Tips, Tricks & Back Saving Cues:

It’s not all in the heels: You’ve probably been given a cue of some nature before that revolves around your heels and leaning back. It’s more important to think about pushing into the ground and keeping weight through your whole foot, especially into your toes/balls of your feet. You want to think of your foot like a tripod and keeping 3 points of firm contact with the ground. Your heel, the ball of your foot and the outer edge of your foot at the base of the pinkie toe. So get your feet anchored to the ground and push through them to generate the force need. Don’t be passive, be active: Go search out Deadlift Fail videos and you can find hours of cringe-worthy entertainment. If you are going to be lifting heavy weights, which you are all capable of, you need to understand that it is not a passive process. You are an active participant in the lifting process and need to maintain full-body tension. If you are loose or passive in this process you’ll most likely round your shoulders or back and your hips will shoot up before anything else. Sadly, the majority of people that are new to deadlifting will just bend over, grab the bar and attempt to lift it. The worst part is they probably will be able to lift it off the ground. That’s what makes the DL dangerous. Take your set-up seriously: It can be done with really shitty technique. We’ve all seen it. But something as simple as taking your set-up serious will help immensely. Grip the bar with a purpose, pull your chest up and push your hips down and pull the slack out of the bar. Think about making your arms as long as possible with elbows extended. Squeeze your upper back/posterior shoulders and pull your chest up toward the ceiling, like you have a giant fish hook under your sternum. Push your hips down until you feel maximum tension building up in them. And then say bye bye to all the slack. Now you’re ready to rock! If you still find that you can’t keep tension a trick I like to try is to stand tall, isometrically flex every muscle that you can, back, legs, arms, chest and sit yourself down into your starting position. You may lose some tension as you get down there but I’ve found people have an easier time reestablishing tension if they previously started with some. Just breathe..actually hold it: How you breathe is just as vital, if not the most vital, of any of the other pieces I’ve mentioned here. In order to adequately stabilize the spine, the abdominal and thoracic cavities must be pressurized. Hence how you breathe and hold your breath effect that. So try to draw in as much air as possible to fill your abdomen ensuring the lungs are filled fully. If you just pull the air into your chest you are missing out. Once the air is sealed in, tighten your abs and back musculature. Yes you are holding your breath and yes it is safe. But don’t think of tightening the abs means to suck them in, though it looks cool on the beach it does nothing to help you lift weight off the floor. This level of pressurization should be maintained throughout as much of the movement as possible. Letting a little bit of air out past midway or at the top is ok, but before you go for rep two repeat the previous steps to reestablish that same level of pressurization. Don’t over do it: Pushing the deadlift hard is the most taxing thing you can do in training outside of heavy long rucks. If you push it very hard either by maxing out or going close to failure you’ll negatively impact recovery, which can affect the next couple of training sessions and for some people can wreck you for a week or more. People have asked me if they can get better at deadlifting with out actually deadlifting. Now if you grew up on a farm bailing hay in your formative years, you probably will do just fine with the ACFT Deadlift, but if you didn’t, you better be deadlifting once every 7-10 days. You can do things besides deadlifting to help your deadlift like specific accessory movements, but don’t neglect deadlifting…and don’t deadlift every day. Your back will thank you! Get your mind right: Now deadlifting does require a certain mindset that doesn’t come naturally ingrained in all of us. It is a highly psychological lift and you need to practice handling heavy weights (relative to you). I am not advocating finding a max every day you have deadlifts. But it is important that you set goals and work throughout the year to achieve them. One kilo at a time: The best thing you can do is set yourself up for success. Don’t be in a race, this is a marathon not a sprint, strength will come, you just have to be patient. In weightlifting we use kilos so I try to live by the 1 kilo rule. The whole point of it is, why not make smaller, more frequent improvements, think 5lbs, rather than hoping you make big ones, think 25lbs, infrequently? The former is a more constant measure of progress that keeps you motivated to continue. Failing on a 25lb PR attempt sucks, especially when you could’ve taken a 5lb.

“And if all else fails, just clench your taint abs really hard.”