The Official Deadlift Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES!)

What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com.

We're talking deadlift today. One of the best exercises you can do if you do it right. So we're breaking out the checklist so we can break this down step by step and make sure that you do.

Okay, any good deadlift starts with how you prepare your body to do it before you even do the exercise. So a couple things that I do: there's two considerations here. Number one: you've got to have the feeling that you could actually get to this bar and do this exercise properly.

So what I do is a quick, little routine to feel nice, and loose. I put my feet up, against the insides of the plates, and I use them to stretch out my adductors in my groin because we know if you're going to be driving your knees out – as you should be, as you'll see when you press this bar off the ground, and pull it off the ground – I say 'press'. That's the key difference, too.

You're going to want to make sure that you have adequate flexibility here through your adductors. The next thing I do is, I feel as if I want to keep my hamstrings engaged, and I also want to have my pelvis in the right position. So I lean forward where to grab the bar, and I try to get myself into an anterior pelvic tilt.

So I'm trying to rotate my pelvis all the way down until it's facing the ground. All the way down. Point your junk down to the ground, keep your hands on the bar, and then keep your head up.

Look straight ahead and just feel the stretch in your hamstrings, and feel the stretch here in all those attachments to your pelvis that we know we feel like we're in that good position. Once I do that – just for a couple minutes until I feel nice, and loose – the next thing I'll do is this pre-deadlift movement pattern. That is, I stand here, I keep my hands on my thighs – you're going to see why this is very important in a second – and I let them slide down until the level of the knees, by doing nothing but hip hinging.

If you just did what I showed you that hip hinge should feel really easy now. So right down to here, no bending the knees. From here, once I get to the level of the knees, then maintaining this low back, I just let my hands drop straight down by bending nothing but the knees.

Then I work on going back up and feeling the first few inches of this to be nothing but let press as I get to the level of the knees, and then driving through with nothing but the hips. So it's hip hinge to the level of the knees, drop the knees down, push through the knees, hip hinge, and finish it all the way here, through extension. Just use that movement pattern until you feel as if you've got it down, and then you're ready to start lifting the bar.

Now we're ready to actually approach the bar. There is something you want to focus on here. There are actually two things you want to focus on.

First of all, how far under the bar are your feet going to go? And how far apart should your feet be? First of all, let's deal with the easy one.

The width of your feet should be the width of your hips. Now, for someone that doesn’t have a really wide physique like me, that could be pretty narrow. You see mine.

I'm actually inside the non-knurled areas of the bar, here. For you, that could be a little bit wider, but it doesn't matter. You just want to be hip width.

As far as 'how far under the bar the feet should actually go', there's a little cue I like to use here. I want to just see my laces on the other side of the bar. So you can see right now I can't.

My laces are actually being covered by the bar. If I sneak them out, just to the other side here, now I've actually setup the right position for this bar. Which should be about 1" away from my shin because when I go down to the bar my shins will go forward to meet that bar, and that is the proper position.

Now, a lot of people will try to roll the bar away, and then roll it back. That's sort of a pre-lift ritual, but ultimately what they're doing is they're getting that bar back to that position, and they're using the experience that they have, and being comfortable with moving the bar to get it there, ultimately, in the right position. If you're new and you're just learning this exercise; take one of those variables out.

Get set to the bar and don’t change anything else. Get yourself about 1" away, get ready to perform the lift, and just go ahead and do it. Okay now, with the feet in the proper place, now we've got to get the hands in the proper placement.

There are two elements I want to cover here. It is the type of grip that we're going to use – because we've probably seen a lot of different grips being used on this exercise – as well as the width of your hands on the bar when you perform the lift. So first of all, let's talk about the type.

You have three different options here when it comes to how you're gripping the bar. Most commonly, you probably see this 'double overhand grip'. There's a great advantage to this that we're going to get into when we actually talk about performing the lift, but at the surface level here, this is giving you the most balanced distribution of your upper body, and how you're gripping the bar so you don’t create muscle imbalances by gripping the bar.

The second option that you'll see is often the choice when you feel as if this is too weak of a grip, because the bar starts to roll out of your hands. So what do we do? We see people do a mixed grip.

The mixed grip is one under, one over. The one under and one over allows the bar to stop rotating, because as it starts to fall out of this hand, it's actually turning more into this hand. So you're creating more stability.

It's the same way you would grab a baseball bat. Your dominant hand would be on the top here, and the underhand, you just take that baseball bat, and turn it. That's what you're doing here, on the bar.

However, in order to eliminate some of the muscular imbalances that could be created from doing this – especially up in your shoulder girdle – you would want to alternate the grips here. So you have a third option. This is the option chosen by more of the advanced lifters that perform this lift.

That would be a hook grip where you take your thumb, you wrap it around, and then you wrap your fingers over your thumb. So if you look at it here, they wrap their fingers around that thumb. Now I'm going to tell you, if you're going to do this, number one: it's going to be very uncomfortable.

It's going to feel like you're snapping your thumb off. But in order to alleviate that you want to grip on that first digit here. That first knuckle right here.

If you go on top here you're really going to feel like you're snapping your thumb off. Okay, from here I still would advise – if you're going to do this, you're going to want to build up to this by starting with lighter weights, accommodating to this discomfort that you might feel on this the first time you do it, and then over time, of course, your body is going to become resilient to it. It will be, overall, your most effective grip, your strongest grip, and it will also not lead to those imbalances that the mixed grip would.

Now as far as the width, and how wide I want my hands on the bar, that actually brings up a point from the last topic. That is, a lot of people think that the mixed grip is what is responsible for leading to bicep tears during the deadlift. A lot of people are scared about tearing a bicep during a deadlift.

More so, it actually comes from what you're doing with your arms, in terms of width, and I'll show you why. First of all, people sometimes want to grab the bar wide. But what you're doing when you grab wide is, you're effectively shortening the length of your arms.

If we know that – if I let my arms hang straight down, right about the width of my hips, or just down at the side – they're as long as right here. To this point in my thigh. But if I widen them you can see that they lift up, and I've just shortened them by about 2", or 3".

So the shorter my arms become – because I widen them out on the bar – the lower, and deeper I'm going to have to become on every, single rep of the lift. And I'm not necessarily concerned about that from the strength benefits, because that would be a good thing. I'm more concerned about the fact that most of us don’t have the mobility to go those extra 2", or 3" down.

So you're causing yourself and increased likelihood that you're going to screw the lift up by going wider. So the ideal position here is to have your hands just outside of those hip width feet. So just to the outside by about 1".

Now you want to have enough room here for two reason. Number one: you don’t want to have your hands dragging up the sides of your thighs, here. You want the bar dragging up your thighs, but you don’t want your hands dragging up because the extra friction can make the exercise: A) more uncomfortable than in could be, and B) just become a little more awkward.

But more importantly, the tendency, as I said, is when you start to push you're going to want to have your legs pushing out. If your arms are too close, what happens is, people will create an inadvertent elbow bend here, as they perform the lift. No matter if you're doing it this way, or you're doing it this way with a mixed grip you might get some flexion here of the elbow as you perform the lift, which places a high degree of unnecessary tension on the bicep.

That is what, more often, leads to the ruptures of what you see happening in the biceps. The same thing would apply if I were to go do a dead hang on a pullup bar. I could hold there for a very long period of time, but if you wanted me to do a flex-arm hang that time would be cut drastically.

So we can actually become more efficient by just letting the arms hang straight down, keep the tension all the way through here. Even though it's more elongated it's less likely to tear in this position because it's a more stable position. Okay, we've got the feet in place, we've got the hands in place, and now we've got to get our body in place.

If you've followed what I've said to this point, as you lower yourself to the ground, if your feet are the proper distance away from the bar your shins will make contact with that bar. Now your grip, as you said – we've talked about – and from here the only goal you should have is to get your low back in the right position to execute this lift because when people talk about the dangers of this lift it's because they're doing it with the wrong positioning of the low back, which can cause a lumbar disc issue if you don’t do it right. So from here you only have two cues.

You've got to drive your chest forward, up, and out, and you want to drive your hips down. So from here the chest goes out, hips go down. What you'll also find is that your arms will get the lats activating to actually pull you into that position.

Think about doing a straight-arm push down. You're literally doing that straight-arm pushdown, which will bring the bar further in contact with your shins, chest goes out, hips go down, and I'm ready to rock and roll. Now the key, as I've said, the position of the low back being flat.

You don’t want that rounded low back. Don’t worry about how angled your torso is to the ground. As long as the low back is in the right position.

You may see people that are really far bent over like this, here, or people that are more upright. That's a factor of their leg length and torso length; whatever is right for you. As long as your low back is there, then you know you're in the right spot.

So now, when we get ready to actually pull, guys – this is why I call this a leg exercise'. And it had better be a leg exercise first if you want to avoid all the problems with your low back that you could potentially run into with this exercise. It has to start with a push of your legs off the ground until your hands are at the level of the knee.

So if you go back to that warmup that I was showing you, grooving that pattern; that's exactly what you're trying to do. I'm going to show you why, here. I'm going to break this down into, literally, two parts.

From the ground to the knee, and then from the knee, up. So now when we get in this position here, what you want to do – once that chest is out, and those arms are engaged, and the low back is down – what you're trying to do here is do a standing leg press. I'll show you exactly why this is exactly a leg exercise.

You're going 'standing leg press' from here, to here. Here, to here. Right from your hands, from there, from the floor, to the knee.

Once they get to the knee, that's when the hips will start to kick in. Then this will become a tremendous back exercise. But from here, to here you're doing all the initiation with a push of your legs, into the ground, as hard as you possibly can.

I talk about, all the time, why this is a standing leg press because the mechanics are the exact same. If my hands were down here on the handles, and my feet were on the plate, and I push away; all that is happening right there, from the legs. I do not bring my body closer to my thighs in order to feel like I'm pushing.

I take my feet and I push them away. So the same thing would apply here. You're not going to bring your body closer to your thighs here because what that does is, it lifts with the hips.

The first move is hip. The first move is hip. Lifting with the hips throws your low back into a rounded position.

Which, again, is asking, and begging for a lumbar disc issue. This is an incredibly safe exercise. One of the best exercises you can do, but you have to get this part right.

So again, when we're in here the position is down, chest out, hands in, here, we're going to do a leg press, straight to here. Down. Leg press, straight to here.

I'm going to show you what happens to the bar once it reaches that level of the knees. So now, if we can get that bar to the knees we want to make sure that it's dragging up those shins every inch of the way, staying in contact. If you start to see space between the bar and you it's likely that you're not doing what I said before, which is keeping that lat engaged.

Keeping that straight-arm pushdown going to keep the bar close. It's going to keep your whole upper torso tight, and stable also. So now when it gets to the level of the knees right here, by using just the legs to power it up, now we let the whole rest of the back kick in.

Now it becomes an incredible back exercise, and a posterior chain exercise as we drive through, using the strong muscles of the hips, and our low back extensors, and our traps to stabilize the bar. So we're going from here, and driving through. You'll notice if you do this right the timing is simple because you're using your knees as the visual cue of when to kick this in.

As soon as your hands are at the level of the knees, boom! The hips kick in and the bar will continue to travel up, in that efficient, straight path. So right against your shins, and right against your thighs.

That should be the goal on every, single rep. So it looks like this. From here, down, set up, to here, drive through with the hips.

Here, engaged, drive through with the hips. Now, on the way down you want to reverse the motion. Hip hinge, hip hinge, hip hinge.

Right to the level of the knee, straight knee bend. Very simple. So we're up here, down, and then on the way down hip hinge, hip hinge, hip hinge to the level of the knee, then let the knees bend, come straight down.

You'll see that the back stays right in the position you need it to be. Guys, this lift has a lot of components to it, but when you put them all together it's actually very, very simple. It should become a staple of your training for many, many reasons.

Most of which, it's one of the best total body exercises. Yes, you're training the legs. Most importantly, if you're training legs because it sets up the safety of the entire rest of the lift.

And of course, a posterior chain. Overall, awesome exercise. There's none better than this.

Guys, it's not the exercise. You can tell people "I'm deadlifting. " And you think you're doing things right.

It's doing the exercise right that matters the most. Actually, in this case doing the exercise wrong could actually lead to an injury that will keep you way from the gym for a long, long time. I don’t want to see that happen to you.

I want to make sure you get these all right. I hope you've found this checklist exhaustive, but very, very helpful. If you want me to cover more of them I'm happy to do that in future videos.

Just leave your comments down below and let me know. In the meantime, if you're looking for a program that cares – not just what exercises we do, but more importantly how we do them – head to ATHLEANX. com.

Use our program selector, using the link below this video to find a program of mine that is best suited to your current goals. All right, guys. I'll be back here again for a future video.

See you.