If you're someone with tall height and struggling to perform Deadlifts, a good technique. If you're worried about your spine and wrong posture, here in this article we are going to learn proper form and techniques to do deadlift step by step and how can you strengthen your hamstrings, back & Traps for heavy lifts.
Being a tall individual, the range of motion increases and the posture that suits most of the people might not be the best for you. And executing deadlift with a wrong posture will surely be deadly for your spine as the name speaks for itself ‘DEADlift’. Rather of following what your short friends are doing, let’s learn the correct posture and right technique that will help tall people like you and me to get stronger with deadlifts rather of getting hurt.
Step 1: Stand in front of the barbell with weights on. Step forward and move your feet under the barbell. Your feet are hip width apart, toes facing forward.
Step 2: Now, hinging your hips, while keeping your spine straight/neutral and chest up tight, keeping your knees soft, reach down the barbell with your hands and with the strong grip grab the barbell just one thumb way from the thighs.
Step3: Now, for the tall individuals, engaging your back muscles, squat down with your hips bringing your hips down to the level of shoulders.
WHILE LIFTING THE WEIGHTS
Step4: After you squat down, push the floor with your feet just like leg press and try to stand up with the barbell making sure the hips and the shoulders are moving up together (It is very important to make sure that you’re keeping your hips down then the level of the shoulders while lifting the barbell off the ground until you cross the knees level.)
Step5: As the barbell crosses your knees, extend your knees and hips at the same time while squeezing your glutes as the body stand erect. (Make sure you’re not doing hyperextension while standing posture.)
WHILE BRINGING THE WEIGHTS DOWN
Step6: While bringing the weights down, keep your knees just soft (no bending of the knees) while keeping your spine strong, straight and chest up tight. Let the weight come down while pushing your hips backward.
Step7: As the barbell crosses the knees, start bending your knees, slowly bring your weights to the floor. (As the weight reaching toward the floor, maintain strong spine (straight/neutral) all the time.)
One reputation ends as the weight touches the floor, and you can repeat from ‘Step3’ to do more reps from here for each rep performed.
….
Muscle engagement while doing deadlift is majorly on hamstrings, traps/back, glutes, quads.
Breaking down the engagement while doing different part of deadlifts would be:
While initiating and moving the weights up, major engagement is on quads, back and traps.
When you’re standing with the weights, engagement is with your traps, back and glutes.
While reaching down with the weights, engagement is on the hamstrings, glutes, traps and back.
…..
Deadlift is one of the most important exercise one can do, if the person wants to have maximum impact on the hamstrings then go with the moderate weights and instead of doing one reputation max, and do stiff leg deadlift.
Stiff Leg Deadlift
To do the stiff deadlift After ‘Step6’ follow ‘Step8’ below (max impact on hamstring, glutes)
Step8: As the Bar Crosses the knees, do not bend the knees and let the weights come down to the point where the spine is about the parallel to the floor or a little less. (let the bar reach till mid-shin or little less).
Step9: Now, again lift back the weights (let the bar travel just over the mid of the feet without dropping the weights down.)
Step10: Again, as the bar crosses your knees, squeeze and extend your hips and knees just like ‘Step5’. (Go for the max reputations while maintaining strong spine, chest uptight, knees just soft)
Common mistakes to avoid:
Do not let your spine curve while lifting the weight, neither while moving the up nor while going down with the weights. (understand, if you can see your spine is getting curved while lifting then, you need to strengthen your muscles first to support better spine stability rather than doing ego lifting.)
Again, maximum people are not aware of their goals and go for ego lifting while try to show off how heavy they can lift, but your one wrong move can give you spine injury that will stay with you for life. Deadlift is a technical compound movement that need to be learned first or to be done under professional coach.
Do not bend your knees quickly while moving weights down, by doing this you’ll miss the hamstring engagement and your knees will interrupt the bar movement. Only bend your knees once the bar crosses the knees level, that too slowly, not bending it immediately.
Your hips should not lift first while initiating the bar lifting. Your hips should be down to the level of the shoulders while lifting from the ground.
Another common mistake is when your knees start rolling inside
Do not bar move away from body, at the same time do not let it collide with your knees. (Ideally, the bar will be over the middle of your feet and will be travelling vertically up without any forward or back movement.)
Know your goals, if the goal is to do power lifting then understand that before lifting heavy, you should first work on the basics and learn how to maintain strong posture and learn to work the technique. A strong foundation is the key for heavy lifting. One small mistake have the tendency to ruin your powerlifting career before even it started.
If your goals are to look good and build functional strength, then do not let heavy lifters in the gym influence you to become an ego lifter and forget your goal. Maintain your track and work with moderate weights with maximum reputations to build strength and overall muscle growth. Working with moderate weights give your ability to do more reps that targets the desire muscle more with comparatively less injures. As the muscle grows and your strength increases, you will eventually try adding more weights.
One very common mistake people usually do while performing deadlift is shoulder shrugging. Avoid lifting your shoulders up as you lift weights or while in standing posture.
Another variation that tall lifters can try is:
If you find you’re lacking the required mobility to perform the normal deadlift or with the hip width feetstance, then you can open up your feet and try with wider stance that will reduce the range of motion as compare to the hip width stance that might need more body mobility.
Or you can also go for sumo deadlifts that can further reduce the range of motion more.
If you find this article worth your time and have learned something from it, then do not forget to subscribe to author on YouTube. Click on Healthonpoint. And subscribe to encourage the coach to write more such articles for we all learners. If you have any questions, feel free to comment, or you can get in touch with the expert Strength & Conditioning Coach Aman Abrol on Instagram.
