Deadlift: How To Deadlift; Deadlift Muscles & Back Injury Risks From Poor Deadlift Technique

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Welcome to the Back Pain Solutions Podcast – Deadlift: How To Deadlift; Deadlift Muscles & Back Injury Risks From Poor Deadlift Technique

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Introducing Deadlift: How To Deadlift; Deadlift Muscles & Back Injury Risks From Poor Deadlift Technique

The deadlift is a common exercise performed at gyms across the globe. From fitness enthusiasts to professional athletes the deadlift is often incorporated into training programmes because of the compound muscles it recruits, its focus on the posterior chain and because it is considered a classic benchmark for overall strength! However, the deadlift exercise requires good technique to be performed safely and due to the weights people often attempt to lift can result in significant injury to the low back.

In this episode we break down the deadlift into its component parts and discuss the technical skill required to execute this exercise safely. We discuss some of the muscles the deadlift targets and identify the steps you can take to improve your overall deadlift technique. We also introduce the important role that foot stability plays in the deadlift exercise as well as discussing the role of the hips, and how many people make the mistake of lifting the weight from the floor when they shouldn’t. Furthermore, we discuss how good grip strength, and technique, will help you maximise the weight you can lift.

Some of the things you’ll discover…

How to brace effectively and create stiffness throughout the core

Why recruiting the latissimus dorsi and pectoralis muscles is important for you to brace effectively?

Deadlift benefits and why this is an exercise you may want to consider

Why anatomically we’re not equal and that some people should not be attempting a deadlift from the floor

Deadlift grip and where so many people go wrong with this element of the exercise

Deadlift lower back pain and the common risk factors that people need to be aware of

Show Highlights

The deadlift is great exercise to perform to build strength, and endurance, in the posterior chain. The muscles that contribute to the posterior chain play an important role in back health and so can be effectively trained using this exercise. However, like with many exercises there are risks, and understanding those risks, and being able to perform the exercise safely is important. People often report pain when performing this exercise, particularly in the lower back, which is a vulnerable structure especially when too much weight is applied.

Like with the squat, breaking down the movement into its component parts will help you to learn good deadlift technique. This will also ensure you can progress confidently, add weight safely, and build strength in the posterior chain.

Interview Transcription

Unknown Speaker 0:00
When we’re young, we move with freedom and confidence with a great resilience to injury. But somewhere along the line we develop poor habits and become more vulnerable to back pain. Back Pain solutions features evidence based and practical advice to help you take back control of your health and get back to the activities you love. This is your guide to better back health through movement. So join us as we demystify some of the commonly held beliefs about back pain and build your confidence to a stronger back the smart way.

Ben James 0:28
Okay, welcome back to the back pain solutions podcast Everybody with me, Ben James. And as always my co host, Jacob stain. Today we’re talking about the deadlift, and why how that is important for our overall back health, how it’s applicable to back health, but also, as always, how it’s relevant to activities of daily living, or is it relevant to activities of daily living, and also is it performed effectively. As always, head over to the www dot smartstart codit uk website. Take advantage Our free ebook, to take back control of your back pain within seven days, a lot of content there to help you to start to take control of your back health and empower you to get back to the activities that you love. So, Jay, good morning, the deadlift, is it as relevant for people with regards to activities of daily living compared to the squat.

Jacob Steyn 1:23
Good morning, man. In my opinion, it’s not as applicable. It’s not as important. And I think it has its place. But it’s, it’s something that if you learn to do it properly, will definitely enhance your movement throughout the day. But certain things that you do, especially when you carry and pick up heavy stuff, but it’s, I’d say that the squat takes the first place in having to be able to do that properly.

Ben James 1:52
Yeah, and what about, I guess, modified deadlift in a way because we talk a lot about the golfers lift, for example. In some respects, that’s a similar kind of movement pattern. But it’s it’s not two legs. It’s, it’s on one. So it’s a similar idea that we’re trying to rotate, I guess over the the hip joints and keep that back straight. that’s fundamentally the the importance here in terms of technique that we’re looking for.

Jacob Steyn 2:20
Yes, and it’s good that you mentioned that. I think it’s, it comes back to that understanding of what do I do with my body when I pick something up? Whether it’s something small and I use a golf lift on one leg, whether I have to be with I go for a very strong base with two feet on the floor, and I really crank up all the power throughout my, my legs and my core and i i brace and I protect my spine. I pick something up heavy. Well, it’s that understanding of, like you say, hinting around or about the hip joint?

Ben James 2:56
Yeah, exactly. So what was the deadlift Specifically, as a movement pattern as an exercise might not be as relevant, as that isolated movement should we say as activities of daily living, the the exercise and is talking through the exercise still has relevance to activities of daily living. But we say in terms of modifying it for the for the Golf is lifting, you’re lifting something light off the ground, you might be just rotating over that one, one hip to keep that back straight and able to lift off the floor. So there’s still relevance in terms of the deadlift being applicable for activities of daily living. But it’s certainly the case that you’re not going to be doing that specific movement regularly for picking shopping up off the floor or gardening, for example, because there are other movements such as the squat that are more relevant and more efficient to do that. is fair to say.

Jacob Steyn 3:53
Yes, and, you know, I think when you look at the deadlift, you have to consider that your your room really taking the hip joint in terms of range of motion to its max. And so you want to you want to understand what you’re doing so that you don’t compromise other structures of the body. Yeah. And for a lot of people, if you, if you’ve not specifically looked up that that movement pattern, you know, the body is going to try and find a different way it’s gonna, it’s gonna find an easier way to get to the floor or to to make a similar movement, but it’s not going to look up that full range of motion and hip joint. And I think that when we look at the squat, we’re a little bit more upright. You know, where, where we share, we give you a little bit more work to the knees. So the distribution of the power is better. It’s, it’s more it’s better distributed, whereas with the deadlift, you like just said, you really have to be able to crank up, you know, a lot of power in the core. And you got to look at your position I think for as we’re going to discuss later for a lot of people. And anatomically. This is there’s already a small issue there. Yeah, we’ll discuss that.

Ben James 5:15
Yeah. In terms of the hit range of motion and and where are we lifting that weight from? Exactly, yeah, no. So I think, let’s talk about the deadlift in terms of an exercise for for strengthen durance in terms of in the gym, because it’s one of those movements that is, again, often executed by a lot of people, but so often executed badly. And and it does take more technical skill than the squat in order to execute it effectively and safely. But it is fair to say I’m sure you agreed, Jacob in the gym where you are, you see people again, flexing through that lower back, not keeping that back straight, and the obvious impact that has as discussed You know, previously, in terms of the line of driver, those muscles resist in that shear force. So what we’re saying there is, the muscles in the back help to pull the vertebrae backwards if that back is kept straight, so they kind of work at about a 45 degree angle. If we’re flexing through the spine, that’s not the case, and we get more compression. And this is one of the big problems we see.

Jacob Steyn 6:23
Exactly. And I think you know, that that’s usually our main focus is to make sure that we protect the spine. So we know we’re big on, we don’t want to bend through the spine, whether it’s extending or Flexi through the spine. We don’t want to create any movement there. But for a lot of people, if you’re starting out doing this, or maybe you’ve been doing it for a while, but you’re not so aware of your movement. It’s, it’s an issue of maybe something else, like you just mentioned, I would very The very first thing I would usually do is establish what the hip joints are. capable of giving you in terms of range of motion. So if we know that that is, you know that that’s a problem, then we’re not necessarily going to deadlift from the ground. And we’re going to discuss that later as well. But I want to mention that you have to first understand whether your hip range of motion is allowing you to pull from the ground. And if that is and you’re still not doing it properly, then quite often something along the chain is not supporting the movement. And so you’re, you’re failing in the movement because it’s a big chain similar to the squat. I mean, from the from the feet, all the way through the core shoulders, you know, into what into what you’re holding, you’re trying to pull off the ground.

Ben James 7:46
Yeah. So again, what we’re saying is you’ve got to, you’ve got to establish a bit of a baseline in terms of that range of motion in the hips. Can you can you lift effectively from the ground, you know, do your hips give you the range of motion that are required? To be able to lift that, that weight that bar from the ground. And if they do, and if you’ve had the hips, screen, hips scour, to establish that range of motion, and actually, the depth is there to allow you to do so. But you’re still struggling or you’re still struggling in that form, then somewhere else in that chain, there’s a problem is basically what you’re saying.

Jacob Steyn 8:22
Exactly, exactly. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that they tried to correct the back, you know, the back won’t be corrected because maybe the glutes are not supporting the whole movement, especially when you start adding weight to it. So now, you know, you need all those links in the chain to be really supporting this movement really stabilizing. Whether it’s not allowing the knees to drop in or it’s you know, whether it’s your quads allowing more force to go through the knees. So you you have to be Be open to maybe work more on the glutes. If you work more on your core, maybe work more on your upper back where you’re collapsing.

Ben James 9:09
And yeah, so again, it’s looking at breaking down this, this, this movement, this exercise, and establishing those points in the chain that could be worked on, or be focused for you in isolation if required.

Jacob Steyn 9:22
Exactly.

Ben James 9:24
So before we jump in, and break that down, because we’ll do that in a moment, for the people listening, again, from a hip range of motion point of view, it’s difficult sometimes to to self establish that range of motion. Is it a good idea, therefore, the anybody that is concerned has back problems and this is doing a deadlift type movement. To start with the weight slightly off the ground, there’s not going to be any negative effects of lifting that weight slightly, even if that range of motion ultimately is there is that a good baseline to start with?

Jacob Steyn 9:59
That’s, that’s great. To ask that when Yes, it’s, for me, it’s there’s not really a negotiation, we always start, not on the ground, we always have a higher platform. And then we can also whether it’s a structural or a functional block that’s in the way. You know, starting high means that when we slowly progress down towards the floor, when the form breaks down, we know Okay, we don’t just stay above that. And we, we make sure that the form stays good. And as soon as the body and the mind especially then your neurology figures out how to move properly, how to stabilize, we progressed a little bit further towards the floor. And that’s just a very safe way of protecting the spine, staying within the form, you know, and building more strength.

Ben James 10:50
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely makes sense. So let’s break this down. Let’s break the deadlift down into those different parts, those important parts so that we can really look to isolate elements of this movement If required, just to optimize the overall movement, ultimately. So, as always, Jacob we talked about this, this chain and the connection between the shoulders and the hips. lats important chest important. Again, it’s, it’s making sure that that co contraction is there throughout this chain to support this movement effectively, and not focusing in on one area such as the glutes, to the detriment of other other areas and other aspects of this movement.

Jacob Steyn 11:35
Exactly. I think when a deadlift you, you have to consider it, you know, you have to consider how you approach it. In other words, not from the point where you pull it off the ground, but how do you set yourself up to pull it off the ground? You know, so it’s all about that setup, so that the initial setup is very important, if that’s not good to start with, for good is a very, there’s a small chance you’re gonna, you’re gonna you’re going to perform a good deadlift. So you have to think about how do I get into my position? Right? Get get into my position. I said my back and what am I going to use to drive this? Where’s my my line of drive? Where’s my face, my chest facing. And so if we look at the biomechanics, then we get into a position, we grab the bar. And the very first thing is, we what we do is we think about how we create stability in the trunk.

Ben James 12:38
Okay. Yeah. So, we’re talking about that, that link the lats, chest in that instance, or would you start if you were coaching somebody would you start with with the feet and planting those feet and making sure that grip is effective on the backfoot? First of all, where would you start to break it down?

Jacob Steyn 13:00
Yeah, very good question. So, you know, I, I, first of all I want somebody to do have a solid base with their feet. This is, you know, we have to establish that the feet have to be facing the right direction usually pointing in direction of the knees. No collapsing feet if possible. Otherwise we’re and I don’t feel comfortable progressing through a heavier weight really. So we want to work and so just jumping in. What are your thoughts on doing it? Certainly initially, if it whether it’s an athlete and what kind of stripping it back and trying to make improvements or whether it’s someone started out, what are your thoughts on doing it? barefoot deadlift, first of all, in terms of just trying to support that, that development in the feet, even if that takes some time. Fantastic. I mean, great because you can see so much happening when someone is doing this bare feet, especially because they’re pulling something off the ground. And I you know, like really putting it back in I quite often get a golfers or tennis players and sometimes I’m quite shocked to see how little connection they have with with the floor in their, you know, from their feet, especially with it, especially the toes are completely sometimes not even touching the floor. And I allow Okay, and I suppose that comes from playing with, I don’t know, I think golf shoes are quite, quite stiff and maybe tennis, some tennis players, you know, they’re not really connecting with their toes there may be running more on the ball of the feet. So yeah, I think that’s something that you know, sometimes I peel right back and we work with that. But if somebody has connection, I can see that the toes are active, you know, the arches, strong arch lifted off the ground, feet are pointing in the right direction and we’ve got that connection. With knees, the knees are really, really strong in the chain, then I would go to creating that trunk stability.

Ben James 15:10
Yeah, so really, we’re looking for those feet to be well planted. And stable, first of all, and if isn’t a good kind of baseline test people could do in terms of a balance just to self assess their their foot stability, because again, you know, this is something that from a personal point of view with ankle sprains, and over the years in football in injuries, that was a real problem for me took a lot of work to build up the stability in the feet, and it’s a work in progress. This is kind of a, for me, it’s a lifelong habit that I need to develop. It’s a it’s a lifestyle choice to to ensure that those feet are strong in the long term. So this is an ever progressive focus for me, but I can still write all my deadlift effectively because I know how to help stabilize those feet and and all the other areas in the chain or, or well established if that makes sense. But for people starting out what’s a good kind of self assessment? And if if they fail that, should they avoid this movement?

Jacob Steyn 16:21
Yeah, another good question. So I would start with their feet on a wooden floor or a hard surface, have a little of a mirror in front of you. And just face the mirror, especially with your feet, your feet kind of facing straight forward. So not pointing out, some people will naturally like really point the feet out but let them face forward and then you shift your weight onto one foot, bend the knee a little bit, stand on one foot and just have a look in the mirror what your foot is doing. You know, how stable is that foot? As a drop in? Does a knee pull in or do you have A lot of the you know, is the arch picked up picked up off the ground. Are you stable strong? Do you have some toe spread? You know, what’s your big toe doing? Is it kind of going straight along with the bone that comes from the ankle? Or is it really pointing outwards? Do we have a hallux valgus there. And so if that’s good, then I would progress to maybe seeing how stable you are you on one foot when you do for example, hip aeroplane, or you can if you don’t know this exercise, you can take with the opposite side, a kettlebell in your hand, and just do a small hip hinge through the hip with this kettlebell, lowering it to the floor and see how stable you stay on that on the other side’s foot, you know, are you dropping your knee in? Is your foot collapsing? are you raising your toes off the floor? So really, we want to progress this You know, I’m just giving a small example here, there’s a, there’s a natural progression of exercises that you build up. But we want to see, we eventually we want to get to a foot that’s really stable and strong, even if you’re on one leg, and then you know that you’re really ready to progress to a deadlift. And getting the most out of that base, if you want to call it that.

Ben James 18:21
Yeah, absolutely. Because like you say that if, if that’s foots going to drop in, or if there’s no stability there or a lack of stability, then the risk is that you’re unique and drop in, that’s going to affect your hip, then those muscles that we want to be firing into be controlling this movement and not optimally fired. And therefore there’s there’s a risk in terms of back injury because we know how important all those muscles in the chain are in support and supporting the low back. Yeah, so we’ve established that the feet there’s a there’s a bit of a test that people can do in terms of establishing their their foot stability. So foot stability is good, we’ve got a good alignment of the knee, we’re happy that the knee is where we want it to be. And that, again is dictated by the feet, then moving up the chain taken with regards to this movement. Next up, we’re looking at the the hips and activation of those muscles around around the hips.

Jacob Steyn 19:21
Yes, so I like to explain to people you know, have the feeling when you lower your body, when you lower the the bump to the floor, when your knees have the feeling like you’re spreading your bum cheeks. And that’s how you really get tension in the glutes and in the hamstring. You know, so you feel that tension when you lower yourself into the position where you’re going to grip the bar on the floor. And now we’re assuming that you can actually get into the position where the bar is on the floor. Otherwise we were going to have you You raise the bar, so you’re going to put blocks underneath the weights.

Ben James 20:07
Yeah, and if you started out, maybe just consider that as your first option. You could always progress later on, but it just does help ensure that you’re not trying to push too much or flex too much at the end range of that movement to the low back.

Jacob Steyn 20:21
And I would say, if our recommendation is if you start out deadlifting absolutely do not pull off the floor. You know, unless you’re coming from Eastern Europe or somewhere where you’ve got naturally very, very big range of motion your hips, then my suggestion is just start off a higher point and slowly gradually move it down. And so, we’re getting into that position where spreading the bum cheeks. And we’re now gripping. We’re having our arms on the outsides of knees, were gripping the bar. And from this point we have to activate we have to activate that trunk stability. So we’re going to look at compression and we’re going to look at bracing. So pressure and creating pressure in the abdomen and creating that compression between the shoulder blades and hips.

Ben James 21:22
Yeah, absolutely.

Jacob Steyn 21:25
And so and yeah, no Ben.

Ben James 21:28
No, I was just going to say and in terms of the, the activation of those muscles, we’ve got to we’ve got to give consideration for the impact that the poor technique can have from the from the ground up and we talked about this on a previous podcast with Dr. Xu political from over in the US. And if those muscles are not firing correctly, then ultimately that core cannot activate as we want to see activate. So all of these different elements are a hugely important. So it’s not to be underestimated how important these different parts are in, in the whole of this, this movement. So, Jake, we talk there about the core activation. And even at this stage, this is something that people often fail on your, you may have the strong feet, you may have their knees aligned, the hips aligned, and then there’s flexion to the back, or those core muscles just aren’t aren’t being activated.

Jacob Steyn 22:31
Exactly. And it could be that you’re not very aware of what you have to do. And I find that quite often the problem because if you would start deadlifting from a young age and you develop a strategy and you reinforce that you do it in a regular basis, then I can imagine you develop a really good technique, but most of us don’t have that opportunity. We we sit on a chair, we do other things, we relax, we don’t pick so many things up or The floor anymore. Definitely not heavy things. And so now we’re thrown thrown into a situation where we’ve got to, you know, we got to think about so many things that were the things we just mentioned. And we have to be able to create this compression and this, you know, the, the bracing effect. So, we’ll go for very first off the raising effect, and that’s where we, we put the thumb in the mouth, we breathe out. We don’t let any air escape. And we feel how the abdomen just blows up. But at the same time, we create compression because the muscles are pushing back. And so we really stiffen the core. Right? And the next step is where we activate the pecs and the lats. So we create this compression between the shoulders and the hip joint or at least the pelvis and so Now we’re we’re stiffening the whole spine. Or we want to do this in the neutral spine position. And so we we assume that somebody established very well what the neutral spine is when they stand. But obviously, we’re lowering ourselves down. Now we’re in that squat position quite deep. We want to maintain that neutral spine, which means we have a shallow hollowing in the low back and the shallow rounding in the upper back together with the compression and the pressure we’re creating.

Ben James 24:34
Absolutely. And once we get into that position where our feet are well planted, we’ve we’ve got our back brace, we’ve got our back in neutral, we’ve activated the lats, the pecs, we’re gripping the bar, the grip is also important. Often people can just let that bar sit in their fingers. They don’t really activate those intrinsic muscles of the hand. It’s self to really grip that bar. This Something that again is, is often a bit of an energy leak, I find with with people is that they’re not really gripping through the hand and then wrapping those fingers around to get a really effective grip on the bar. Is that something that you find as well? Jacob with your patients or your the people? You’re training?

Jacob Steyn 25:17
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And my, my cue usually is, a guy wants you to really grip the bar. Because if you do that, you’ll also feel the shoulder turning on. And we know that if you grip really hard in and create a lot of strength and pressure in your forum, that you actually turn on the small muscles in the shoulder, you stabilize that shoulder blade. And so that’s the connection between the bar and my core. As the connection.

Ben James 25:49
So do you do you ever advise people to kind of almost try and rotate the hands externally as well on the bar a little bit to activate the lats And just a little, sometimes people as a bit of a hint or suggestion and find that that helps them focus on those muscles a little bit.

Jacob Steyn 26:09
Yes, I use the word or that’s what I got from McGill. You know, I just tell people, I want you to bend the bar. Sure, yeah. You know, and if you bend the bar, so you’re rotating the hand out, then you’re activating the lat, that’s a natural occurrence. The only thing is that a lot of people who start out, you know, with this movement, it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit far for them to already because we’re still creating and establishing a feeling between, you know, a connection between the brain and the lats. So, quite often people come from, okay, I’ve not been using this part of my body at all. And now I have to, I have to bend the bar, you know, it’s so it’s step by step we we get there.

Ben James 26:58
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s, it’s Almost walking through these different steps before even lifting the bar and just repeating them. So that kind of motor pattern of a following through these different steps is established before you even lift the bar off the floor. There’s nothing wrong with with taking a slow progression through this movement, and not lifting weights at all just establish these different steps effectively, because when you come to lift the way, you’re going to do it safely. But you’re also going to find it, you establish a very good technique in the first case, and progression will be far more efficient afterwards, and you’re not trying to resolve faulty patterns. And you’re certainly not going to be trying to work around or really rehabilitate, pain and injury. So, yeah, as with anything, you know, it’s small progressions rather than just a big leap. And that’s the problem. Fundamentally, people don’t break this movement down. They just say, Well, I’m going to do a deadlift today because I know I’ve seen other people in the gym do it or I know it’s good for these muscles. So I’m just going to do it but not doing it properly. A is not efficient, effective for the muscles you’re trying to train. But obviously, as discussed, and the reason for us discussing this movement during this episode is it it fundamentally is a big risk for for back injuries. So we’ve we’ve talked about the grip strength, Jacob, we’ve talked about establishing an effective grip on the bar when we’re down in that squat position. If we’re starting out, we’ve got that bar, or simply the weight just lifted, lifted off the floor at the point of execution. One of the things that I’ve seen his people almost extend through the legs. And what I mean by that is through the knee, first of all, and they lose a bit of power there rather than it going through the glutes initially. Is that something that you’ve seen as well, because that, again, is a is an opportunity for an energy leak I find in this movement.

Jacob Steyn 28:56
Yeah, that’s that’s a great point. That’s what you typically see people During the beginning, they want to leave, they want to tap into where they’ve got the most power first. And so the weak part of the chain will be left to do the work lost. And so like you say, somebody’s got the bar, instead of standing up and taking the bar with them in one movement, their first movement is actually raising the hips. And then they raise the chest. So what we’re doing now is we’re, we’re extending the knees, we’re giving the work to, most likely what is the case with a lot of most people is the dominant quads or quads, their quads that are doing most of the work, usually, instead of sharing the work with the glutes, where we’ve got this extension through the hips, and that means pushing the chest up and standing up in normal fashion. So so that’s a typical problem. What happens there is your Obviously, you’re extending the knees, you’re pushing the hips up into the air. Now you’re creating this massive fulcrum at the hips, so you’re giving a lot more work to the low back. And this is quite often where the low back fails. So we we tend to lose the neutral spine, then we start flexing through the low back, we drop the shoulders, and then we extend through the hips.

Ben James 30:28
Yes, yes. And that faulty pattern there is is the cause of the problem. We’ve we’ve established a great base, we’ve established a good grip, we’ve raised the weights off the floor, and then that slight incorrect execution by extending at the knees First of all, loses a lot of power and creates a lot of risk and, and ultimately leads to a lot of people losing that neutral spine. Which is where the where the problem again is.

Jacob Steyn 30:56
Exactly. I want to say one more thing then I the thing that we have to remember here is we have a limited capacity for what we would call coordination. And so the coordination of the movement, let’s say we have 100% capacity for the coordination. And if we ask somebody to do bracing of the spine, or brace, bracing, to protect the spine, standing up without raising the hips first, making sure that you stay firm on the ground. So the more things we add to the perform the movement for someone who’s just starting out, the more we have to spread, that limited capacity of coordination of coordinating all these movements, all these things that we are supposed to do. So that’s what I want to say about the progression. So starting out with the movement, I usually get people to focus on Getting the knees and feet lined up and starting to feel the movement through the hips, of course, with good form and making sure that they keep the neutral spine. So those are already enough for people to start out with, if you add too many things, you spread it too thin, people will not be able to execute all those things at the same time and then later you add on more things to to the technique to make it even better.

Ben James 32:29
Yeah, and the same rule applies with you know, with those athletes that maybe have had a problem and they’ve lifted heavy weights before then you know, scale it right back let’s get the technique right and then let’s build up because it’s going to be just so much more beneficial effective in doing that, because it is a very complex exercise, like you say with with a lot of different steps and and perform any one of those poorly or inadequately and and there is huge risk there particularly with with the weights that you often see and people attempting to lift in the gym, you know It makes you cringe sometimes, because there’s, you can just see that flexion. And, and that’s also, again back to the steps that you talked about Jacob. And it’s not just about getting up into that straight back standing position, we’ve got to get the weight back down again. And again, that’s another area where that that brace and that neutral spine is often lost. So you can have great technique all the way up and on the way down. It’s poor again, and and often you see the loss of lat pec activation on the way down, people get lazy on the, on the downward movement, and kind of almost drop that way to the floor. And that’s again another another problem. So this, this is bracing, and all these steps have to be controlled and that stiffness has to be applied throughout the movement. Even after that weights dropped to the floor and you then stand up right without even holding the bar at the end. So it just just shows how important is to focus in on each of those parts of the sequence to effectively execute safely. For sure.

Jacob Steyn 34:08
Exactly. And, you know, there are many variations of the deadlift. You know, we once you get good at performing the technique and you get confident, we can go to picking it up. When you’re in opposition, you, you let it go. If you’re in a CrossFit gym and you’re able to drop the weight, then you drop it completely without taking it back to the floor. So then you you protect the spine and you stay safe. You go back to the floor, you make sure you get into a good setup, and then you pick it up again. But if like what you say, Ben, if you have to put it down, you know, then it’s like you say equally important to make sure that you actually do the reverse of standing up, but maintaining the whole chain and, you know, working with your breath, keeping that pressure in the abdomen until you put it down. And, you know, there’s also the normal deadlift, there’s what we would call a powerlifting deadlift. So there we actually have the hips higher than what we would do when we do. So we have, that’s the powerlifting deadlift is different to when we have a weightlifting, deadlift, because weight lifters, they’re much more upright because they are ready for that explosive movement when they want to get the bar onto their shoulders or over their head. And then we’ve got one of my favorites, just because I do have the hip mobility to do it very well. And I enjoy the effect of what it does for me, is the sumo deadlift. And if you’re strong enough in that position, where you have the feet and the knees really open, you’re able to get deeper if your hips allow you able to get deeper and so you have a much more upright chest and so you don’t have that shearing effect between the vertebrae in the spine. And so, yeah, I just think that’s a that’s a great variation of the deadlift.

Ben James 35:55
Yeah, absolutely. Like you say, it’s an exercise that is Dare I say flexible in terms of how it can be performed, or there’s different variations of the exercise that can be so beneficial in targeting some of these key muscles that are so fundamentally important to supporting back stability. But start with a straightforward deadlift. First, break it down. Don’t be afraid to progress slowly through those different steps, so that you perform an each really well, because if you do that, like we say, you don’t get the energy leak, you don’t get the risk to back health, but your progression and your ability to lift weight will be much, much more efficient. And you’ll be able to lift more weight quicker by doing it properly, and you’ll know that you’re doing it safely and it’s all about keeping that stiffness throughout this chain, if you’re able to execute it properly. So Jacob anything else you want to add? On the deadlift there, I think it’s clear that if you’ve never done this exercise, before, really is about taking it through those different sequences rather than trying to just focus on executing the whole exercise in one go.

Jacob Steyn 37:09
Yeah, what I what I want to add Ben is I want to say use logs. You know, even when you’re able to get to the floor, don’t always pull off the floor. That’s been my experience with a lot of people with a lot of patience and people I give personal training to myself, you know, we, we want to, we want to explain sparingly and using blocks is just such a good way to use the same muscles. Get that workout, getting strong in a position, doing something that’s actually really good for your spine. Because, you know, we know if we lift the weight, we get that exhale compression, and we were strengthening the spine if we do it properly. We use blocks is my suggestion and always start high with the blocks and then peel the onion down gradually.

Ben James 37:58
Yeah, make those make that progression slowly, like you say, and a great point about with respect to the the exercise and putting weight on the spine because we know too little is has a deleterious effect on the back and we know too much. It has the same impact. So it’s finding that balance. And this is a great exercise, if performed effectively, that will really help support overall spine health. So they have it goes the deadlift, a number of different parts of the sequence of that exercise that you need to consider. But if you focus on the more and you progress slowly, it can be a great exercise for your spine health. So Jacob Thank you very much. Thanks everyone for listening. As always, please head over to iTunes give us a rating there helps to provide feedback for us helps to get the show out to a wider audience so that we can continue to help people get back to the activities they love, by empowering them to work through their back pain and resolve Back Pain issues. As always, thank you again and we’ll catch you again on the next show.

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