It seems that this exercise goes against the wisdom of “lift with your legs.” Why is that?
In: Biology
It sure does if you don’t do it perfectly.
Source: guy who won’t ever deadlift or squat again
In a deadlift you still “lift with your legs”. If your back is rounding excessively, you are probably doing it wrong.
Although there is an exercise called the “Jefferson Curl” which you should look up. It invokes only lifting with your back. If you approach it carefully and gradually build up, you will have a strong and injury resistant back.
Certain movements and motions should not be inherently bound to injure the human body.
“Lift with your legs, not your back” is an adage to bend your knees, lower your hips, and hold a straight back while lifting.
The issue that it seeks to avoid is to having a rounded spine, so that the tension of the lift is pulling the spine out of natural position, bending it. This stresses smaller muscles such as the spinal erectors as they become the primary component of movement, and exposes the spinal disks to alignment issues and injury.
Good lifting form instead holds the spine in a natural position and hinges to bring the shoulders in line. This allows much larger muscles such as the glutes and hamstrings to perform the lift, while relatively smaller muscles only have to keep the spine aligned.
This carries over to the deadlift.
The deadlift, performed correctly is a straight backed hinged movement.
The lifter bends their knees and lowers their hips to reach the bar, then braces to straighten the back and tenses to keep it there.
The first movement is to push with the legs to break contact with the ground and to allow the knees to move backwards and clear the bars path.
The second movement is to hinge the torso upwards by driving the hips forward. This is a big hamstring and glute movement. Because the hips are driven forward relative to the shoulders, the torso rotates upwards, and the lift is completed.
Now, how can lifters lift hundreds of pounds without messing up their back?
We’re stronger than you.
That’s all. Even with good technique, your muscles are not strong enough to maintain good technique under stress / strain, and could injur yourself.
Whereas we’ve trained and worked up our strength such that we can maintain good technique even when highly strained.
But you do lift with your legs when you Deadlift. If you prioritise pulling with your lower back over pushing with your feet, you will not engage your glutes, and then you will hurt yourself.
The whole idea of lifting with your legs is a cue to maximize glute engagement.
Deadlift is a lot of leg — glutes and hamstrings and the entire posterior chain working together.
With correct form, leg muscles lift, core muscles stabilise. The point of it is to strengthen the whole body so more weight can then be lifted.
A deadlift is working your hamstrings more than anything. To properly deadlift, you brace your stomach as if someone is about to punch you. This engages your core muscles, which stops you from using your back muscles, which is what would result in injury (lack of proper form).
Also, a proper deadlift is “hinging” at the hips: push that booty out and hips back when going down. Your back DOES NOT move.
Finally, nobody just starts lifting 350lbs deadlift. It’s a buildup. You start with a weight that’s hard (maybe that’s 10 lbs, maybe it’s 75lbs) and keep adding more weight over time. This is what is referred to as progressive overload.
u use proper form and work ur way up to heavier weights, regularly.
if u use bad form ur deadlifting career ain’t gonna last long
Whilst it can *look* optically like it has back movement, one of the key aspects is using your core muscles to *prevent* movement in your back. ‘Lifting with your back’ involves straightening your back, whereas for deadlifts you assume a straight backed posture before lifting and use muscles to maintain it – a critical difference.
The lift itself can be thought of as a hip thrust, your upper half just gets sort of pivoted over the hips whilst remaining straight.
I did straight leg dead lifts for the first time today with o my 15 lbs dumbbells at first . Then I did another set with 20s
And on my god I thought those muscles were strong from squats! I’m super mega sore now
Which to me means I have found new muscles to work
Latest Answers