At BeFit Training Physiotherapy in Coogee, we love programming deadlifts. The deadlift is an elegantly simple, highly effective strength exercise. It involves picking something up, usually a barbell, letting it come to a dead stop, then picking it up again. It meets the criteria for a genuinely great strength exercise: a large load, moved through a large range of motion, using a large amount of muscle mass. Learning how to not injure your back while deadlifting comes down to two things: technique and programming.
While the movement is simple, there’s a lot of fear around the deadlift. The lift has real benefits when performed correctly at an appropriate weight, but what we see in clinic is a pattern of poor form combined with a load that’s too heavy, leading to a low back overload injury. Because back pain can be so debilitating and can get in the way of training or doing the activities you love, understanding the movement and executing the technique properly is genuinely important. Building up your deadlift appropriately is a key factor we consider when including it in a strength programme.
The two main modifiable factors relating to back pain with deadlifting are technique and programming.
Part 1: Technique
Below we’ll go over the key aspects of a safe, effective deadlift.
Engage the Right Muscles: Posterior Chain and Core
To bulletproof your technique, you need to understand the mechanics of the deadlift, specifically which joints create the movement and which stay locked to efficiently transfer the load.
The primary muscles creating the movement are those at the back of the legs, your hamstrings and glutes. As these muscles contract, your hips move from a flexed (bent over) position to an extended (upright) position, simultaneously creating tension through your posterior chain, the connected chain of muscle and fascia running from your skull to your heels. The more properly engaged these muscles and the posterior chain are, the more moving power you’ll have, and more importantly, the more your spine will be able to resist rounding and becoming irritated during the lift.
Brace Your Core
Once you’ve engaged your posterior chain leg muscles, you need to add stiffness with a core brace. Take a breath of air and hold it while bearing down into your abdominal cavity, as if you were about to be punched in the stomach. This creates extra intra-abdominal pressure and spinal stiffness to ready you for the lift. Hold that breath through the whole duration of the lift, then reset once the plates hit the floor. Take a second, then go again.
Keep the Bar Close
The further the bar is from your shins and thighs during the ascent and descent, the higher the forces your back must endure for a given weight. This comes down to basic biomechanics: the load on your spine is a function of both the weight and its distance from your body, so the further the bar drifts away, the greater the demand on your lower back. Try holding a dumbbell close to your body, then a few inches away, and you’ll quickly feel the difference a close bar path makes.
Part 2: Programming and Overload
Once your form is solid, the next thing to consider is how you programme the deadlift: frequency, sets and reps.
Frequency
The deadlift places significant stress across the whole body, especially the spine. It’s taxing on the muscles, but it also loads the spine with compressive and shear forces unlike almost any other movement, which means it can’t be programmed with the same frequency as other exercises.
When deciding how often to deadlift, consider whether you’re still a novice lifter, meaning you’re still learning the movement and can add weight to the lift on a roughly weekly basis. Once weekly weight increments start to slow, you’re no longer in the novice category. Novice lifters can generally perform the movement twice weekly, with at least 3 days of rest between sessions. Beyond the novice stage, once a week is typically enough to keep getting stronger while giving the spine the recovery time it needs.
Sets and Reps
For a novice lifter, 2 to 3 work sets is a good starting point when the weight is moderate, measured by how many reps in reserve remain at the end of the set. This volume gives you the repetition of practice you need. Aim to lift a weight where you have a minimum of 5 reps in reserve at the end of your set, and add 2 to 3 warm-up sets before that.
Once you’re beyond the novice stage, 1 to 3 work sets per workout is typically an adequate strength stimulus for continuing to get stronger with the deadlift while sparing the spine. This is closer to a max set, meaning you should have somewhere between zero and one rep in reserve. Perform as many warm-up sets as you need to feel genuinely ready for your work set.
Once you’re lifting beyond around 1.5 times bodyweight, reps per set should typically drop to around five. Big compound exercises like deadlifts and squats, when performed heavy, cause neurological fatigue more than muscular fatigue, meaning lower reps are appropriate, along with longer rest periods (a minimum of 3 minutes) between sets.
It’s worth noting that the above is a general guide and may differ depending on your specific lifting goals. Our Strength and Conditioning team can tailor your programming to fit your goals and help you get the most out of your deadlift, with good form, appropriate programming and a reduced risk of injury.
How BeFit Can Help
If you’re already managing back pain and wondering whether deadlifting can still be part of your training, our companion guide, How to Deadlift Safely With Back Pain, covers what the research says about who benefits most. Our movement assessment can also help identify any individual technique or mobility factors worth addressing before you build up your load.
Book an appointment at BeFit Training Physiotherapy — no referral needed.
Edgecliff: (02) 9327 7749 | Coogee: (02) 7205 2805
References
Gallagher S, Marras WS. Tolerance of the Lumbar Spine to Shear: A Review and Recommended Exposure Limits. Clin Biomech. 2012;27(10):973-978.
Australian Physiotherapy Association. Clinical guidelines. physiotherapy.asn.au.
