by Jamie Lewis
Form tips: This is not an Olympic lift. There are not two pulls— there is but one. The point here is to generate as much force ripping the bar off the ground as possible so that it goes as high as possible. You’re not racking it, and you’re not catching it in a snatch, so the only position about which you need to worry is the start. The key is to get the bar as close to your shins as humanly possible. Again, I use the same stance and grip width as I use in the regular deadlift.
Filling in the Rest of the Blanks on the Deadlift
The above exercises can serve as alternatives to the deadlift, but aren’t true assistance movements to fill in the blanks on things the deadlift misses or requires. Basically, the deadlift and the aforementioned exercises are the cars that can get you to the party, but you’re not going to get laid if you try to take someone home in a stripped-down beast of a vehicle that lacks the finer touches like a stereo, seats, and air conditioning. Thus, include:
Grip training. The manner in which you train grip matters far less than the fact that you train it in the first place. I like doing standing wrist curls holding the barbell as I would if I were doing a double-overhand deadlift at the top of the movement. I really only train the wrist flexors (the underside of the forearm), as I get a lot of knotting in my extensors if I train them too heavily or frequently.
Biceps. They’re not the sole purview of the bench bros, so it’s time to drop the haughty attitude, put away your monocle, and join the tan kids in front of the mirror. Failure to train your biceps may well lead to a torn bicep in competition, so train them a couple of times a week to ensure your tendons and ligaments are up to the task of a heavy pull. I prefer cables for biceps, and generally do 5-25 rep sets of rope hammer curls two or three times a week, supersetted with rope pushdowns for triceps.
Hamstrings. Strong hamstrings are essential to a good deadlift. Vince Urbank, who holds the American deadlfting record with a 906 raw pull at 308 lbs., reputedly does ultra-high rep sets of hamstring curls in the form of 50 to 100 rep sets, in order to flush them with blood and strengthen the insertions. I don’t quite go that far, but I do recommend doing multiple sets of 10-20 reps at the end of your workout at least twice a week. Glute-ham raises are also a great hamstring accessory movement, and can easily be done by throwing a yoga mat on the floor in front of any heavy machine and wedging your toes under a low crossbar on it. You don’t need a GHR bench to do GHRs. I do these for lower reps and add weight with a weighted vest on occasion.
Calves. Andy Bolton is a big proponent of calf raises to assist in your pull, and as he is the world record holder in the equipped deadlift at 308 lbs., he knows what he’s doing (Bolton). Like the hamstring curls, include these a couple of times a week to finish out your workout.
Basic Tips On The Deadlift Itself
Get as close to the bar as humanly possible. This seems ultra-basic, but it is probably the most important part of the lift. If the bar gets away from you, you cannot possibly finish the lift. You should start with the bar against or within one inch of your shins, and the bar should be dragged up your shins as you pull. Additionally, you want your hips as close to the bar as possible, which brings us to point #2.
Do not sit into the lift too much. This is incredibly important. When you sit too deep into the deadlift, whether it’s conventional or sumo, you’ll create “slack” in the lift, so when you start your initial pull you’re going to generate force against nothing and hit a wall. The deadlift is enough of a bitch without adding additional difficulty. Olympic lifters generally have a real problem with this, and they in particular need to remember that you should start with your hips high. According to Dave Tate, champion deadlifter Chuck Vogelpohl used to pull in khakis for this very reason- it prevents you from dropping your ass too low to the ground because you’ll split your pants if you do (Eggers). I generally train in cargo shorts, which accomplished the very same thing, and I can attest to the fact that the sear of your pants/shorts will explode like a shaken can of soda spiked on the ground if you drop your hips when you pull.
Round-back lifting is not necessarily a bad thing. For whatever reason, there appears to be some sort of a witch-hunt regarding round-backed lifting, probably fueled by insurance companies. People who should never lift with a round back are weak and untrained people. If you look at odd-shaped object lifts performed in real life by truly strong people, such as log or stone lifts, you’ll see that the lifts are always done with a round back. Similarly, many of the best pullers in history, such as Konstantin Konstantinovs, John Kuc, Andy Bolton, and Bob Peoples pulled with pronounced rounding in their backs. I personally pull with a round back and have never had a single problem with my lower back. That is not to say you should intentionally pull with a round back, but if your back rounds on a heavy pull, it’s not the end of the world, and fuck anyone who says it is. Ten times out of ten, the guys bitching about round back lifting are weak as kittens.
Do not try to squat a deadlift. That might sound silly, but I’ve read countless articles and message board posts wherein the deadlift is described as a reverse squat. It’s not- it’s pretty obviously a pull, and should be approached as such. The mentalities for each movement are as different as the movements, as well. The deadlift is the ultimate instance of an unstoppable force vs. an immovable object. You must approach the bar like a caged beast and literally tear it off the ground. Provided your form doesn’t deviate, there is literally no amount of pumpitude that is too much for the deadlift- you should be practically rabid when you approach the bar. That mentality doesn’t work for the squat, as approaching the squat too wildly will get your mind out of the game and you’ll usually reverse the movement before you hit parallel as a result. Thus, you cannot squat a deadlift or deadlift a squat.
Pull back, not up. When you’re deadlifting, you’re basically trying to pull your hips through the bar path, rather than pull the bar straight up. Thus, your shoulders and knees should always be behind the bar- remember, this is not the first pull in a clean.
Check your toes. When pulling conventional, your toes should point straight ahead. When pulling sumo, you should have your hips, knees, and toes all pointing in exactly the same direction.
Get in shape. That might seem silly, but the best deadlifters in history have generally been people with incredibly physical jobs (most of the best Finn deadlifters were loggers, Bob Peoples was a farmer, etc.). Thus, you are going to need to increase your overall physical workload to condition yourself for deadlifting. My personal favorite movement for GPP is the stone load. When I had access to stones, I really enjoyed loading the 135 lb stone onto a high box for time, usually about 20 minutes. I would generally do this with a partner and we would alternate reps, and it was a ball-breaker. For those of you with access to a sled, you might want to drag the sled. Louie Simmons mentioned that this movement really helped improve his lifters’ pulls, and they incorporated it to mimic what the Finns used to do as a major part of their workday- drag logs (Simmons). Whatever you decide to do, get your ass in shape if you want a brutal deadlift.
Don’t quit. The deadlift is perhaps the best example of a lift wherein he who wants it the most wins. A heavy deadlift is never fun— it’s a brutal, gut-wrenching grind of a lift where you’re worried you’re going to shit yourself and pass out. It’s not for the weak minded or the faint-hearted. It is perhaps the truest test of will to win in which one could compete. Thus, show the world you’re a badass and pull until you’re physically incapable of continuing the lift.
A Note On The Attached Programs
In an effort to be as unpredictable and ultimately chaotic as possible, I’ve included a deadlifting specialization routine. It’s basically the sum total of all of my efforts in the lift, and will at the very least take your deadlift from shitty to passable, and will probably take it to “holy shit” if you stick with it. That stated, I’m not anywhere near Coan’s 791 deadlift (no one on Earth has come near it,) but I’ve only been out-pulled once in the last couple o
f years, and am ranked #5 on the all-time list for raw deadlifters at 181. Thus, I have a pretty good feeling I know what I’m talking about. There will be a squat specialization routine as well, and you can feel free to alternate between them, should you so wish. Frankly, I’m including these programs due to popular demand. They should be a starting point, rather than an end, and a place from which you can build a routine that suits your personality, body type, and the amount of time you can devote to training.
Squatting Like You're The CEO of the Paper Street Soap Company
If there's one exercise on which I feel confident I can be a revolution-inspiring, Baby Gap t-shirt clad and bloodspattered Tyler Durden to the assembled masses, it is unequivocally the squat. At the moment, I'm 17 lbs off a world record that has stood since 1973, and my latest third attempt was easy as pie. As such, I feel pretty confident acting as a vocal authority on the king of exercises. Making my level of comfort even greater is the fact that I wasn't always a great squatter, and for years was a barely passable squatter. That did not, however, deter me from breaking my ass on it. Thus, you motherfuckers need to sit back, grab a fucking notepad, and forget every single thing you think you know about squatting. It's highly likely all you have in your mental Rolodex for squatting is a pile of horseshit written by people who suck at squatting for people who've accepted they're always going to suck at squatting. No woman worth her salt would seek advice on prepping for a hundred man gangbang from a Catholic nun, and no man is going to seek advice on changing his oil from an effete, coiffed Frenchman on a moped. You should be no different about the squat.
Like the bench press, the squat is a relatively young exercise as well, as the squat rack wasn’t invented until the 20th Century. Prior to its invention, the only time the squat was done was if it was clean and pressed to the back or held in the clean rack and front squatted. Milo Steinborn, a German strongman who arrived in the United States in 1921, popularized the back squat by demonstrating the version popularly contested in Germany at the time. At that time, since they had no rack, the Germans would upend the barbell, lay it across their backs, and then squat (Boff). Though Steinborn is the person credited with its invention, he neither invented it nor was best at it— Germans competed in it for years before Steinborn brought it to the US, and Carl Moerke was the first person to break the 600 lb barrier in the back squat defeat the legendary strongman Hermann Goerner in competition (Todd). The squat rack seems to have been invented in the 1930s, though that’s a guess based on the fact that it was popularized in books at that time. The lift was still considered one of the non-Olympic “odd lifts” contested in AAU meets and the like, but it didn’t really gain full preeminence as the king of all exercises until powerlifting became an official sport in the 1970s. Since then, the squat basically been the Robert Downey Jr. of weightlifting, passing in and out of periodically with strength coaches as sports scientists have struggled to keep up with advances in sport training. Like Robert Downey Jr., the squat is currently enjoying a hell of a lot of popularity, and is currently regarded as one of the best, if not the best, exercise for gaining muscular weight and strength. In spite of that fact, there’s still no real consensus about how it should be performed, the ideal squat stance for certain lifters, or the best method of performance for it. If you haven’t already picked up on this underlying theme, you’re a little slow, but I’ll catch you up— there’s no consensus because there is no one best method for performing the squat.
"You do the little job you're trained to do. 'Pull a lever.' 'Push a button.' You don't understand any of it, and then you just die." – Tyler Durden
From the emails and comments I've received on my squat form, there appears to be a pervasive and hilariously nonsensical opinion that one’s squat stance must be moderate when squatting raw. At best, the reasoning online appears to be "a wide stance will kill your hips eventually," and at worst, people posit some preposterous bullshit about power transfer in the hips versus the legs in a pathetic attempt to bolster their nonsense with officious wording. Having squatted with a moderately to extremely wide stance for years, I can say that you're in no danger of "killing your hips," whatever the fuck that means, any more than you are of incurring any other injury squatting, and that this point is especially moot considering the downright embarrassing numbers most people put up on the squat. I will state, for the record, that the wider my stance goes, the higher my squat goes.
Let's take a look at what works, shall we?
The Squat Form Of The Greats
Tony Fratto- World record holder since 1974 at 198 with 688 squat. Moderately wide stance, toes out, wide grip.
Jill Mills- World Record holder at 181 with 473 lbs. Moderate stance, wide grip.
Stan Efferding- World record holder with 854 at 275. EXTREMELY wide stance and grip.
Kirk Karwoski- World record holder at 242 with an 826 squat. Moderate stance, toes out, wide grip.
Scot Weech- World record holder at 308 with an 826 squat. Wide stance, toes forward, extremely wide grip.
Sam Byrd- World record holder with 782 lbs at 220. Wide stance, toes out, extremely wide grip.
Dan Dumitrache- World record holder at 165, 672 lbs with wraps. Crazy narrow stance and grip. (Pictured at 181.)
Don Reinhoudt- World record holder with a 934lb squat at SHW. Wide stance, toes pretty much forward, extremely wide grip.
Me- 17 lbs off a 40 year old world record with a 633 squat. I squat wide as shit, and have started pointing my toes more forward than this picture shows, and have spread my grip wider over time. My squat form is constantly evolving, and I am currently using a suicide grip with my pinkies on the outside edge of the knurling.
Jennifer Thompson- 314 at 132. Wide stance, toes pointed slightly out, super close grip.
Konstantin Pozdeev- World record holder at 220 with a wrapped 815. Horrifyingly narrow Olympic stance and grip. His squat is as awesome as it is unbelievably awkward looking.
Suzie Hartwig-Gary- World record holder at 114 with a 319 squat. Moderate stance, close grip. By the way, time to stop patting yourselves on the back for your 315 squat and get pissed that a 114lb chick makes you her punk bitch every day.
What did we learn from this? Conventional wisdom about the squat is worse than worthless, for one. For another, the best of the best seem to squat primarily with a wide stance, even when raw. If anything, the close and moderate stance lifters appear to be the outliers, rather than the norm.
"I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every endangered panda that wouldn't screw to save its species and every whale or dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground."
- Tyler Durden
As always, what is needed here is not the blind faith in idiocy that most people seem to have, but rather an overwhelming contempt for the opinions of the majority and a burning desire to determine what works best for you. No one will be able to tell you what your best form is without 1) the requisite experience in powerlifting that comes from a great deal of training and a great deal of successful competition, and 2) seeing you attempt squat repetitions with a wide variety of squat forms. This should be the most basic, simple to understand element in this equation, but for some reason people seem to think that blindly asking people so stupid and ill-informed that chimpanzees seem sage-like by comparison is the best course of action for them.
Before you consult a single other person for advice on the squat, spend a week squatting every other day. These don't need to be marathon, balls-out sessions. The goal is, in fact, to see what feels most comfortable squatting. After months of squatting close to Olympic-style, I opened up my stance as much as my flexibility would allow and dropped the bar as low on my back as I could, and I watched my squat jump up like I never thought possible. What I discovered was that the strength was there— I simply was using the wrong form to maximize my leverages. As such, your goal for the next couple of weeks should be to determine, through trial and error, what your best form is. If possible, find an elite
lifter whose body type most resembles your own and see what form they're using. Try that first and foremost. You might think that the new form would take some time to acclimatize yourself to, but that's not the case— I realized the benefit of my new form within a couple of sets. Once you break through the mental wall of "this feels wrong," you'll determine what works the best for you. Four variables with which to play:
Foot placement. Test different widths ranging from shoulder width, slightly outside shoulder width, and as wide as you can get your feet inside the rack.
Foot angle. Conventional wisdom dictates that your foot should be in line with your knee, but I've found that angling my feet more forward seems to reduce the amount of tendinitis pain I get in my knees.
Bar placement. I've found that the lower the bar, the easier the movement, which would be exactly what one would expect with any knowledge of physics- Archimedes postulated this thousands of years ago, and it's correct. The closer the bar is to the fulcrum, the less your effort force needs to be. Thus, if you squat with a high bar, you're making the lift harder than it needs to be. That stated, some lifters are much more comfortable squatting with a high bar, Olympic style, and they put up huge numbers as a result. The form you should use is not the one you think should be best- it should be the form with which you’re strongest and most comfortable.