5 Key Movements for a MASSIVE Deadlift
If you had to choose squat, bench or deadlift as the king of lifts, which would you choose? Now, let me sway your answer by proclaiming that the deadlift is a movement that requires you to move a motionless bar such as stated by Newton’s First Law:
An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by a force.
And because of that, I want to say that of all the major traditional lifts, deadlift is king of all. Now with that being said, if the deadlift is the king of lifts, it might be pivotal for any lifter to master it as it is physiologically relevant in not just strength sports but also traditional sports as well. Whether you’re a sprinter pushing of the blocks or a strongman competing in the deadlift ladder, knowing how to master the deadlift translates into so many things. Even if your wife decides to dump you on the side of the road because of a lustful affair, you need to know how to deadlift in order to pick up and carry every box of clothes out of the house for the big move…
Oh, my mistake. She dumped you for your lustful affair with the iron. God bless you for your admiration and dedication to the iron.
So as discussed, there are many instances of how we are forced to pick things up off the ground whether it’s for sport or the functionality of real life. So to conquer this lift, I have provided to you (in no specific order) a list of five ways I program athletes to successfully grow their deadlift.
#1 – Trap Bar Deadlift
I absolutely love the trap bar deadlift. Think about it like this, if you are to do a traditional barbell deadlift, the weight is displaced in front of you 100% of the time. That means biomechanically, the strain of the lift means you will be putting a ton of engagement in your postural muscles. Clearly in competition there is no escaping this characteristic of the deadlift, but for those who are struggling to learn how to promote posture and better displacement of resistance on their bodies natural levers (the joints), using the trap bar deadlift helps put 100% of the resistance in the middle of your body to better stack your shoulders, knees, ankles and learn how to lift with more leg drive. By competition time, its best to do the traditional barbell deadlift clearly but during the offseason and early in the prep, it is (to me) fully acceptable to use the trap bar as not only a secondary, but primary movement to help you learn the movement pattern and expectation of the lift to have the best results of the movement pattern.
#2 – Farmer Walks
Farmer walks are huge for the idea of grip, but also farmer walks are working more than just grip. Strongman itself is a pivotal style of training not only for strength athletes but for ANY athlete, PERIOD. During a strongman exercise, the movement seems to (more times than not) require you to be athletic and engage multiple muscles and planes of movement the whole way through. So for farmer walks, you have to keep your posture tall, keep your core strong as well as promoting strength and endurance of grip too. You also must use the upper back, glutes and lower body muscles to perform the walking motion and carrying the load as well. Clearly, the list of benefits from strongman movements seems endless, but there are also those who believe strongman can be dangerous…
You know what else is dangerous? The head to head contact in all levels of American football but ya know what? Hasn’t stopped a majority of our population from participating or supporting the sport, so don’t be a hypocrite you bum!
Also, just as the trap bar deadlift…the farmer walk might not necessarily dominate programming near the peak of training, but this could be a secondary or a primary movement in your early offseason programming. Imagine using a trap bar for the farmer walk as well, and early in offseason you choose on one week to heavy farmer walk and speed trap bar deadlift, then the next week go heavy trap bar deadlift and do trap farmer walk for speed or endurance as well.
#3 – Training with Less Reps AND Lower Intensity
I am more than sure that every person reading this article at some point has trained their deadlift for multiple reps per set. I bet you have followed rep schemes of 3x6, 4x8, or something in that range. But instead of 3x6, why not 6x3? Let’s face it, deadlift is an intense movement and very exhausting on the body. But don’t start giving me the excuse of your CNS being massively depleted and you need to go get IV therapy and some kinesiology tape before your next training session. Sometimes it’s not an exhausted nervous system, sometimes it might be you are weaker minded. But have no fear! Let’s make this easier on you. I believe to have a massive deadlift, try focusing on more sets and less reps. So instead of 4 sets of 8 reps, go 8 sets of 4 reps. And even better, why not drop the intensity. Instead of using the normal percentages that would go with a 4 rep scheme, go lighter in percentage so that for your 8 sets of 4 reps, you can focus on lighter submaximal weight for massive power, speed, and rate of force development. In high school I could barely squeeze out a 515 pound deadlift but after 12 weeks of only doing speed deficit deadlifts for 6x3…my deadlift jumped from 515 to 575 and I was only using 315 pounds for training! THAT WAS IT
#4 – Isometric Deadlifts (no, not pause deadlifts!)
Ok, so let’s address the elephant in the room. A person messaged me on social media and asked me about their peer’s training program. The topic of discussion was “reductionist training”. I’m not sure if there is an actual program named this, but I believe the implication had to be just doing what was necessary and then move on. Sure, for any newer lifter I could easily see them being overloaded with advanced programming but if you really want to load more weight, you have to progressively overload. And another way to progressively overload yourself with a unique exercise for massive engagement is using the isometric deadlift. No, not a pause deadlift, I absolutely hate this lift. I don’t understand why I want to teach someone to pause a bar in training when the goal of the deadlift is to lift the bar straight upward. Now someone could argue this about pause squats, but in that case the pause squat is a movement that is manipulating fatigue during a portion of the movement for improving the anatomy of the movement. Remember, the desire of the squat is to ascend with the barbell out of the bottom, so I would never ask my client to pause during the ascending motion of the lift. Some of the terms I have heard in programming…
Pause Deadlifts
Double Pause Deadlifts
Double Pause Squats
TRIPLE Pause Squats – pause before the bottom, pause at the bottom, then pause again half way to the top. Fantastic
So for us to do the actual isometric deadlift, let’s start off by finding your weak point. This tends to be where you slow down the most. You could be slow off the bottom, you could be slow half way in the lift…so the goal is to set the pins to lift against them at your weak point, but when you pull against the pins, the bar is motionless and you have to fight with 100% engagement. The idea is that an ACTIVE isometric (pin pull) instead of a PASSIVE isometric (pause deadlift) helps you learn to be stronger in that point of your lift so next time you are hitting that sticking point, you will push through it.
#5 – Sandbag and or Stone Training
Whether it’s a sandbag and stone, we are basically looking for the same end result – pushing your hips through the movement to meet the standard of the lift. Some movements I like are “seated sandbag or stone squats” where the athlete sits, weight in lap and they have to squat up and push their hips through to finish. Another lift like this that could be more rigorous is “sandbag over bar” meaning you pick up the weight, set it in your lap and push your hips through completely to get the load over the bar, or if you want onto a platform or a plyo box. Either way, using the sandbag and stone in these instances means your hips have to go more than 100% of the required range of motion to finish. I believe this can really exaggerate your hip extensors to help your deadlift grow even more