Deadlift: size vs fatigue

Does it challenge you or is it super light when you pick it up? If your muscles experience tension when you deadlift it, and you’re using proper form, I’d actually recommend keeping it but aiming for more of an RDL (Romanian deadlift).

If you’re a beginner, your goal is to consistently challenge yourself, place tension on the muscles, avoid injury, get stronger, and learn how to achieve a solid mind-muscle connection. Just my opinion. You can do this without the deadlift as someone said above, but as others have stated, it is a hip hinge that will recruit a ton of musculature from your entire posterior chain.

To be honest, I don’t deadlift all that often these days, but am a fan of the results when keeping it moderately loaded and paying more attention to the mind-muscle connection in the glutes and hams. However, if I didn’t have a gym membership, it would be nonnegotiable. I’d do it all the time.

Regardless, you could make progress on the RDL using the weight you have, and then once that becomes too easy, switch to a B-stance or kickstand RDL. This will shift tension to one side of your posterior chain and make each rep a lot harder with lighter weight. Just make sure to do both sides.

Once that becomes too easy, you could consider single leg RDLs or simply adding bands for extra tension. The cool thing about single leg RDLs is that the stability required to not fall over can leave a lot of strong people pretty fatigued, even when using dumbbells or kettlebells. And judging by all the physique competitors who use them, they seem to work.

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