BEST Strategy for a Stronger, Smoother Deadlift (6 Simple Tips)
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Quit trying to yank or jerk your deadlifts off the floor.
Heavy weights cannot be yanked off the floor. Light weights can, of course, but in doing so, you’re accidentally practicing something that won’t work when things get heavy.
With this in mind, let’s cover six ways to fix this problem along with a bonus tip at the end to tie it all together.
The Mistake
The error of trying to yank the bar off the floor is usually caused by poor execution of step four in the five-step deadlift setup process. Here’s a quick recap of that process, and you can watch the video below for a more in depth treatment:
Stance - shins one inch from the barbell
Grip - bend over and grab the bar (don’t move the bar)
Shins - bend your knees slightly (i.e., drop the hips slightly) until your shins lightly touch the bar
Chest - squeeze your chest up to set your back
Pull - drag the bar up your legs as you stand up
When you squeeze your chest up in step four, you should be putting a significant amount of tension on the bar, and lifters who don’t do this tend to then yank the bar off the floor when they try to execute step five (i.e., pull).
Here are six cues to ensure you put tension on the barbell when you set your back.
Cue #1: Bend the bar.
With this cue, you are reminding yourself that when you squeeze your chest up with long, straight arms, there should be enough tension on the bar at this point that the bar starts to bend upward in the middle. In other words, you create a bit of a hill with the bar.
Figure 1: The difference in bar shape between no tension (left) and tension (right) is very noticeable, and it’s even more noticeable when watching it in person or on video.
Cue #2: Bend it before you break it.
The same concept applies here, but this is a bit catchier. It’s the “try it before you buy it” cue of smooth pulls.
This cue also has the benefit of illustrating the timing needed - you bend the bar before you break it off the floor. You don’t bend the bar and try to break it off the floor at the same time.
Think “set the back, pause, then pull.”
Cue #3: Flex the bar.
This is another cue that emphasizes the change in the shape of the bar that should happen when you set your back. You should see and feel the bar flex upward when you squeeze your chest up to set your back.
Witness the noticeable difference in bar shape (between tension and no tension) at the 1:02 mark in the video below.
Cue #4: Pull the slack out of the bar.
Every bar has some slop (i.e, some gap or distance) between the shaft and the collars, and you also have slop between the sleeve of the bar and the plates themselves. When you squeeze your chest up - applying tension to the bar - you should make this slop disappear.
You can see this happen on video, so watch the video below at the 1:55 mark.
Cue #5: Pull the click out of the bar.
This is the same idea as cue #4, but you’re focusing on the audible aspect instead of the visual aspect. When you put tension on the bar, you’ll hear the barbell click as the shaft moves upward against the collar of the bar, and you’ll also hear some noise as the plates rattle a bit.
Make some noise when you set your back (you can hear this at the 2:29 mark of the video above).
Cue #6: Heavy in the hands
Before you squeeze your chest up and consciously apply tension to the bar, you probably aren’t supporting much of the weight of the bar in your hands. You shouldn’t be resting on the bar, but you’re not pulling upward much either.
However, when you squeeze your chest up to set your back, you should absolutely be supporting a significant portion of the bar’s weight in your hands. If it’s a 400 lb deadlift, you might now be applying 100 lb, 200 lb, maybe 300 lb of upward pull at this point. The specific numbers aren’t important (and they’re made up in this example, anyway) - the point is that you should feel significant weight in your hands because your hands are now supporting that weight (and correspondingly, the floor is supporting less of that weight).
Bonus Tip: Squeeze the bar off the floor.
Some lifters will do a good job of setting their backs with proper tension on the bar, and then they’ll make the mistake of slightly releasing that tension and then trying to yank the bar off the floor. This is usually a subconscious effort to get a bit of “down-up” movement out of the lift akin to the bounce you see at the bottom of the squat.
However, the floor prevents this movement as the bar can’t actually go downward, and as a result, slack is created in the arms, which then is “yanked” back out again as the lifter tries to jerk the bar off the floor.
Cue yourself to squeeze the bar off the floor.
As you squeeze something hard, you grip it tightly, then tighter, then tighter yet.
Likewise, this reminds you to pull harder, then harder, then harder yet as you pull the bar smoothly off the floor. An efficient start to your pull is analog - not digital. It’s not a switch, but rather a dial. You turn that dial up when you set your back with tension, and then you smoothly turn it up further to start the pull.
As always, we hope these tips help you get stronger and live better.
-Phil
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