My Deadlift is a Disaster

Training Powerlifting
61

Looks like you’re doing something that I did for a long time- you’re starting with your hips too high, not using leg drive. You’re essentially stiff-legging it. I would guess that you aren’t pulling the bar up your shins either.

Try setting up with the bar about 4" from your shins while standing. Reach down, get your grip, then drop your hips- at this point your weight should transfer forward and shins should contact the bar. Sack up, and pull that fucking bar up your shins. Your form looks worse than mine did, but it appears to be the same issues- I also wasn’t contacting my shins. First couple pulls of the workout kind of suck, but you get used to it and it’s no big deal. Once I started doing this, my lower back was no longer trashed the day after deads.

62

Well, thanks to both Sandos and Consul for the props guys (and girls). I just try to help out. I’ve done a lot of things wrong in the past so I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two over the years of screwing up haha.

To the OP–I have no doubt that with your attitude you will eventually come out on top. I think you’ll eventually put this all behind you and pull even heavier weights.

63

[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Well, thanks to both Sandos and Consul for the props guys (and girls). I just try to help out. I’ve done a lot of things wrong in the past so I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two over the years of screwing up haha.

To the OP–I have no doubt that with your attitude you will eventually come out on top. I think you’ll eventually put this all behind you and pull even heavier weights.[/quote]

You’re welcome, man. Learning from the screw-ups seems to be the important factor in determining success.

64

This is a great thread, I’m glad I saw it this morning. Thanks OP for posting and thanks to everyone else giving such great advice.

I’m a new lifter also, I’ve been doing this for 6 months now and the advice on this board, and especially this thread is great.

Henry

65

[quote]dez6485 wrote:
Looks like you’re doing something that I did for a long time- you’re starting with your hips too high, not using leg drive. You’re essentially stiff-legging it. I would guess that you aren’t pulling the bar up your shins either.

Try setting up with the bar about 4" from your shins while standing. Reach down, get your grip, then drop your hips- at this point your weight should transfer forward and shins should contact the bar. Sack up, and pull that fucking bar up your shins. Your form looks worse than mine did, but it appears to be the same issues- I also wasn’t contacting my shins. First couple pulls of the workout kind of suck, but you get used to it and it’s no big deal. Once I started doing this, my lower back was no longer trashed the day after deads.[/quote]

I’ll give that a go when I hit up some speed deads tonight. But for the most part I am taking a break from heavy deads for awhile to bring up my weak points on it.

For anyone who is having similar issues I found this another older post on weak abs and stormthebeach dishes out some great info that is to fix a guy having similar rounding problems as me.

66

You might want to not worry about the speed on your speed deads either. Do them correctly or don’t do them at all (I vote for the doing them correctly option).

67

Pretty much what Aragorn said, but at the risk of giving you some information overload I have an additional suggestion.

Do your front squats as he described 1x a week.

On your second leg day, again start with front squats as Aragorn said, and then switch to back squats working up to one near max effort set of 5 reps. Then take about 50-60% of that 5 rep weight and do pause squats to the pins for 3 sets of 5.

Ideally you will set the pins just below parallel. For me, it usually works out that I bring them up one hole higher from where they were set for back squats as safety pins. Go down under control until the bar hits the pins, pause for about a second but DO NOT relax, and then explode up concentrating mainly on two things: 1) Lead with your chest 2) keep your knees out.

Ideally you should be able to work up to the point where you are doing 70-75% of your 5RM.

This will really help reenforce the correct movement pattern coming out of the hole. By pausing, the whole movement slows way down and you’ll really be able to concentrate on getting your chest up. As long as you keep your chest up, your back should stay flat. Not only will both the front and pause squats really help your leg strength, but I’ve also found they help with hip/groin/back flexibility as much as anything.

I’m also in the camp that you should not deadlift at all for a while. Ideally, you would completely forgot how to deadlift and rewrite that motor pattern in a few months after your squat intensive cycle. If you feel like you must deadlift, I’d suggest giving sumo a shot for a while.

As for your assistance work I really don’t think it matters much. Go for a GHR or reverse hyper if you have access, otherwise just make sure you are squatting with enough intensity that you don’t even need it. Personally, split squats and lunges are favorites of mine, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend you do the split squats. It’s just too easy to bend forward at the hips and you’ll end up rounding your back again. Lunges may be worth a shot. I’d cut out anything and everything that causes you to round your back, though, including good mornings. Again, we need your body to forget that movement and that won’t happen if you keep doing exercises that reenforce it.

68

As far as the pin squats go, if they jar your shoulder and elbows too much, you can use chains to catch the bar. Just set the pins fairly high and close the chains around them so the bar catches on the chains at or a little below parallel.