off the floor. You've got the strength to not just take that bar to, but through your knees,
and you can lock out that bar like a champion at the top. But you have red flag number five and
that is bad form. If you want to fix that, guys, I put together an official deadlift checklist
everything you need to know about how to perform the exercise right every single time, you're
going to want to watch that video over here. And of course, as always guys if you re looking
for a step-by-step plan to build your best body while putting the science back in strength,
you can find them all over at athleanx.com. Make sure you click Subscribe and turn
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