Weight Training Tips and Articles

Deadlift Techniques

Though the deadlift is known mostly as a lower back exercise many other muscle groups such as the quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and even the upper back assist in lifting the weight. Since you have to hold a lot of weight in your hands when you’re deadlifting you’ll also build grip and forearm strength.

How you grip the bar is very important when you’re doing deadlifts. The best way to do it is to use an overhand grip with one hand and an underhand grip with the other hand. If you try to deadlift with both hands in an overhand grip you won’t be able to hold near as much weight and you won’t get the full muscle building benefits of the exercise.

To deadlift heavy you’ll also want to assist your grip with wrist straps or chalk. This will greatly increase the amount of weight you can handle when you deadlift. If you’re planning on competing in a powerlifting competition you’ll have to use chalk instead of straps, so you’re better off training with chalk assisting your grip. On your first few warm up sets of the deadlift, do the exercise without any grip assistance to help improve your natural grip strength.

When you deadlift you can either place your hands on the bar either inside or outside of where your legs are. Placing your grip outside of the legs is the preferred way of doing the exercise. Some weight trainers prefer to place their grip inside with a wide legged stance, which is known as the “sumo style” deadlift. Do whichever style you’re comfortable with.

When you start a deadlift rep you’ll want use your leg muscles as much as possible to get the weight off of the floor. Using too much of your lower back to get the weight started upward could cause an injury. You’ll want to keep your lower back arched instead of bent as much as posible.

Once you get the weight off the floor when you’re doing a deadlift rep you’ll want to straighten your body as you lift the weight. This is the part of the lift where you’ll use more of your lower back strength. Some powerlifters will put baby powder on their thighs to “slide” the weight up their upper legs when they are maxing out on the deadlift. This can be messy, and you don’t really need to do it unless you are a competitive powerlifter testing out your strength.

At the top of a deadlift you should lean back a bit and contract your back muscles. Try to not drop the weight or let it fall too fast when you lower it back to the starting position.

The deadlift is one of the best weight training exercises for the entire body. Using all of those different muscle will give you a nice boost in testosterone. If you follow these deadlift techniques you’ll be able to take full advantage of this great strength and muscle building exercise.

Lower Back Workouts

  Any serious weight trainer needs to perform lower back workouts regularly to avoid injuries and lift more on weight training exercises for other muscles. A weak lower back will negatively affect you on many major exercises, deadlifts and squats in particular. If you don’t have a strong lower back you will also be way more likely to hurt yourself lifting, even if you aren’t using much weight.

  The best weight training exercise to strengthen the lower back muscles is the deadlift. You should always start a lower back workout with them. Good mornings are a rarely used exercise for the lower back but is a good one to do after deadlifting. Hyperextensions should be done for high reps with no or little weight and are a great finisher to a lower back workout.

  Try a workout like this to build muscle and strength in your lower back:

Deadlifts (1 or 2 sets of 12-15 reps on light day, 2 or 3 sets of 8-12 reps on medium day, 3 or 4 sets of 3-8 reps on heavy day)

Good mornings (1 or 2 sets of 15-20 reps on light day, 2 sets of 10-15 reps on medium day, 2 or 3 sets of 5-10 reps on heavy day)

Hyperextensions (1 or 2 sets of 20-30 reps during each lower back workout to finish off with).

  This workout should allow you to strengthen your lower back without overtraining as long as you get enough rest between workouts. You may want to try your deadlift one rep max every now and then on your heavy day to test your strength.

Building A Stronger Core

  If you’re into weight training it’s very important to have a strong core. The core is made up of the muscles in the midsection area of the body, including the abdominals, obliques, and lower back. Strengthening these muscles will help your body support and stabilize more weight on many major weight training exercises for other muscles, especially ones that involve many muscle groups like squats and deadlifts. Strengthening your core will also help you avoid injuries and improve your posture.

  To build a stronger core you need to perform abdominal and lower back workouts regularly. For your ab workouts do exercises such as crunches and leg raises, along with some ab training on a core ball. The abdominals recover quicker than most muscle groups so you can train them as much as every other day. For the obliques you should do some ab exercises where you twist on the way up, whether it’s on an upper ab or lower ab exercise. You can also do some side bends with a dumbbell in one hand or on a cable machine, or on an ab machine that allows you to do some more direct oblique training. Deadlifts and hyperextensions are great for building strength in the lower back. Some exercises for other muscles like dumbbell bench presses for the chest can be done on a core ball to build more core strength. Training the abdominals and lower back will also help you get a ripped midsection if you don’t have too much body fat covering them up.

  Even you’re more concerned with lifting as much weight as possible than getting ripped you’ll still need to strengthen your core so you can handle those weights. You’ll be glad you did.