Deadlifting is an art form, a mosaic if you will. Everyone loves to pick up heavy stuff, even in ancient times the people found enjoyment in lifting heavy things. Deadlifts are big time ego boosters, I mean how cool is it to be able to pull 2,3,4 even 500 lbs of the ground.
Over the past 10 years of training people, I have used about 100 different cues to help people out when deadlifting. Some work, a lot of them dont. I found a pretty solid way of getting people in a good position to deadlift and it starts with about 5 steps. Let me preface this by saying that you want to get so used to this you shouldn’t have to think about it. Thats called muscle memore and thats what we are shooting for.
- Feel the steel-When you walk up to the bar I like you to feel the bar. This makes sure that you are keeping the bar close to you. Simple enough
- Big deep breath in, squeeze your belly- We want to fill our lungs with air and brace our stomach as if we are getting punched. This creates tension around our spine and core. What this does is prevents our spine from rounding and keeps that “core” tight.
- Squeeze the oranges, make orange juice-Deadifting is a full body movement, we must engage our upper body for maximal strength. I tell people to pretend they have oranges in their armpits and as we grab the bar “make orange juice”. (For some reason this is the only one most people remember) This adds tension to the upper body engaging the lats.
- Pull the slack out of the bar– We must also create tension with the bar. There is a little wiggle room with the barbell before you go to lift, this is called the slack. I generally tell people to use that slack to pull themselves into a good position. This creates even more tension.
- Push your heels through the ground-A lot of people think of the deadlift as a pulling movement. I like to think of it as a pushing movement. If you push your heels into the floor and stand the bar up you engage your hamstrings more.
Improving your technique
How do you know if you are improving with your technique? One obvious way is you can generally lift more. Also, you should feel the movement in the back of your legs more. You might be sore in your glutes and hamstrings as opposed to your lower back and biceps.
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