Starting Strength

up. Be sure that you lower the bar by first unlocking your hips and knees, and then shoving your hips backward and letting the bar slide down your thighs in a straight vertical line, with your lower back locked in extension, in a movement that is the opposite of the upward bar path. As the bar passes your knees, bend them to finish setting the bar down, never unlocking the back. If your knees go forward before the bar passes them on the way down, the bar will obviously have to go forward to get around them, and this usually means that you will have also released your tight back position.
    Fix your eyes on the floor at a point that is 12–15 feet in front of you, to put your neck in the normal anatomical position, and pull a set of five. Think very hard and pay close attention to your form, concentrating especially on your back position and keeping the bar close to your legs. If you’re sure your form is good enough, add weight for a few sets until it feels like the next increase might be a problem, and that’s the first deadlift workout.
     

    Figure 4-12. The five steps for a perfect deadlift. 1) Take the correct stance. 2) Take your grip on the bar. 3) Drop your shins forward to touch the bar, pushing your knees out slightly and without dropping your hips. 4) Squeeze your chest up, with your weight on the mid-foot. 5) Drag the bar up the legs.

    Back Position
     
    Everything else can be wrong with the deadlift and nothing really bad will happen, but if your low back is round under a big load, safety will be compromised. So now is the time to learn the most important part of the deadlift: setting the back correctly. After you set the bar down, stand up without the bar and lift your chest. At the same time, arch your lower back by thinking about sticking your butt out. Refer to Figure 4-13 and imagine a coach touching you on the chest to cue your chest-up position, and touching you at the small of your back to cue your lumbar arch. The touch on your lower back gives you a point to “curl” your low back around as you stick out your butt, the net effect of which is to cause the erector spinae muscles to contract under your conscious direction.

    Figure 4-13. Become familiar with the position the back should assume during the pull. Lifting the chest toward the hand of a coach places the upper back in extension, and arching the lower back around a hand in contact with the muscle bellies of the lumbar spinal erectors puts the lower back in extension.

    The arched position in which the contracted spinal erector muscles place the lower back is referred to as lumbar extension . You will probably not be able to maintain this degree of lumbar extension at the starting position with the bar on the floor because hamstring tension will pull your pelvis and lumbar spine out of this position to some extent, depending on your flexibility. A few people – usually women and underweight men – are so flexible that they can produce lumbar overextension at the bottom ( Figure 4-14 ). This is not desirable at all because an over-arched lower back is just as bad – and perhaps much worse – a position for the lumbar discs and their normal weight-bearing ability as a rounded one. A loaded, overextended lumbar spine can not only harm the intervertebral discs but also damage the facet joints and the close-by nerve roots. The desirable position is an anatomically normal lordotic curve or normal anatomical arch. But to achieve this, most people will need to concentrate on an exaggerated extension, because even the correct arch will test the limits of most people’s flexibility. The point here is to learn to set your back and identify and control the muscles you must use to do this, so that you can quickly develop the correct position. Once again, just to be sure you understand: an overextended lumbar arch is NOT the position to use to start the deadlift. Normal anatomical position is. But it may be necessary to try for overextension in order to produce normal anatomical position.

    Figure 4-14. (A) The correct starting position for the lower back uses a normal anatomical arch. (B) A hyperextended lordotic curve is both unnecessary and counterproductive, as well as being difficult for people of normal flexibility to attain. The idea that the lumbar spine must appear to have a visible lordotic curve in order to be in the correct position is a misconception based on the appearance of skinny people in this position. Muscular men will be