Starting Strength

floor.

    Figure 4-35. (A) Start position. (B) When the knee angle opens before the bar leaves the floor, the quadriceps have not been used to move the load. When the hamstrings fail to control the knee angle (their distal function) the back angle goes horizontal. (C) This leaves the bar away from the shins, and the work of lifting the weight becomes predominantly hip extension. Technique errors that involve one group of muscles failing to make their contribution to an exercise are a common phenomenon in barbell training.

    The reason for this is not immediately apparent. In the deadlift, the clean, and all other pulling exercises from the floor, raising the hips before the chest is a common enough problem that we should analyze it here. The quadriceps straighten the knees, and if the back angle stays constant while this happens, the bar comes vertically up the shins. But it is the hip extensors – the glutes and hamstrings and, to some extent, the adductors – that act as stabilizers during the initial phase of the pull and maintain the back angle by exerting tension on the pelvis from the posterior, at their insertion points on the ischium and the ilium. If the spinal erectors keep the back flat, the hip extensors anchor the back angle by pulling down on the bottom of the pelvis. The pelvis and the spine are locked in line by the erectors, so the hamstrings actually keep the chest up and the back angle constant, allowing the quads’ function of straightening the knees to push the bar away from the ground. During this phase, the hip angle will open slightly, but the back angle should stay constant relative to the floor. It is as the bar approaches the knees that the hip extensors begin to actually change the back angle by actively opening the hip angle. So, the function of the hamstrings and glutes changes during the pull: initially they act to maintain the back angle as the quads straighten the knees; then they change the back angle as they extend the hips and finish the pull ( Figure 4-36 ).

    Figure 4-36. The hip extensors – the glutes and hamstrings and, to a lesser extent, the adductors – initially work only to maintain the back angle as the bar rises from the floor. As the bar approaches the knees, the hip extensors continue to contract, but at this point they begin to actively open the hip angle.

    If the hamstrings fail to maintain the back angle, then the butt comes up and the shoulders drift forward, allowing the quads to avoid their share of the work since the knees have extended but the bar has not moved. The bar, however, must still be pulled, so the hip extensors end up doing it all, and in a much more inefficient way. They should be working with the quadriceps through the initial phase of the pull, instead of having to open a much more horizontal back angle at the end of the pull. Either way, the hip extensors work, but their job is easier if the initial contraction controls the back angle and the last part is active concentric hip extension, instead of the whole movement being a long, mechanically hard hip extension. The problem is not that the hamstrings are not strong enough; it is one of motor learning , teaching the muscles to move the bones correctly, in the right order at the right time. The only way to correctly address this problem is to take weight off the bar and make sure you do the deadlift with proper form, with all the angles correct, so that all the muscular contributors to the pull learn to do their jobs in the right order. If you know the actual cause of the problem – and you do now – you can fix it by thinking about squeezing your hamstrings and glutes tight before you pull, thus making them better at doing their job of holding your ass down. If this doesn’t work, think about making your chest move up first , which causes you to fire the muscles that would make this happen; the hamstrings and glutes try to make the chest rise, and this action averages out to a constant back angle.
    An interesting thing happens when all the pulling mechanics are correct: the deadlift feels “shorter,” as if the distance the bar has moved has been reduced, compared to an uncorrected, sloppy deadlift. It obviously hasn’t, since the bar moves the same distance either way, but the increased efficiency obtained from the improvement in pulling mechanics is significant enough that the perception is one of a shorter movement. This perception is largely due to the reduction in extraneous hip