How has the deadlift exercise affected my clients? More importantly, how has it affected them and those around me and thus my exercise prescription over 20 years of personal training. The results have been interesting and I’ve come to a few key conclusions and ONE really big finding.

Deadlifts have come in and out of style over my career and lately, (since the start of CrossFit, they’re really back in style. I remember being at a university gym and finding a “lifting room” down in the basement and thinking, what’s this all about??

Now, deadlifting and power lifting platforms are front and center in many new gyms. It’s pretty cool and I do love watching Olympic Lifting and Power Lifting. I think the first time I put a weight in my hands, it felt good and I wanted to lift it. I also feel this way about deadlifting, I enjoy the lift.

All that being said, I don’t really do the lift in it’s genuine form anymore.

Reasons I don’t Deadlift Anymore

First, I play a lot of sports that I feel deadlifting doesn’t really benefit. I don’t discount that another athlete might play my sports and feel deadlifts are crucial for their performance but that’s just how I feel. In my sports, my coaches and myself have noticed that there’s a happy medium for tissue movement. Overbuild and you don’t get the stretch and recoil for amazing sports performance. In simplistic terms, the joint can get a little bulky with muscle and end up a little slow. Nothing major, just happens.

Second, I don’t love the loading of barbell deadlifts on my body. I have a very short torso and long legs. I’ve always found that as I go up in weight (despite wide leg deadlifiting) I don’t get a feel good load on my body. It doesn’t feel bad, it actually feels ok but not as good as other lifts. Again, that’s just me.

Third, I’ve found RDLs, single arm dumbbell snatches and hip extension exercises to benefit me nicely and load my body more comfortably.

Deadlifting with clients over the last 20 years

I’ve seen many trainers literally use how much a client can deadlift as a marker for progress. While that’s fine, I always wonder at what point they’re going to be satisfied. And what if they hit a point where everything’s just too much? Is it just maintenance then? Maintenance at a really heavy weight? Because that’s not easy and injury rates are higher than at lower weight. So I’ve kept my clients out of it.

I’ve also been at parties where people find out I’m a trainer and one of the typical questions I get is: “How sore should I be after a workout?” The next one is often a statement to the effect of “My trainer’s got me doing all these lifts and they’re getting me to do a lot of deadlifting and my back is really sore. Is that good?”

So of course I say: “I don’t talk about this unless someone’s paying me” and the convo ends there. Kidding! Kidding! I would never say that. I do typically quiz a little out of my own curiosity. As the chat continues, I tend to find out that they might be overdoing it a bit. Again, not a major finding. But, you shouldn’t be sore to the point that you’re worried and or getting physio etc. because you’re so bashed up from lifting. It’s just not necessary for most people.

Another deadlifting issue that would come up with clients

As you probably know, as the weight goes up, so do the compensations. Compensations are not good and can lead to very tight muscles and potential injuries and that’s not somewhere I felt clients needed to go to get the overall results they wanted.

It’s just tough to keep things perfectly clean all the time. I’ve seen amazing athletes train right beside me and they’ve suffered injury at heavier weights with big lifts and in general, those injuries tended to be more serious. So if the super athletes can’t get it perfect, can my clients? Even though I consider myself a decent trainer, I also feel I have some decent limitations. Thus, I’m not gonna push that edge with my clients.

Is perfect deadlifitng technique safe?

In my opinion, no. It’s just the safest.

This was my one big conclusion on heavy loaded movements: Even perfect technique didn’t save you.

Here’s a example.. I knew this amazing thrower in track and field and he had perfect technique. He was of course competing at a high level so the loads were big. Over time, though his technique was perfect, it still brought on a great deal of load. Eventually, even with perfect technique, he experienced some breakdown of his T6 and T7 thoracic vertebrae or let’s say a lot of wearing down. Now that’s just him. This probably won’t happen to everybody but my point is that even perfect technique didn’t save him and it may not save you under very high loads.

It’s the extreme overloading of the joint vs. just an amount that will keep it optimized that we’re focused on here: 

Load YES, overload too often NO.

Even a perfectly positioned set of car brake pads wear out over time with lots of overuse. There’s just not a way around it. Now, I’m not debating what you should do with your life. I’m just stating that after discussing this with clients, they chose to go about things with smaller loads to potentially avoid as much compression, injury likelihood etc. as possible. In fact, I now try to train clients in a way that helps keep things as “decompressed” things as much as possible.

I think it’s a good point to understand that even with perfect technique, there’s still going to be use, compression and likely some wear and tear (hopefully not tear). Now are there bomb proof people that can deadlift and train heavy until they’re 85, yeah probably. I don’t study those folks but someone should. I’m sure they’re out there.

Best of Health,

Tyler

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8424024/