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In the Gym

Now that you’ve made the majority of your choices regarding how to perform your deadlifts, it’s time to get to the gym. This part of the guide will help you make the most of the workout.

Not sure what to start with deadlifting? Check out 10 Things You Need to Know About the Deadlift.

How Should I Warm Up For Deadlifts?

Preparing for deadlifts will depend on your individual requirements but should emphasise preparing the posterior chain. I have attached a sample warm-up.

Once this is done, you need to gradually escalate to your working weight. Starting with the empty bar and move up in increments until you reach the desired weight. As you increase weight, decrease reps. If I am aiming to deadlift 100kg for 5 reps, I would warm-up like so:

Empty bar (20kg) practice x5

50kg deadlifts x 3

65kg deadlifts x3

75kg deadlifts x1

85kg deadlifts x1

This provides plenty of sets to warm-up, practice, and get acclimated to the weight you’ll be using for today. If you go from bodyweight straight to 100kg, the weight will feel like such a shock to the system that you will likely spend the first few reps getting used to it. This will possibly stop you from using your best technique.

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Where Should I Put My Feet to Deadlift?

These are rules of thumb and may need to be tweaked, but generally:

Conventional Deadlifts – feet about hip width apart, with feet slightly turned out.

Sumo Deadlifts – Approximately one or two steps wider than your squat width, with feet slightly turned out. This will partly be determined by grip width, as you need to make plenty of space for the hands – see below.

Kettlebell Deadlifts – Around squat-width, so the kettlebell can pass through your legs.

Romanian Deadlifts – hip-width apart, with toes facing forward.

Where Should I Put My Hands?

Most barbells have knurling (the rough texture; see below) along the majority of the bar, with some smooth gaps in the middle. On these bars, you should aim to put your hands as close to shoulder-width as possible without placing your hands on the smooth parts of the bar. Holding the smooth part of the bar will reduce the friction between you and the bar. This will mess with your grip.

In some cases you may find a bar with knurling all the way along, in which case you can customise your grip a little bit more!

Should I Wear a Belt When Deadlifting?

Short answer: It certainly shouldn’t be a priority when you’re starting out. Learn to brace and lift without one first, and see how far you can go without using a belt. Depending on how seriously you’re training, you could do this for a number of years. If you’re sure that you’re bracing properly and you’re struggling to progress, it might be time to look into it.

Long answer: Lifting belts are somewhat controversial. Some people think they’re essential, while others think they are a lifting crutch. As always, the real answer lies somewhere in the middle. It might be useful to watch this video on bracing first.

As the video discusses, bracing is about creating air pressure within the body to reinforce the structure provided by muscles and bones. This air pressure is built up around the abdomen area. A belt restricts the amount of space in this area, giving you something to push against. This increases the amount of pressure you can produce. This is why good bracing technique is crucial to master first.

A note on belts – as the squat and deadlift require different hip angles, the same belt won’t usually suit both lifts. A thick squatting belt will commonly pinch or block the hips when you set up for your deadlift. Keep this in mind while you’re shopping!

How Should I Grip the Bar?

There are three main approaches to gripping the bar. These examples have been shown from a rack position to make them easier to see, but they are just as valid from the floor.

A double overhand grip is probably the way you would grab the bar on instinct. It’s just a normal grip. It’s generally fine, but you will reach a limit with the amount you can lift in this way, especially if you’re going for multiple reps. You can train for a stronger grip, but if you’re just training to get stronger and move better, do you really want to dedicate your (probably limited) gym time working on grip strength? Your deadlift will probably get stronger at a quicker rate than your grip, meaning the benefits of this approach is fairly limited.

A mixed grip is where one palm is up, and one palm is down. If you’re looking to lift the most weight possible, then this will be almost always be a stronger grip than the double overhand. However, it may come at the expense of an imbalanced shoulder setup and risk of bicep strain.

Note: As with any discussion of injury and imbalance, it’s important to remember we’re not fragile beings just waiting to fall apart; however, it’s also important to weigh up risks vs the rewards. If you’re not competing, is it worth the increased injury risk just to chase a personal best? Probably not. Even when I’ve trained amateur powerlifters who compete at friendly events, we usually reserved the mixed grip for lifts about 90% and up so as not to ingrain it as a habit.

The third grip is my favourite, although it’s always a tough sell.

The hook grip is used by most strength athletes who use a standard-sized bar. It’s used by a great deal of powerlifters and almost all Olympic Weightlifters. It involves using your thumb to lock the bar into your palm, as well as creating something extra for your fingers to latch onto when closing the fist. I’ve also read that it puts the muscles of the forearm into a more advantageous position, although this sounds like something that would vary among different hand sizes.

You can use the hook grip in a double overhand position, or a mixed grip position.

So why is it a hard sell? Because it takes time to learn. It’s fairly uncomfortable at first, as it puts extra pressure on the thumb. It will make you feel like the bar is too big for your hands too. This is made worse by the fact that most people don’t start learning it until they’re lifting heavy enough that their regular grip can’t hold out, meaning they’re wedging the thumb against a significant amount of weight. If you can get past all this and practice the hook grip at a lighter weight – especially during warm up sets – then it will become your go-to grip.

How Else Can I Improve My Grip on the Bar?

Alongside these grip alterations, there are other things you can use to improve your grip:

• Chalk – by keeping the hands dry and improving friction, chalk can help you hold onto the bar. With the growing popularity of weight training in mainstream gyms, the use of chalk is becoming more acceptable. This is especially true of liquid chalk, which is far less messy.
• Straps – these wrap around the wrist and secure your hands to the bar. These are a great way of working around the grip problem, especially on higher-rep exercises where grip fatigue will start to interfere with your focus, such as Romanian Deadlifts and Lat Pull Downs.

How Should I Breathe When Lifting?

When loading the spine, it’s important to brace. This creates a more rigid spine and improves your ability to push against the bar. This will seem familiar if you read my squat guide, however there is a slightly different strategy for deadlifting.

Bracing is a difficult task to describe, so here’s that bracing video in case you skipped it earlier:

Essentially, bracing is a way of creating internal pressure similar to a well-pumped tyre around your mid-section. However, this is slightly different with deadlifting than it is with squatting. Here is my preferred strategy:

• Brace 1 – As you take the slack out of the bar and prepare to lift.
• Release 1 – As you get to fully standing at the top of the movement. Take as many breaths as you want before you start to descend, but don’t hesitate for too long either.
• Brace 2 – Just before you start to descend to put the bar down.
• Release 2 – When the bar touches down to the floor, and you release the weight.
• You’re now back to brace 1 again, and should repeat for each rep.

You won’t always feel the need to breathe out at the top before you descend; you may do the whole rep on one breath. The heavier the lift, the quicker your lockout will be and the less reps you’ll be doing, therefore you may not wish or need to hang around holding a bar to catch your breath. However, I recommend resetting your breath at the bottom of each lift.

Should I Bounce the Bar Off the Floor?

When performing multiple repetitions, some people will bounce the bar off the floor rather than fully set the bar down and reset.

I am not a fan of this outside of timed competitions where speed is a factor. There will almost always be some deterioration of form from one rep to the next, whereas resetting each time allows you to fix any parts of your form that have slipped.

Bouncing will probably also give you some assistance at the bottom of the lift, when you would typically be working hard to overcome the inertia of the bar. In my opinion, this gives bouncy reps a poor transfer to heavy deadlifts.

That being said, I rarely train the deadlift at such high reps that resetting each time becomes a nuisance. This is when people are more likely to bounce the bar.

If you’re super confident in your form, and don’t particularly need to work on pulling from the floor, then go for it.

How Many Sets and Reps Should I Do?

There is no right answer to this question – it depends on your exercise history, the type of deadlift you’re performing, and about a million other factors.

Whatever sets and reps you do, make sure you’re keeping 1 or 2 reps in reserve. I’ve spoken more about this here.

That being said, I am biased towards pretty low reps for a full deadlift from the floor (6 or less), as it can be a very demanding exercise. I like a moderate range on Romanian deadlifts (6-8 usually), as this still allows you to go heavy whilst keeping grip fatigue under control.

That’s everything for my deadlift guide! Do you have any questions I haven’t answered? What would you like a guide on next? Let me know over on my Instagram.

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