Starting Strength

men to get more out of their pulls.

    A more knees-out position also effectively shortens the distance between the bar and the hips when the knees are shoved out of the way a little. This modification of the effective length of the thighs – similar to the effects of a snatch grip or a sumo stance, where the angle acts to shorten the effective length of an otherwise fixed segment – makes a more vertical bar path easier to obtain off the floor. This may be very important for lifters who have longer femurs and are trying to get into a better start position. (Some very good competitive deadlifters have learned to use a round upper back to produce this same shortening of the distance between hips and bar, producing a better set of pulling mechanics at the hips. This method is NOT recommended for novices.) But even for lifters with normal proportions, a little external rotation of the femurs alters the balance of muscle action around the hips in a positive way, helping to produce a more effective hip extension off the floor.

    Figure 4-40. The angle of the stance affects the horizontal distance between knees and hips, with a toes-forward stance producing a longer moment arm between the hips and the bar, and a toes-out stance shortening the effective distance and thus the moment arm. This shortening effect is magnified by the lifter’s widening into the sumo stance. ( M.A.= moment arm )

    The easiest way to identify and reproduce the stance every time is to note the position of the bar and its knurling marks over your shoelaces as you look down at your feet. Use this landmark on your shoes to quickly and consistently produce the same stance.
     

    Figure 4-41. You can easily duplicate the stance every time by establishing a reference position for the bar against the shoelaces when looking down at your feet.

    The Little Details
     
    Just in case you were thinking that the deadlift was not rife with picky details, here are a few to consider.
    Breathing is the kind of detail that is often ignored in lifting instruction. The details of the Valsalva maneuver and its importance to spinal support were discussed in Chapter 2. To implement this procedure for a pull from the floor, inhale while the bar is on the floor, before you start the pull, not while you’re supporting a heavy weight at the top. And exhale after you’re finished with the rep, which happens when the bar is back on the floor. The top of a deadlift is a poor place to lose back support, and it is unnecessary since setting the bar down doesn’t take very long. You can breathe much more safely when the floor is supporting the bar than you can when your back is supporting the entire weight at the top.
    A set of deadlifts should start at the floor, meaning that each rep begins and ends at the bottom, with the back getting set and a new breath being taken between reps while the bar is on the floor. Many people like to pull the first rep off of the floor, breathe at the top at lockout, and finish the set by bouncing the bar off the floor for the remaining reps. It is easier to do the set this way, true, but easy and strong are usually opposing concepts. You need to develop the ability to set your back and control your position each time you pull the bar, because these things use precisely the skills and the muscles you are doing this exercise to develop. The point here, as is so often the case in the weight room, is not to simply do the deadlifts by moving the barbell through space, using a deadlift-like movement; the point is to use deadlifts to get strong by doing them correctly, the way they are best used to develop strength. They have to be done right, not just done.
     
    Avoiding a bounce
     
    One of the key features of the deadlift is that it requires the production of force from a dead stop. In contrast, a key feature of efficient squatting is the use of the controlled “bounce,” which takes advantage of the stretch reflex that occurs at the transition between an eccentric and a concentric contraction. Any muscular contraction is more powerful if it is immediately preceded by a stretch, as always occurs when you jump. One of the reasons a heavy deadlift is so brutally hard is that it starts up out of the bottom without the benefit of the bounce that helps the squat change the direction of the force from down to up. Up to down without a bounce is quite a bit harder. If a bounce is incorporated into all the reps of a set of deadlifts except the first one,