5 Worst Pieces of Deadlift Advice (Almost RUINED Me)

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"PERFECT POSTURE"

Trying to keep ‘perfect posture’ led to me keep my shoulders back and spine unreasonably arched. With short arms and a long back, it was awkward and inefficient Letting my shoulders and thoracic spine forward massively improved leverages, thereby improving starting speed, consistency and recovery This isn’t commonly repeated advice in competitive circles, but there is still enough rot in general lifting culture that you will see imaginary standards of flat/arched/neutral/straight being recommended. I did this in response to chronic injuries, which was a mistake. No good deadlifters do this, and that’s for a reason.

"POSTURE DOESN'T MATTER"

Before trying ‘perfect posture’, I’d let my back whip and flex like a diving board at fat camp. I personally experienced a decade of chronic injury. Regardless of correlation to injury over the population, it was inefficient, inconsistent and fucked my recovery No sport approaches skill or performance with this attitude. The vague and non-descriptive tagline “the body adapts” is usually the justification for ignoring back flex, and it’s often in response to hysteria from the ‘perfect posture’ or ‘deadlifts are dangerous’ crowd. A lot of postures fly, but the key is intentionality. If you deliberately setup the same way every time, your odds of adapting are good. If you like to say a prayer as your erectors are forced through a max eccentric every rep, God be with you.

"NO STRAPS"

As a newbie, I remember holding onto slick barbells with no chalk with 60% less weight... “because grip” Even with chalk and a mixed grip, sessions were limited by skin getting chewed up, not grip strength. Unsurprisingly, deadlift suffered until I stopped being stubborn. The deadlift is not a grip exercise. Period. In fact, it’s the slowest and least specific way to train grip I can think of. Powerlifters need to practice their mixed/hook grip setup for competition but this doesn’t apply to any single other athlete that would ever need to train the deadlift. Even Olympic lifters, the kings of barbell specificity, use straps to keep their skin from turning into wet newspaper. Given that the purpose of dead is to get your hips and back really, really strong.... put the goddamn straps on.

"DEADS ARE ENOUGH"‍

Ignoring ab work led to a midsection incapable of creating tension, more ‘bowl-of-pudding’ than vital supportive structure. Force transfer sucked, i couldn't maintain a deliberate setup and my back was always achy (see the point about posture). Doing ab work, specifically brace work, was absolutely game changing and allowed me to handle more work with less pain I’m sure there are many, many people who just pull and call it a day and are none the worse for it. But this is a complex movement that has a lot of potential points for weaknesses. If yours is in your midsection, more of the same shitty reps isn’t going to fix it. And if you have a longer torso, shorter arms, start with hips very flexed or otherwise really bent-the-hell-over, that will become the thing slowing you down.

"LOW REPS"

I got this advice from some talented pullers when I started strongman.... since reps were hard, I took it as gospel. I got short term strength, then hit a wall with no idea of how to progress. My capacity also sucked in deadlift-for-rep events. The rational was that heavy pulling is specific to getting better at pulling heavy (this is true), but specific training is only a PART of any athletic development. If NFL players only played games to get better, they'd have more injuries with suckier performance. For just about everyone, incorporating more reps will create faster development and will give more things you can change when training slows down. It also builds more mass, capacity and character. 

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