Starting Strength

bar. Gloves make bars harder to hold on to. The gloves that incorporate wrist wraps prevent the wrists from getting used to training. The only legitimate use for a glove is to cover an injury, like a torn callus or a cut, when the workout is important enough to do with the injury and it cannot be done without the covering. A desire to prevent callus formation does not constitute a legitimate use. If your gym makes a lot of money selling gloves, you have another reason to look for a different gym. And if you insist on using them, make sure they match your purse.
    Deadlifts are hard. Many people don’t like to do them. Most people, even the ones who will squat heavy and often and correctly, will leave deadlifts out of the workout at the slightest provocation. This is the reason most powerlifters squat more than they deadlift – there was often no “time” to do them in the program. But doing them adds back strength, and back strength is necessary for the other lifts, and for other sports, work, and life. So let’s learn how to do them.
    Learning to Deadlift
     
    The bar should be loaded to a light weight relative to your capability. A light weight for a novice 55-year-old woman will be different from that for an 18-year-old 205-pound athlete. Your gym should be equipped to load weights as light as 55 pounds, or possibly even lighter, to accommodate people of all levels of ability. This makes it necessary to obtain 5–10 lb plastic training plates that space a “45” lb (20 kg), 15 kg, or even 10 kg bar off the floor to the same height as a standard plate: 17¾ inches, or 45 cm. If you cannot get these light plates, you can place blocks under 10 or 25 lb iron plates, or set the bar at the correct height in the power rack; the small iron plates place the bar closer to the floor than most people’s flexibility can accommodate in a correct starting position. Judgment must be exercised here; the starting weight must be light enough so that if your form is bad, you cannot hurt yourself, just in case these instructions are not followed closely enough. So 55 pounds or lighter will be the starting weight for some people, 40 kilos (88 pounds) will work for most women and lighter-bodyweight novices, and 135 pounds will work for athletes and more experienced trainees. There is never a reason for anyone other than a competitive lifter to start heavier than 135 pounds.

    Figure 4-8. The standard plate diameter provides a standard height for the bar above the floor. Different weights in this standard diameter allow people of different strength levels to pull from this standard height, 8? inches or 20.5 cm between the bottom of the bar and the floor.

    This method for learning the deadlift proceeds in five steps. Pay careful attention to each step as you are learning. As the steps become more practiced and familiar, they will merge into a continuous pattern of movements.
     
    Step 1: Stance
     
    The stance for the deadlift is about the same as the stance for a flat-footed vertical jump, about 8–12 inches between the heels, depending on anthropometry, with the toes pointed out. Bigger, taller people with wider hips will use a proportionately wider stance. This stance is much narrower than the squat’s stance because of the difference between the two movements: the squat is done from the top down, with the hips lowered and driven up; the deadlift starts at the bottom, with the feet pushing the floor, the back locked in place, and the legs driving the floor away from the bar. The difference in stance is due to this difference in hip and knee mechanics and the need to accommodate a narrow grip for pulling efficiency ( Figure 4-9 ).

    Figure 4-9. The starting stance for the deadlift places the heels approximately 8–12 inches apart, with the toes pointed slightly out.

    The bar should be 1–1½ inches from your shins. For almost every human being on the planet, this distance places the bar directly over the middle of the foot, the position over which the bar stays on its way up to lockout. Most people are reluctant to keep the bar close enough to their legs during the pull, as well as when setting it down, and for that matter before the bar leaves the ground. This reluctance is often due to the fear of marring the beauty of the shins and thighs and a lack of appreciation of the significance of balance in the pull. Efficient bar paths are straight vertical lines, and if the bar starts from a position directly over the mid-foot