Deadlift
The full-body pull that builds total back, hip, and grip strength — and the single lift most associated with raw functional strength.
Set your stance and grip. Feet hip-width apart, bar over the middle of your feet, grip just outside your knees.
Set your back before you pull. Flat back, chest up, shoulder blades pulled together, hips down until your shins touch the bar. This setup happens before any weight moves. Drive through the floor. Push your feet into the ground rather than pulling the bar up with your back — think "push the floor away." Finish standing tall. Hips and shoulders rise together until you're standing fully upright, bar close to your body the entire way.
Lower with the same control. Reverse the motion deliberately — hips back, bar staying close, back staying flat. Don't just drop it.
Rounding the back during the pull. This is the highest-risk error in the deadlift and the most common reason for lower-back injury. If your back rounds, the weight is too heavy for your current setup.
Why it matters
The deadlift is less an isolated back exercise and more a total-body strength test that happens to load the back heavily and safely when done correctly. It builds the posterior chain — back, glutes, hamstrings — together, which is exactly how those muscles function in real life: as a connected system, not in isolation.
It's also one of the most direct carryovers to everyday strength and injury resilience, since picking things up off the ground safely is a movement pattern everyone needs regardless of whether they ever set foot in a gym again.
How to do it
- Set your stance and grip. Feet hip-width apart, bar over the middle of your feet, grip just outside your knees.
- Set your back before you pull. Flat back, chest up, shoulder blades pulled together, hips down until your shins touch the bar. This setup happens before any weight moves.
- Drive through the floor. Push your feet into the ground rather than pulling the bar up with your back — think "push the floor away."
- Finish standing tall. Hips and shoulders rise together until you're standing fully upright, bar close to your body the entire way.
- Lower with the same control. Reverse the motion deliberately — hips back, bar staying close, back staying flat. Don't just drop it.
Common mistakes
- Rounding the back during the pull. This is the highest-risk error in the deadlift and the most common reason for lower-back injury. If your back rounds, the weight is too heavy for your current setup.
- Letting the bar drift away from the body. A bar that drifts forward away from your shins puts much more strain on the lower back for the same weight.
- Hips rising before the shoulders. If your hips shoot up first, you're turning the deadlift into a stiff-legged movement that shifts load away from the legs and onto the lower back.
- Skipping the setup every rep. Resetting your back, grip, and hip position fully between every single rep — not just the first — matters more as fatigue sets in.
Sets & reps by level
3 sets of 5–8 reps with light weight, sometimes from an elevated position (rack pull style) to learn the pattern with a shorter, more manageable range of motion before progressing to the floor.
3–4 sets of 5–6 reps at a weight that's genuinely demanding while form stays correct.
4–5 sets of 3–5 reps at higher intensity, with full attention to setup quality on every single rep, not just the first.
Log your next deadlift session in seconds.
Track sets, reps, and weight without breaking your rest.