Starting Strength

4-32. The correct down sequence is the opposite of up ( Figure 4-28 ). The last thing that happens on the way up is the first thing that happens on the way down: the hips and knees unlock simultaneously; then the hips move back and lower the bar to below the knees; then the knees flex and lower the bar to the floor.

    Any deviation from this order will not work. If your knees move forward first when you are lowering the bar, they will be in front of the bar, and the bar cannot go straight down because it has to go forward to get around the knees ( Figure 4-33 ). Your knees can move forward only so far before your heels get pulled up, so you round your back to let the bar go forward far enough to clear your knees. This action places the bar off-balance, forward of the mid-foot. If you find yourself progressing forward across the floor from the start to the finish of a set of five, this is why.

    Figure 4-33. This is the wrong way to set the bar down. The knees have moved forward first, and this places them in a tragic position where kneecaps often pay a high price. And if the kneecaps somehow remain unscathed, the lower back might not.

    As you pull the bar off of the floor, your knees and hips extend together while your back angle stays constant, meaning that the quads initiate the push off the floor while the hamstrings hold the back angle constant, resulting in an opening of the knee and hip angles. If you attempt to extend your hips first, the result will be a non-vertical bar path. This happens when you lift your chest first, thus opening the hip angle first and leaving the knee angle in the start position. If this happens, the bar goes forward around your knees, which have not pulled back out of the way. This actually occurs only with very light weights; heavy weights like to move in straight vertical lines. If you try to pull heavy weights chest-first, you will be dragging the bar back into your shins, and the blood on the bar will tell you this is wrong. And when it’s very heavy, the bar will not travel forward around your knees anyway because you can’t pull a heavy weight off-balance forward.
    When the knee angle opens first, as it should, the shins get more vertical and move back relative to the front of the feet, allowing the bar to travel in a vertical path up the legs. If the knee angle changes first, the bar can move up in a straight line, the way heavy bars like to move. If you feel the weight go to your toes, or if your coach sees your heels come up, you know what you’re doing wrong. Get your weight back off your toes, keep your chest up, and pull the weight straight up your shins as you push the floor. This forces the bar back into the correct path, which lets your knees straighten out and lets your quadriceps extension start the deadlift correctly. It might also be helpful to think about pushing the bar back into your legs with your lats, reinforcing the close-to-the-shin position a second way ( Figure 4-34 ).

    Figure 4-34. The order in which the angles open up off the floor is important for correct technique. (A) Reference angles in the start position. (B) When the hip angle opens first, the bar must travel forward to clear the knees, and usually the shins get scraped when this happens. (C) The correct order – knees first, then hips – allows for a vertical bar path.

    When the weight gets heavy, it is a common error to let the bar come forward, away from your shins, before it even leaves the floor. When this happens, your hips will have lifted, also before the load moves. Using our pulling model, we can see that when this occurs, the knee angle has opened, the hip angle has probably stayed constant, and the back angle has become more horizontal, all before the load has moved ( Figure 4-35 ). In this situation, your quadriceps have extended your knees, but have not moved any weight while doing so. In opening the knee angle unloaded – pushing your butt up in the air without moving the bar – the quads have avoided participating in the lift and have placed the entire job on your hip extensors, which now have even more to do since they must move through a greater angle to extend. In addition, since your back is now almost parallel to the floor, your back muscles are in a position of decreased mechanical advantage: they have to stay in isometric contraction longer while rotating through a greater angle, starting in the worst mechanical position they can occupy – parallel to the