From a movement pattern perspective, the Deadlift is considered a hinge pattern. If you’ve never heard of a hinge pattern, that’s okay, it’s def heard of you. In a given day, you probably hinge hundreds of times a day when you sit down or try to pick something up from the ground.
A hinge is simply leaning forward and shifting your weight so you don’t fall over. Feet on the ground and hamstring tension is what prevents you from falling forward. The ‘hinge” is at the hips, but you’ll have some degree of knee flexion as well.
There are some differences between a true hinge pattern and the Deadlift despite the terms being used interchangeably.
A true hinge has an eccentric focus, the lowering part. This makes it a great exercise for developing hamstring strength AND mobility, when done correctly.
The Deadlift has a concentric focus since the goal is to stand up and good for general lower body strength/power. I don’t think it is that great for hamstring specific strength OR mobility. Most people just drop from the top of a Deadlift, so avoiding the eccentric portion. And since the weight in on the ground, you actually give in to any hamstring deficits since you push your butt back.
How to People Get Hurt?
I can’t predict injury, but I have some ideas on how to best mitigate the risks that come from personal experience and having people with actual back pain pull thousands of reps with less to no pain. It comes down to creating tension in the correct places and a more balanced training program focusing on structural strength.
I have a framework I use as a mental checklist as I evaluate exercises as well as people doing exercises. Skipping steps makes the movement inefficient and you are likely using muscle groups that aren’t made to tolerate the loads of a movement. It is a work in progress, but I can fit most movements into this framework. I’ll lay out the DL using this framework.
#1 Trunk Stiffness
I’ve talked about this one at length. Somehow, we’ve lost the ability to breath, and you have to be able to breath to stabilize the trunk. With a big inhale, the trunk needs to get WIDER. You should FEEL the air get the low back.
A good tool to make sure you FEEL this is a weight belt. When you place it around your waist, you should feel your trunk expand into the belt in ALL directions. The worse you are at this, the tighter you will need the belt in order to feel the tension, and the better you are at it, you won’t need the belt to be tight until HEAVY sets.
#2 Pull the weight close
It is the ENTIRE shoulder girdle that pulls the weight close, not just the arms. The lats control the entire shoulder girdle. There are a bunch of verbal cues to make this happen - bend the bar, break the bar apart, etc etc, the end result is to feel the lats engage. You should feel this same tension when you are leaning over, after you grab the bar. So FEEL the lats.
#3 PUSH the ground away
Your legs PUSH the ground away. People that miss this part end up “peeling” the weight off the ground, using mostly low back. The clue is hips rising faster than the shoulders (stripper back), or a completely vertical shin (despite this setup being taught in some circles).
The legs are the primary when the bar goes from the ground to around the knee. You should feel your feet DRIVE through the ground. I use a tactile cue to encourage this, placing one hand on the hips, one on the shoulders, and actually pushing down at the hips. Then it is “let these two (hips/shoulders) come up at the same time). Since I’m pushing down, the person FEELS the legs working. This usually magically reduces back pain with those that complain of it.
Deadlift Lagniappe
So above is all the technique and tension things, but if you keep hurting yourself, you could very well have some structural deficits. By structure, I am referring to the “S” Pyramid (LINK) from StrongFit. If you haven’t heard of them, I recommend checking them out, but only if you like rabbit holes.
Anal retentive engineers, feel free to critique my drawing, but basically a 135# DL is a COMPLETELY different movement than a 405# (and UP) DL. Only DL’ing will get you so far, eventually you will have to (literally and figuratively) become a different person that can withstand the forces the heavier bar does to your center of gravity. You are going up, the bar bends, therefore goes up less since it is bending.
Based on that, I’m a fan of StrongFit’s structural strength recommendations, which are:
50m SB carry 50% of 1rm
20m farmers carry 100% of 1rm split between each hand
5x BB/DB row 50%/30% of 1rm
Not meething these doesn’t mean don’t DL. But, achieiving or working towards these benchmarks leaves minimal doubt your body is strong enough to even give you a chance.
Summary
I didn’t make any of this up, so my cues aren’t profound or exclusive to me - I likely stole them all. The main difference between me and most is I care what you feel like, not what you look like, perhaps to a fault. Being able to feel the tension is a great way you can auto regulate yourself. This way, as you progress, the lift is for you, not me, arbitrarily telling you things so you can mimic a shape for my approval.