Many lifters are confused about hip position. They believe the hips must be set very low. That’s not true in every case. Your starting hip position depends to a large extent on your body type. Short, chunky individuals usually do well with their hips set low, but taller lifters benefit from a starting position where their hips are rather high, even parallel to the floor.
A high hip position is fine - if you can hold it. If, however, you allow your hips to rise when the bar breaks the floor, it’s not good. Whatever starting position you use, you have to hold your back flat and keep it flat.
Look forward or slightly upward, but not too much. Straighten your arms and keep them that way during the lift. They’re merely connecting links. Think of them as chains.
You’re all set to commence the lift. Every muscle in your body is tight and ready. Now, instead of pulling the bar, think of pushing your feet down through the floor. The bar will move upward in a smooth line. That’s not always what happens, of course. That would be an ideal world. Most lifters make some type of form mistake. The most common is that they allow the bar to float away from their bodies too much, either while lifting it or while lowering it back to the floor. You have to keep the bar close all the time. It has to brush your shins, knees and thighs as it goes up and also as it comes down. The bar will always want to run forward. That’s the reason you must keep your back extremely tight. If you relax any part of your back, the bar will float away, which adversely affects leverage.
In many instances lifters elevate the bar correctly but fail to pay attention to keeping it close to their body when they place it back on the floor. It’s a truism in weightlifting that can injure yourself when lowering a weight incorrectly just as easily as you can when lifting it incorrectly. Some people tend to round their backs when lowering the weight, mostly because they’re not paying attention. When you lower the bar away from your body, it’s usually too far away from your legs at the start of the next rep.
Lower the weight in a controlled manner, keeping it fairly close, just as your did on the way up. Set the plates on the floor, then pause a moment in order to reset your hips and back before starting the next rep. Don’t rush your reps. If you do, you’ll most likely break form. It’s also an easy habit to start rebounding the plates off the floor, especially if you’re using rubber bumpers. It may seem like a neat trick because it makes it easier to set the bar in motion, but it’s self-defeating. You bypass a critical part of the exercise, the start. The cheating will always catch up with you because you can’t rebound the first rep of a max weight. In my experience trainees who have been taught to rebound have had trouble breaking the habit. in extreme cases I have them do a rep, release the bar, stand erect, then do the next rep. I also prescribe that for anyone who has difficulty holding the correct body position for the start of the lift.
The entire movement should be smooth and controlled; more slow than fast - and no herky-jerking hitching, even if the bar sticks along the way. Learn to lock your body tightly and keep pressure on the bar, and it will slowly inch upward. Eventually, once you’ve mastered the technique, you can explode the bar off the floor and move it upward rapidly. In the beginning, though, slower is better because it will help you stay in the right groove.
The Deadlift By Bill Starr
Page 3
