Deadlift
- Muscle:
- posterior chain
- Equipment:
- barbell
Why it's worth doing
The deadlift trains almost the entire body pulling against the heaviest load most people will ever move in a gym, all in a single lift. Picking something heavy up off the floor is also a pattern used constantly outside the gym, which makes it one of the few exercises with direct carryover to daily life, not just to a number on a spreadsheet.
It's also one of the three lifts — alongside the squat and the bench press — used almost universally as a strength benchmark, precisely because the number means something without needing an explanation. And because it starts from a dead stop on the floor, it removes any assist from the stretch reflex that variations starting from a rack or a hang do get: every rep is trained from true zero velocity, which is exactly what builds raw starting strength.
That's why it's hard to replace in a serious strength program: no other single lift trains the whole posterior chain, grip strength, and the ability to brace the torso under maximum axial load, all at once. It's also one of the simplest lifts to load heavy with minimal equipment — a bar and plates are enough, no rack or bench required — which is part of why it shows up in nearly every gym and nearly every strength program, regardless of budget.
How to do it
- Stand in front of the bar with your feet hip-width apart and the bar over the middle of your foot, not yet touching your shins.
- Bend at the hips and knees to grip the bar just outside your legs, arms straight and vertical, elbows not bent.
- Lower your hips until your shins touch the bar, chest up, back in its neutral curve, and pull the slack out of the bar toward you before you lift.
- Brace your core with a strong inhale before you pull; that tension holds your spine through the whole lift, not just the start.
- Push the floor away with your legs and keep the bar against your body as you rise, hips and shoulders coming up together, not your hips shooting up first.
- Finish standing tall, hips fully extended and glutes squeezed, without leaning back or hyperextending your lower back to close out the rep.
- To lower it, push your hips back and only bend your knees once the bar passes them; reset your brace before pulling again on the next rep.
Watch the video
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the glutes and hamstrings extending the hip, together with the whole erector spinae chain working isometrically to resist spinal flexion under the heaviest load in the gym. Near the floor, where the knee angle is most closed, the quads kick in harder than most people expect to extend the knee and break the bar off the ground — part of why deadlift day leaves your legs sore too.
As secondary movers, the lats pull the bar in toward the body to shorten the lever arm on the lower back — which is why bring the bar to your body is an actual technical cue, not a cosmetic detail — and the upper back and traps hold the shoulder blades in place under a heavy static load.
As stabilizers, the forearms are often the first link to fail on a heavy set (hence the mixed grip or straps); the core holds intra-abdominal pressure against the load, and the adductors keep the knee tracking in line with the foot instead of caving in the moment the bar leaves the floor.
Common mistakes
- Rounding your lower back to finish the rep: it concentrates stress on the discs instead of spreading it out, and it's the most common way this lift ends in lower back pain.
- Yanking the bar with your hips shooting up before your shoulders: it turns the pull into a half-finished Romanian deadlift partway through and takes efficiency out of the lift.
- Hyperextending your lower back at the top to force the lockout: the glutes already finished their job before that point, and the extra arch only loads the spine without adding anything to the movement.
Conventional or Romanian
Deadlift or Romanian deadlift comes down to which part of the range matters more for whatever the goal is right now. They're related lifts, not the same exercise under two names.
The conventional deadlift starts from a complete stop on the floor: the quads extend the knee to break the bar off the ground, and only then do the hips and back take over to finish the pull. That lets you move more absolute weight, and it's what actually trains the skill of pulling a heavy load off the floor safely — plus it's the number used as the go-to strength benchmark.
The RDL never touches the floor: it starts and ends around knee height, without the quad assist the deadlift gets off the ground, and it loads the hamstrings through a long, controlled stretch that the conventional deadlift barely touches. That makes it better for hamstring-specific hypertrophy and for the eccentric strength that guards against strains.
In practice: if the goal is maximum strength or training the heavy pull off the floor, the conventional deadlift is what does that job. If the goal is adding hamstring volume without the systemic fatigue of a heavy floor pull, the RDL earns its spot as the better accessory. Most serious posterior-chain programs use both, not one instead of the other.
Frequently asked questions
What do I do if I can't finish a rep?
Let go of it. Lower it with whatever control you still have, or drop it if you've already lost position, but don't force it through with a rounded back — that's where a lower back injury happens, not in the failed rep itself.
Why can't I round my lower back?
Because a rounded spine under a heavy axial load concentrates stress on the discs instead of spreading it across the erector spinae, which are built to hold that load in a neutral position. It's the most common technical cause of a lower back injury in this lift.
Mixed grip or straps if my forearms give out before my back does?
Yes, without guilt. If the real limit is your grip and not your back or legs, training through that bottleneck just slows progress on the rest of the body, which is what you actually want to train.
Do I need to touch the floor between reps?
It's better to reset your tension on every rep, even if the bar only grazes the floor without fully settling. Chaining reps together without resetting your breath and core tension is what makes technique fall apart toward the end of a set.
Similar exercises
The Romanian deadlift is the most direct complement: same hip-hinge pattern, but without the systemic fatigue of pulling heavy off the floor, so it works well the day after a heavy conventional deadlift, once the goal shifts from strength to hamstring hypertrophy.
The hip thrust adds direct glute work at the end of the range the deadlift barely touches — the close of hip extension — without any axial load on the spine, which makes it a good option when the lower back needs a lighter day but the glutes still need volume. The barbell row, for its part, shares almost the same hinge posture as the deadlift, so it can be programmed the same day without repeating the stimulus: it pulls toward the hip instead of extending it.