Hip bridges for glute activation and some abdominal work before deadlifting has always done it for me.
OP - You brace your trunk by flexing your abs (rectus, obliques…) and lats. This puts you into a solid starting position and will keep the bar close as you ascend. Brace your abs before you bend over to grab the bar. Brace your lats when you pull the slack out of the bar.
Mike Robertson has a pretty good article on deadlift form.
From seeing that vid, i would recomend:
Straighter legs + more hip hinge - you’re squatting down too much
Shoulders more forward over the bar
Thanks friends for all of the useful advice.
I think we should make this thread a “sticky”.
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[quote]theBird wrote:
Besides correcting anterior pelvic tilt and glute activation[/quote]
I understand glute activation, but why do we need to correct anterior pelvic tilt to deadlift? I thought APT was a necessary part of deadlifting.
To bend forward and lower our shoulders, we must tilt our pelvis forward. If we’re tilting without doing that, we’re rounding our spine instead.
Why do you NEED to deadlift?
I love deadlifting but if a lift isn’t working for me I wouldn’t think twice about dropping it. If you want a big back you could still do rack pulls.
I would STRONGLY recommend that you stop seeing a chiropractor. Some of those “adjustments” might make you feel better in the short term, but chiropractors are a dangerous breed. They pretend to be medical experts when they are no more than glorified massage therapists. Only difference is, they do things to the body that can be very dangerous and they don’t have a solid foundation of empirical evidence for why they do it.
Deadlifts are a great exercise, but if you continue to injure yourself with them they just aren’t worth it.
Deadlifts are now BANNED!
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Bird, you say you started light at 100kg…but it looked quite heavy for you, no offense just something I noticed, may be light compared to your other lifts. To learn correct technique take them back to around 50-60kg. This will stop you from hurting your lower back as much until you nail them.
Another way to save the lower back is to do deadlifts from blocks (say start at 4" high), this is good as it saves the lower back when learning, and you can then adjust down to standard 9" bar height (plates on ground).
Don’t stop doing them, they are probably the best posterior exercise known to man, and you would benifit from learning them.
But 100kg is not a light weight to start learning a new exercise mate, it may be light as compared to your other lifts but you have to ‘learn’ this lift to get the best benefit from it, than move up in weight from there.
my 2cents
Bird,
Have you tried Trap Bar DLing? Or has somebody already asked that, lol.
I am a Personal Trainer, and I don’t ever introduce deadlifts until clients have built a strong foundation and have perfected the movement. Your lower back injury is likely due to arching your back on the initial lift and using your core for the motion rather than beginning it with your legs. A proper deadlift begins in the same manner as a squat, with your torso and shins angled paralell over the bar and your lower back in straight alignment with your spine. Your weight should be loaded on your heels, not your toes. Upon lifting, your legs should not straighten until the bar passes your knees, at which point the focus becomes directed at tightening your glutes and thrusting your hips to stabilize the motion. The most important thing about the motion is that your body should be moving around the bar not the other way around, and the bar should be guided straing upward and not on any angle.
I would suggest starting with basic bodyweight squats to get the motion down, then progress to a lightly loaded bar. Don’t just jump into a big compound lift, the potential for knee and back injury is serious. Feel free to ask for advice anytime.
Thanks buddies for all the advice. I am going to review all the literature and come up with a program for the next 6-8 weeks to build my core and improve on my mobility/flexibility aswell. I will post my plan in this thread once I have come up with a plan.
In other news; my back is feeling much better. Tomorrow I will go for a low tempo cycle on the bike to kick off my training again.
Thanks again.
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its not a squat movement, jhew86.
Bird - says who? your mum? everybody can deadlift
[quote]chitown34 wrote:
I would STRONGLY recommend that you stop seeing a chiropractor. Some of those “adjustments” might make you feel better in the short term, but chiropractors are a dangerous breed. They pretend to be medical experts when they are no more than glorified massage therapists. Only difference is, they do things to the body that can be very dangerous and they don’t have a solid foundation of empirical evidence for why they do it.
Deadlifts are a great exercise, but if you continue to injure yourself with them they just aren’t worth it.
[/quote]
Bullshit on chiros! That could be said of ANY GP, and I’ll bet my left nut more GP’s have fucked people up than chiros.
My chiro was a Godsend when I fucked up my shoulders years ago. No surgery. Most GP’s would have shot me up with cortisone or recommended surgery.
I’m not sure why you asked this in the bodybuiilding forum and not the powerlifting forum.
My lower back used to hurt after deads and squats too but that’s because I wasn’t using my glutes and hamstrings properly and my lower back was trying to take up the slack.
I would watch these vids first:
http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Deadlift_Videos
This is a good series too:
http://www.elitefts.com/documents/deadlift_setup.htm
Best of luck
james
Thanks dwarf and atypical1.
Caveman- mum said i should take it easy or ill end up in a wheelchair by 40.
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a sydney funnel web will kill you first
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
[quote]chitown34 wrote:
I would STRONGLY recommend that you stop seeing a chiropractor. Some of those “adjustments” might make you feel better in the short term, but chiropractors are a dangerous breed. They pretend to be medical experts when they are no more than glorified massage therapists. Only difference is, they do things to the body that can be very dangerous and they don’t have a solid foundation of empirical evidence for why they do it.
Deadlifts are a great exercise, but if you continue to injure yourself with them they just aren’t worth it.
[/quote]
Bullshit on chiros! That could be said of ANY GP, and I’ll bet my left nut more GP’s have fucked people up than chiros.
My chiro was a Godsend when I fucked up my shoulders years ago. No surgery. Most GP’s would have shot me up with cortisone or recommended surgery.
[/quote]
I’m glad you avoided surgery and had a good experience, but when it comes to back and neck adjustments chiropractic adjustments have caused fractures, strokes, paralysis, and other terrible injuries. THat’s not to say that surgery and western medicine always end well or that all chiros are quacks, but you are taking a risk every time you let one of those guys manipulate your neck/spine.