Starting Strength

groups and the movement feels easier. But done correctly, with the back locked into rigid extension and no knee extension involved, the RDL is perhaps the best assistance exercise for deadlifts and cleans because it works the very things that cause heavy deadlifts to be missed.
    The best cues for good form on the RDL are “chest up,” “arch the back,” and “knees back,” with an occasional reminder to keep the weight off the toes. The chest cue will remind you to keep the thoracic spine in extension, while arching the back usually gets interpreted by most people as a low-back cue. The knee cue keeps the quads out of the movement, but it can also cause the bar to fall away from the legs, and you might need to cue the lats by thinking “push the bar back.”
    When you’re doing heavy RDLs, use a double-overhand grip. The shoulder asymmetry that results from an alternate grip is not desirable for this exercise, and the lats cannot effectively pull the bar back into the legs if you are using a supine hand on one side. The weights that will be used for heavy RDLs are not really heavy relative to the deadlift, with most people being able to use between 65% and 75% of their 1RM deadlift for the exercise, so using a plain old double-overhand grip will not usually be a problem. Use a hook grip or straps if your grip strength is insufficient, which it should not be at 65–75% of 1RM, but both your hands must be in the prone position. Being an assistance exercise, RDLs are done in the range of 5–10 reps.
    Stiff-legged deadlifts
     
    The stiff-legged deadlift (or SLDL) is possibly a more familiar exercise in most gyms, as a result of the fact that many people do the deadlift wrong and it ends up looking this way accidentally. The SLDL is essentially an RDL off of the floor – without the stretch reflex but with the higher hips, more horizontal back angle, and more vertical shins of the RDL. Since the SLDL starts on the floor, it involves a longer range of motion than does the RDL, which is supposed to stop at the point where the low back unlocks due to limitations in hamstring extensibility. Most people can’t do a strict RDL all the way down to the floor with the bar loaded with 17-inch plates, so you will have to do the SLDL with enough knee bend to allow your back to get into a good position to start. The amount of knee bend will obviously depend on individual flexibility. The point of the exercise is stiff legs – knees extended as much as possible and hips higher than in a deadlift, with the low back flat in the start position – so use as little knee bend as possible.

    Figure 7-27. (A) The conventional deadlift start position and (B) the stiff-legged deadlift start position.

    Take your regular deadlift stance, with the bar directly over the mid-foot. Use the regular double-overhand clean grip, for the same reasons mentioned above for the RDL. Unlock your knees and set them in position hard, as straight as your flexibility permits. Raise your chest, take a big breath, and pull. The SLDL is essentially a deadlift done according to the five steps outlined previously , but without Step 3, the dropping-the-shins-forward-to-the-bar part. This means that the bar leaves the floor from over the mid-foot but is still in the air while in front of the shins. When the bar is just above your knees, it comes onto your legs, and the pull is then locked out like a regular deadlift at the top. Again, each rep is replaced on the floor, reset, and pulled from a stop; it is a deadlift, not an RDL, and each rep starts from a dead stop .

    Figure 7-28. The stiff-legged deadlift.

    Both SLDLs and RDLs are versatile exercises and can be applied to your training in many ways. They can be done in a variety of rep ranges, depending upon the desired effect. When they’re used as a substitute for the deadlift on a light day, sets of five work well; in fact, SLDLs and RDLs can be used for sets across, unlike the deadlift, since they do not produce the stress that the full heavy movement is known for. For back-off work following deadlifts, they can be used for sets of 8–10 reps to accumulate extra volume. And high-rep sets of 20 RDLs can be an interesting addition to your training.
    Despite the fact that both the RDL and the SLDL can produce extreme hamstring soreness in the short term that can interfere with the normal range of motion of the knees, both exercises provide an excellent way to increase the extensibility of the