Starting Strength

mechanics of the start position to try to assume a back position more vertical than the relationship between the back, the arms, and the bar allows. The lifter’s shoulders will be in front of the bar when it leaves the ground, and an artificially vertical back angle will decay as the pull is started, leaving the bar out in front of the shins, off-balance, with a horizontal displacement to cover before it leaves the ground. The best position that can be assumed at the start is the one already described: with the bar over the mid-foot, and the scapulas directly over the bar. When this alignment exists, the bar is easier to pull.
    Make sure the bar is touching your skin or your socks before it leaves the floor. It is not necessary to bump your shins with the bar or to scrape the meat off of them on the way up. You do need to maintain good control of the weight, because if you scrape your shins, you can get sores that will be a problem for a long time; then every time you deadlift, you will break the sore open and make a big mess on your socks or the bar. You might need to cut a shin guard out of a one-liter plastic bottle and place it inside the front of your socks until the sore heals. Sweats help eliminate this scraping problem, and allow the bar to slide up the thighs better as well.
    The knurl of the bar might also be a problem for your shins if it starts in too close to the middle. A standard Olympic weightlifting bar and most power bars have an opening in the knurl that is about 16.5 inches wide, and this is usually sufficient to accommodate the stance widths of all but the tallest people. Some bars are manufactured with no thought given to the possibility that they might someday be used to deadlift. Don’t use these bars.
    Foot placement has been discussed above. In a deadlift, you are pushing the floor, not lowering the hips as in a squat, and you must set your stance accordingly. If your stance is too wide, your legs will either rub your thumbs on the way up or force your grip out wider to avoid being rubbed. The wider the grip, the farther the bar has to travel to lock out at the top. The grip and the stance are interrelated in that your stance must be set to allow the best grip, and the best grip for the deadlift is one that allows your arms to hang as straight down from the shoulders as possible when viewed from the front, i.e. the closest grip possible, in order to make the shortest possible distance from the floor to lockout for the bar. Too wide a stance necessitates too wide a grip and confers no mechanical advantage. If you’re thinking that since we squat with a wider stance, we should pull with a wider stance, don’t think that. We are not squatting; we are pushing the floor with the feet, an entirely different thing.

    Figure 4-38. The different bar heights produced by different grip widths. A narrower grip reduces the distance the bar has to travel. Note the position of the bar relative to the lower rack pin.

    Too narrow a stance is not a thing encountered very often. There have been great deadlifters – Vince Anello and George Hechter come to mind – who pulled with a very narrow stance, with heels nearly touching and knees out. This is called a “frog stance,” and many lifters have used it effectively. We learned the knees-out position in Step 3 of our deadlift method. In the Squat chapter, we discussed at length the advantages of externally rotating the femurs for its effects on depth, the ability to lock the pelvis and the lower back together, and the stretch reflex (see discussion here ). This concept is also applicable in movements – such as starting a pull from the floor – that don’t elicit a stretch reflex. If a hip extension is involved in the movement, the lower back obviously needs to be locked with the pelvis and in hard extension, but what is less obvious is the role of the adductors and external rotators. If the knees-out position can tighten up the groin muscles, they can function more effectively as both back-angle anchors and hip extensors in the pull. Since hip extension is involved in any pull, a knees-out position can improve the extensors’ participation in the pull. Olympic weightlifters often employ this knees-out starting position to fix problems off the floor and to allow for a better back angle.

    Figure 4-39. Note the toes-out position of the stances of both Vince Anello and George Hechter. The knees-out position this stance enabled these massively strong