Technique
How to deadlift without wrecking your back
The deadlift is the most useful lift you can learn and the one people fear most. Here is how we teach it at Ironworks.
Jamal Carter5 min read
No lift gets a worse reputation than the deadlift. Everyone knows someone who hurt their back doing it. But lifting something heavy off the floor is one of the most natural movements a human makes, and learning to do it well protects your back for every other time you pick something up: a suitcase, a toddler, a bag of mulch.
Here is the setup we teach every new member, in the order we teach it.
The five-step setup
- Stand with the bar over the middle of your foot, feet hip-width apart, toes slightly out.
- Hinge at the hips and grip the bar just outside your legs, arms straight.
- Bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Do not move the bar toward you.
- Lift your chest and squeeze your armpits down as if holding oranges there. Your back flattens.
- Take a big breath into your belly, brace like someone is about to poke you, then push the floor away.
Notice that you do not pull. You push through your feet and stand up, keeping the bar close enough to brush your legs on the way. At the top, stand tall and squeeze your glutes. There is no need to lean back.
The three mistakes we see most
The first is starting with the bar too far forward. If it is over your toes, it will drift away from you and load your lower back. Keep it over the middle of your foot, every rep.
The second is squatting the deadlift: hips too low, knees too far forward. The deadlift is a hinge. Your hips should start higher than your knees and lower than your shoulders.
The third is losing tension before the bar leaves the floor. Yanking a slack bar rounds your back. Pull the slack out first, until you hear the plates click, and then drive.
If it looks ugly, it is too heavy. Strip the bar and earn the weight back.
How heavy, how often
For beginners, once or twice a week is plenty. Start with sets of five at a weight that feels moderate and leaves at least two good reps in the tank. Add 2.5 to 5 kilograms each week for as long as every rep looks the same. Most new lifters can progress like this for three to six months before needing a more structured plan, and by then, the fear is usually long gone.
