Deadlift: technique, variants, common mistakes
The deadlift is the most honest lift in the gym. The bar is on the floor, you pick it up, you put it down. There’s no spotter to bail you out, no momentum to hide behind, no half-rep to fake. Either you lift the weight or you don’t.
It’s also the lift people screw up the most. I’ve watched guys deadlift 180 kg with a spine that looks like a question mark, then wonder why their lower back is fried for a week. Good deadlift technique isn’t optional — it’s the difference between a lift that builds a back made of steel and one that puts you in physical therapy.
This guide walks you through the setup, the pull, the variants, and the seven mistakes I see most often. By the end you’ll know exactly what a clean rep looks like.
Why the deadlift earns its place
The deadlift trains more muscle than any other single exercise. Glutes, hamstrings, spinal erectors, lats, traps, forearms, core — they all work simultaneously. One heavy set of five leaves you breathing like you ran a 400m sprint.
It also carries over to everything. Picking up a kid, moving furniture, loading a suitcase into the trunk — the hip hinge is the most useful movement pattern a human can train. Squats build legs, but deadlifts build the whole posterior chain plus the grip and core that hold the rest together.
The catch: load it wrong and the lower back pays. Unlike a squat, where you can dump the bar in safety pins, a failed deadlift just doesn’t come off the floor — but a sloppy rep at 80% of your max can still tweak something.
Conventional deadlift: the standard setup
Conventional is the variant most people should learn first. Bar starts on the floor, feet about hip-width apart, hands outside the legs. Here’s the setup, beat by beat.
Foot position
Stand with the bar over the middle of your foot. Not your toes — your midfoot. Look down: the bar should be roughly an inch from your shins. Feet point slightly out, maybe 10 to 15 degrees.
If the bar is too far forward at the start, you’ll have to pull it back into your shins as you lift, wasting energy and pulling you out of position. Midfoot is non-negotiable.
Grip
Reach down and grip the bar just outside your legs. Width matters: too wide and your back rounds, too narrow and your arms hit your knees on the way up. A double-overhand grip works for warmup sets. For working sets, switch to mixed grip (one palm forward, one back) or hook grip if you’ve trained it.
Squeeze the bar like you’re trying to crush it. A loose grip means a slow lift.
Hip and back position
Bend at the hips first, then the knees, until your shins touch the bar. Your hips will be higher than your knees — that’s correct for a conventional pull. If your hips are too low, you’re squatting the weight up, which doesn’t work for deadlifts.
Chest up, lats engaged (imagine pulling oranges into your armpits), neutral spine from tailbone to skull. Don’t crane your neck up. Look at the floor about 6 feet in front of you.
The brace
This is the part nobody teaches. Before you pull, take a big breath into your belly — not your chest. Push your stomach out against your belt (or imaginary belt). Hold that pressure for the entire rep. This intra-abdominal pressure is what protects your spine under load. Lose it and you fold.
The pull: how to actually move the weight
Setup is 80% of the lift. Once you’re locked in, the pull itself is brutally simple.
Pull the slack out. Before you lift, pull up on the bar just enough to take the slack out of your arms and the bar’s connection to the plates. You should hear a soft click. This eliminates the jerk that happens when slack-loaded bars suddenly hit tension.
Push the floor away. Don’t think about lifting the bar. Think about pushing your feet through the floor. The bar comes up as a consequence.
Bar stays glued to your body. It should drag up your shins, over your knees, up your thighs, and finish at your hip crease. The further the bar drifts from your body, the more leverage your lower back loses. Some lifters tape their shins or wear long socks — bloody shins are part of the deal.
Lock out by squeezing your glutes. At the top, hips fully extended, shoulders back, knees straight. Don’t lean back — that’s not extra range of motion, that’s a hyperextension waiting to happen.
Lower with control. The descent is just the pull in reverse. Push your hips back, slide the bar down your thighs, bend your knees once it passes them, set it on the floor. Don’t drop it (unless you’re doing rep maxes from a deficit and need to reset).
Deadlift variants
Once you’ve got conventional dialed, the other variants serve specific purposes.
Sumo deadlift
Wider stance, hands inside the legs. The torso stays more upright, which puts less stress on the lower back and emphasizes the quads, glutes, and adductors.
Sumo isn’t cheating — it’s a different movement with different leverage. People with longer femurs and shorter torsos often pull more sumo. People with long arms tend to do better conventional. Try both for a few weeks each before deciding which is yours.
Romanian deadlift (RDL)
Bar starts at the top (from the rack or after a deadlift), hinges at the hips with knees soft (not bent), bar slides down the thighs to about mid-shin, then back up. No floor reset between reps.
RDLs are a hamstring and glute builder, not a max-strength lift. Use them as accessory work, 3 sets of 8 to 12 at a weight you can control with perfect form.
Trap bar deadlift
Hexagonal bar, handles on the sides. Your hands are neutral, the load is centered around you instead of in front. The trap bar is more forgiving on the lower back and easier to learn — if you have access to one, it’s the best place to start.
Strength carries over to conventional, but they’re not identical. The trap bar is closer to a squat-deadlift hybrid.
Deficit and block pulls
Standing on a 1-2 inch plate (deficit) or pulling from blocks that raise the bar (block pulls) targets specific weak points. Deficit pulls hammer the bottom range; block pulls let you handle heavier loads in the lockout. These are tools for advanced lifters with a specific sticking point — not staples.
The 7 mistakes that wreck deadlifts
I’ve coached enough deadlifts to see the same mistakes over and over. Here are the ones that matter.
1. Rounded lower back. The single most common form fault. Usually caused by weak erectors, no bracing, or the lifter trying to yank the bar instead of pushing the floor. Drop the weight by 20% and rebuild.
2. Hips shoot up first. Your back ends up doing the entire lift while your legs do nothing. Cue: “Push the floor away” instead of “Lift the bar.”
3. Bar drifts away from the body. The bar should drag your shins. If it’s an inch in front, your lower back is taking double the load it should.
4. Soft setup. Walking up to the bar and just yanking. The setup is the lift. Spend 5 to 10 seconds getting your back tight, lats engaged, and breath braced.
5. Hyperextension at the top. Leaning back at lockout looks impressive but compresses the lumbar spine. Stand tall, glutes squeezed, neutral spine.
6. Looking up. Cranking the neck back to look in the mirror puts the cervical spine out of alignment. Eyes on the floor in front of you, neck neutral.
7. Skipping warmups. Going straight to working sets is the fastest way to tweak your back. Always ramp up: empty bar, then add 20-40 kg per set until you hit your working weight.
Programming the deadlift
Heavy deadlifts are taxing on the central nervous system. You don’t need to pull heavy three times a week.
Beginners: Once a week, 3 sets of 5 at a hard but clean weight. Add 2.5 kg per session as long as form holds.
Intermediate: Once or twice a week. One heavy day (sets of 3-5), one volume day (RDLs or block pulls for sets of 8-12).
Advanced: Block periodization, often pulling heavy every 7 to 14 days, with assistance work in between.
The deadlift is also where your overall split structure starts to matter. If you’re picking between a full-body and a split routine, or trying to figure out if an upper/lower program fits your schedule, where your deadlifts land in the week affects everything else. A heavy pull on Monday with a leg day on Wednesday is asking for a tweaked back.
Rest between sets matters more than people think. For heavy triples and singles, take 4 to 5 minutes minimum. We covered the science of rest periods for strength training — short rests on heavy deadlifts are a recipe for sloppy reps and injuries.
How repstack helps
Tracking deadlift progression by hand is doable, but tedious. The repstack AI coach watches every set you log, notices when your top set has stalled for three weeks, and adjusts your next session — sometimes pulling back volume, sometimes swapping to RDLs to address a weak point. The AI knows the difference between a one-off bad day and a real plateau. Read more about how the AI handles workout progression.
FAQ
How heavy should I deadlift?
For a starting goal: pull 1x bodyweight for 5 reps. Intermediate: 1.5x bodyweight. Strong: 2x bodyweight. Elite: 2.5x and up. Don’t chase numbers if your form breaks down — a clean 140 kg beats an ugly 180 kg every time.
Should I use a belt?
Not for warmups or moderate sets. For working sets above 80% of your max, a belt gives you something to brace against and lets you generate more intra-abdominal pressure. Learn to deadlift without one first — the belt amplifies a brace, it doesn’t create one.
Conventional or sumo for beginners?
Start conventional. It’s the foundational hip hinge pattern, and even if you end up competing sumo, conventional builds the back strength that carries over. Give it 6 months before deciding to switch.
How often should I deadlift?
Once a week is plenty for most people. Twice a week works if one session is light technique work or RDLs. Three times a week is for advanced lifters with very specific programming — most people will overtrain and stall.
What if my lower back hurts after deadlifts?
Stop, drop the weight, film a set from the side. 90% of the time it’s rounding or hip-shoot. If pain persists with clean form, see a physical therapist before you stop training entirely — there’s almost always a way to keep lifting around an issue.
Want a coach that watches your deadlift logs, catches stalls before they become plateaus, and adjusts your program automatically? Start training with repstack →