Barbell deadlift
Lifting a loaded bar off the floor — the movement that loads more of you at once than any other.
What to watch
- Set your back before the bar moves
- Bar stays close to your legs
- Hips and shoulders rise together
- Lower it, do not drop it
- Pattern
- Hinge
- Equipment
- Barbell
- Space
- Standing room
- Difficulty
- Developing
- Load
- External load
What it is
Stand with the bar over the middle of your feet, close enough to touch your shins. Feet about hip width.
Push your hips back and bend your knees until you can reach the bar, gripping it just outside your legs. Set your position: chest up, lower back in its normal shape, shoulders roughly over the bar. Take the slack out — pull gently until you feel the weight without moving it.
Stand up, driving through the floor, keeping the bar dragging up your legs. Finish standing tall. Lower it by hinging back the same way.
What it demands
More of you at once than anything else in the collection. The hamstrings and gluteus maximus extend the hip; the erector spinae group holds the spine against a very large flexing force; the quadriceps straighten the knee; the whole grip and upper back hold on.
Grip is the limiter for many people, and that is legitimate information rather than a fault.
The ability to set a position and keep it while the load is heavy — which is why the pattern is learned unloaded first.
What usually goes wrong
The hips shoot up first. The knees straighten before the bar leaves the floor, the bar then rises with straight legs and a rounded back. The most common and most consequential error.
The bar drifts forward. Any distance between the bar and your body is leverage against your lower back. It stays in contact with your legs the whole way.
Yanking. Snatching at a heavy bar from slack. Take the slack out, then pull.
Dropping it from the top. Lowering is part of the lift.
Loading before the pattern is reliable. This is the movement where that matters most, because it is the one that will accept the most weight.
Where it sits
The most loadable movement there is, which is both its value and its risk profile — not because the movement is dangerous, but because it will let you attempt far more than you are ready for.
Learn the pattern with the hip hinge, then the kettlebell deadlift, which is the same shape at a manageable load. The Romanian deadlift is its close relative and never touches down.
On back position: this site takes no view on whether a perfectly neutral spine is required, because the evidence on lifting technique and injury is genuinely less settled than the confidence around it — see the erector spinae record. What is well supported is duller: build up gradually, and unaccustomed load is what causes problems.