To start, lets get the elephant out of the room – dead lifting is not bad for your back 🙂

Deadlifting is making a serious come back within the exercise world due to the functional pattern movement and full body workouts. It is often seen as a ‘bad’ exercise for your back but if performed with good technique it can have a raft of benefits including:

  • Eccentric hamstring strength
  • Perfecting your hip hinge movement pattern
  • Build a strong posterior chain
  • Lengthen your hamstrings
  • Creating strong stable core positions that integrate into life and movement

Technique is key to avoid injury.


Common errors completing the deadlift movement pattern:

  • Pulling the weight off the ground with a rounded back.
  • Get your feet in a good position prior to the lift – grip the floor with your feet, and lift your arches up.
  • Trying to ‘squat’ your deadlift.
  • Incorrect diaphragm breathing & bracing technique prior to lifting.
  • Poor hip hinge and not utilising posterior chain muscles correctly.
  • Lifting to much weight.
  • Not gripping the bar to create tension in the system.

Pictures: Rounded, squatting the deadlift


Quick Tips

  • Practice your hip hinge using a band
  • Get your glutes firing prior to lifting
  • Lift the bar from an elevated height (Plates under the bar) to decrease movement capacity

Practice makes perfect. Get the basics right.

  1. Barbell over midfoot and weight centred over the bar.
  2. Screw feet into the ground and imagine ‘ripping the bar apart’.
  3. Hinge at the hips by dropping hips back and feeling hamstrings tighten.
  4. From here think DRIVE up from hips not PULL up.
  5. Once the bar crosses your knees squeeze glutes and finish the movement without swaying back.
  6. Repeat the hip hinge movement to return the bar down.

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