Dead Lift or Dead End
By Paul Barber
Posted on NaturalStrength.com on October 4, 2002
The dead lift has been and always will be one of my favorite movements. It is an exercise that uses the most muscles and if you do several sets and reps it can leave you feeling the most "spent". It’s also probably one of the best measures of true strength and can help put on some serious mass. In this article I hope to convince you that lifting heavy, even though it causes pain at times, doesn’t have to lead you to what you think is a dead end – the dreaded "genetic potential" limitation. I wanted to use the dead lift to help illustrate how encounters with pain need only be short lived if you respond correctly. But the same principles are true for other lifts and effected body parts.
There are a few variations of this lift worth mentioning because they each offer certain benefits – the stiff-legged, the overhand, and dumbbell for examples. But why even do others, you say? If you are a strength enthusiast and you want to maximize your dead lift, why practice any other movement? Or if you bench press and you want to continue making gains, you keep benching right? So what’s stopping you? This can be answered in one simple but to-the-point word – PAIN. Pain is the mechanism that keeps us in one piece. Simply put, without it we die.
Let’s look at the dead lift and hip pain as an example. You’ve heard it before, "watch your form" and for good reason. Starting off with lighter weights using poor form and increasing the weight over time will lead to injury. But one must also take into consideration their own natural bone and joint makeup. And quite often you won’t really know that something doesn’t feel good until you work up to some hefty weight and go for it. What is better, to follow the picture of someone else’s good form to the "T", or follow the picture "somewhat" but listen you your body a little too? I say follow relatively good form but listen to your body.
The hip is a "ball-in-socket" joint like the shoulder as opposed to a "hinge" joint like the knee. And hip muscles are attached in such a way so that movement can be realized in several directions. If you examine the hip joint from a frontal view you’ll notice that the hip socket is at an angle. That is to say that the place where the ball comes into contact with the socket is not parallel with the ground nor is it perpendicular. Without this angle, you would not be able to raise your leg in the front, side or back. Everyone’s hip joint is not exactly the same especially when you take into account how muscles and tendons are attached and the angle in which they all meet. That is why everyone cannot and should not use the same exact stance while dead lifting. You need to experiment with the width of you feet a little before finding your sweet spot.
Logistically speaking, the closer your feet are, the more the bar must move off of the floor to lockout but the more outward pressure there is on the hip joint. The wider your stance the less noticeable hip pressure is and the less far the bar needs to travel on its way to lockout. Taken to an extremely wide stance results in a sumo dead lift. To assist in finding the best position, try holding a broomstick at various handgrip and foot positions while doing a mock dead lift. Then use a tape measure to determine the distance the broomstick travels off the floor. You may be surprised at how much actual "play" you have. Which one feels the best?
I’ll use an example from my own training. First let me say that I really am a chicken when it comes to pain. If I were a woman having a baby, the doctor would need to slap me to get me to stop crying. And this is before going into labor. I don’t like it. So when I encounter any pain at all in training, I experiment until it goes away. Why back off the weight, work up again; only do discover that you hit the same pain wall? I also like progress and to me, pain and progress don’t ever go together. My goal is to be able to dead lift as much as possible without damaging anything permanently.
I also like to use various lifts to receive maximum benefit in addition to maxing out on the weight lifted. Using "perfect" form, I began to experience a little pain in my right hip. I knew that if I kept increasing the weight, it would only end up bad. By the way, I rarely use the reverse-hand grip anymore when dead lifting. I use a straight overhand grip to assist in grip strength. With this grip, I also don’t have to worry about how it may tweak my back or cause some kind of imbalance. I also read somewhere that if you widen your stance in the squat, it makes the lift more efficient and helps alleviate pain. So why not try it for the dead lift? Hand position for one thing. There is a practical limit. Moving your feet outward means moving your hands as well. Where to you draw the line before turning it into a sumo lift? I tried sumo by the way, not for me, thanks.
What I’ve migrated to is a modified form – one that I use for most of my training. It’s an overhand, wide-stance (just outside of shoulders), wide-grip dead lift. There are several advantages to this form. It hits the same muscles as the dead lift. The wider stance, for me, causes no hip pain. The wider grip, works my entire back more efficiently. And the overhand position helps with gripping strength and keeps everything balanced. Now when I’m ready to go for singles on the classic dead lift, it seems easier than before. And I’m not worrying about whether or not I will do something nasty to my hip.
When you move forward with pain that doesn’t go away, you are only kidding yourself. But it is possible to train around it. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little. I think in the long run, you’ll be further ahead.
You may be wondering why I did not mention the trap-bar dead lift. For one thing, I don’t use one but I think it’s a valuable exercise nonetheless. It works a lot of the same muscles. To me, though I want to stick as close as possible to the big 3, just as a general yardstick. The other thing is that there are very few heavy "odd" objects in the world that one would pick up that have a big hole in the middle. I would prefer training with sand bags instead of a trap bar, but that’s just my personal point of view. I think training with one, as an alternate to the dead lift would not help if you were trying to increase classic dead lifting poundage. On the other hand, I’ve heard it said that a trap bar allows you to push yourself like never before. So, I don’t count it out completely until I’ve tried it.
When you are driving and you see a sign that says "Dead End", do you keep driving anyway, thinking that maybe the sign is wrong or maybe you’ll find a secret passage? No you avoid it because it would stop you from progressing to your destination. Consider pain a dead end sign. Whether it’s a big sign or a little one, it is still a sign and it means the same thing – dead end. Don’t drive that way - drive around.
By Paul Barber
Posted on NaturalStrength.com on October 4, 2002
The dead lift has been and always will be one of my favorite movements. It is an exercise that uses the most muscles and if you do several sets and reps it can leave you feeling the most "spent". It’s also probably one of the best measures of true strength and can help put on some serious mass. In this article I hope to convince you that lifting heavy, even though it causes pain at times, doesn’t have to lead you to what you think is a dead end – the dreaded "genetic potential" limitation. I wanted to use the dead lift to help illustrate how encounters with pain need only be short lived if you respond correctly. But the same principles are true for other lifts and effected body parts.
There are a few variations of this lift worth mentioning because they each offer certain benefits – the stiff-legged, the overhand, and dumbbell for examples. But why even do others, you say? If you are a strength enthusiast and you want to maximize your dead lift, why practice any other movement? Or if you bench press and you want to continue making gains, you keep benching right? So what’s stopping you? This can be answered in one simple but to-the-point word – PAIN. Pain is the mechanism that keeps us in one piece. Simply put, without it we die.
Let’s look at the dead lift and hip pain as an example. You’ve heard it before, "watch your form" and for good reason. Starting off with lighter weights using poor form and increasing the weight over time will lead to injury. But one must also take into consideration their own natural bone and joint makeup. And quite often you won’t really know that something doesn’t feel good until you work up to some hefty weight and go for it. What is better, to follow the picture of someone else’s good form to the "T", or follow the picture "somewhat" but listen you your body a little too? I say follow relatively good form but listen to your body.
The hip is a "ball-in-socket" joint like the shoulder as opposed to a "hinge" joint like the knee. And hip muscles are attached in such a way so that movement can be realized in several directions. If you examine the hip joint from a frontal view you’ll notice that the hip socket is at an angle. That is to say that the place where the ball comes into contact with the socket is not parallel with the ground nor is it perpendicular. Without this angle, you would not be able to raise your leg in the front, side or back. Everyone’s hip joint is not exactly the same especially when you take into account how muscles and tendons are attached and the angle in which they all meet. That is why everyone cannot and should not use the same exact stance while dead lifting. You need to experiment with the width of you feet a little before finding your sweet spot.
Logistically speaking, the closer your feet are, the more the bar must move off of the floor to lockout but the more outward pressure there is on the hip joint. The wider your stance the less noticeable hip pressure is and the less far the bar needs to travel on its way to lockout. Taken to an extremely wide stance results in a sumo dead lift. To assist in finding the best position, try holding a broomstick at various handgrip and foot positions while doing a mock dead lift. Then use a tape measure to determine the distance the broomstick travels off the floor. You may be surprised at how much actual "play" you have. Which one feels the best?
I’ll use an example from my own training. First let me say that I really am a chicken when it comes to pain. If I were a woman having a baby, the doctor would need to slap me to get me to stop crying. And this is before going into labor. I don’t like it. So when I encounter any pain at all in training, I experiment until it goes away. Why back off the weight, work up again; only do discover that you hit the same pain wall? I also like progress and to me, pain and progress don’t ever go together. My goal is to be able to dead lift as much as possible without damaging anything permanently.
I also like to use various lifts to receive maximum benefit in addition to maxing out on the weight lifted. Using "perfect" form, I began to experience a little pain in my right hip. I knew that if I kept increasing the weight, it would only end up bad. By the way, I rarely use the reverse-hand grip anymore when dead lifting. I use a straight overhand grip to assist in grip strength. With this grip, I also don’t have to worry about how it may tweak my back or cause some kind of imbalance. I also read somewhere that if you widen your stance in the squat, it makes the lift more efficient and helps alleviate pain. So why not try it for the dead lift? Hand position for one thing. There is a practical limit. Moving your feet outward means moving your hands as well. Where to you draw the line before turning it into a sumo lift? I tried sumo by the way, not for me, thanks.
What I’ve migrated to is a modified form – one that I use for most of my training. It’s an overhand, wide-stance (just outside of shoulders), wide-grip dead lift. There are several advantages to this form. It hits the same muscles as the dead lift. The wider stance, for me, causes no hip pain. The wider grip, works my entire back more efficiently. And the overhand position helps with gripping strength and keeps everything balanced. Now when I’m ready to go for singles on the classic dead lift, it seems easier than before. And I’m not worrying about whether or not I will do something nasty to my hip.
When you move forward with pain that doesn’t go away, you are only kidding yourself. But it is possible to train around it. Don’t be afraid to experiment a little. I think in the long run, you’ll be further ahead.
You may be wondering why I did not mention the trap-bar dead lift. For one thing, I don’t use one but I think it’s a valuable exercise nonetheless. It works a lot of the same muscles. To me, though I want to stick as close as possible to the big 3, just as a general yardstick. The other thing is that there are very few heavy "odd" objects in the world that one would pick up that have a big hole in the middle. I would prefer training with sand bags instead of a trap bar, but that’s just my personal point of view. I think training with one, as an alternate to the dead lift would not help if you were trying to increase classic dead lifting poundage. On the other hand, I’ve heard it said that a trap bar allows you to push yourself like never before. So, I don’t count it out completely until I’ve tried it.
When you are driving and you see a sign that says "Dead End", do you keep driving anyway, thinking that maybe the sign is wrong or maybe you’ll find a secret passage? No you avoid it because it would stop you from progressing to your destination. Consider pain a dead end sign. Whether it’s a big sign or a little one, it is still a sign and it means the same thing – dead end. Don’t drive that way - drive around.
