You must be kidding me, right? I don’t want to do heavy deadlifts because I don’t want to become ‘bulky.’
The deadlift is the most important exercise for building raw strength and overall posterior development than any other exercise. The raw strength I’m referring to isn’t for ripping a phone book in half, but what if you didn’t need to have someone help you move furniture around, or what about having the strength to do your daily activities with less strain?
Like I said, deadlifts are a posterior chain and full body developing exercise. This means that from head to toe will be worked with focus on your upper back, glutes, and hamstrings.
Equipment Needed
If you go to a gym, most likely you will have the available equipment to do barbell deadlifts. All you need is a barbell and the weights to put on the bar. To me it is the most simple exercise to learn with the least amount of equipment and gives you the most return on investment.
Some wrist straps and a weight belt may be a great addition to your gym bag once you start enjoying deadlifts. Don’t let your grip keep you from lifting heavy and stay safe with a weight belt. Using a weight lifting belt requires special technique which I can teach you in another article if there is enough interest (which I hope there is).
Form
This video shows generally a healthy way to perform deadlifts. Keep in mind that everyone is built differently and if you need to set up further from the bar, have your grip width a little wider or in more, or if you need to have your feet width different than in the video that’s okay.
[youtube id=”KSZogPDS9c0″ width=”600″ height=”350″]
Deadlifting is a natural movement (pick something up) so don’t over complicate the exercise with measuring how far you are from the bar!
As for the grip statement in the video; I agree you should use a double overhand grip as much as you can and only use the over/under grip when you get fatigued or your grip starts to fail you. Remember that your forearms are an important part of your body, so increasing your grip strength is extremely helpful for daily life activities.
Attitude
Deadlifting heavy will do nothing but build a toned and strong physique, so work on increasing your deadlift to watch your body get sculpted.
Having the correct attitude while doing deadlifts will help you blow off some steam and also get that extra 20 pounds you’ve been working to get. Since deadlifts are a full body exercise, you will exert quite a bit of energy to lift the weight. If you’ve been having a bad day or week, a good session of deadlifts will help you release the possible anger or tension you’re holding.
Once you learn to harness that negative energy that you haven’t been able to let go of, you find that deadlifts are therapeutic.
Feel free to leave any questions or comments below!
