SSBC Chapter 4: Deadlift
MissHolidayGolightly
Posts: 857 Member
Here is a thread to discuss Starting Strength Chapter 4: the Deadlift.
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great.
you first
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"The deadlift serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard".
This is my favourite lift, but one that I'm convinced involves mind power. Especially when trying out a 1RM, I feel I have to convince myself that I can do the lift before I attempt it. I've even imagined that I'm trying to lift a car off a child, to help me get the strength!
"The bar should be 1-1 1/2 inches from your shins. For almost every human being on the planet, this distance places the bar directly over the middle of the foot".
I have owned this book for about 3 years, and read it and reread, and it was only a couple of months ago that I read that first sentence properly. I'd been trying to get the bar over the mid-foot. Fairly successfully, I think, but "one inch from my shins" (I have small feet) is SO much easier to judge.
Some more bits that I feel are helpful for me:
"Your toes might be more pointed out than you want them to be".
I have to bear this in mind, because he's right - I don't really want them pointed out.
"...most women will need to put their hands closer together than this, with their index fingers on the edge of the knurl"
Again, this is an easier reminder for me than the one with the pictures (grip width just outside the legs).
"Once the shins are touching the bar, the hips freeze in position. They do not drop any farther (...) Just touch the bar with the shins and shove your knees out just a little".
"Your hips will probably be higher than you want them (...) Keep your hips up, and compensate for this weird feeling by squeezing the chest up even more".
"... drag the bar up your legs"
"At the top of the pull, just lift your chest"0 -
"The deadlift serves as a way to train the mind to do things that are hard".
This is my favourite lift, but one that I'm convinced involves mind power. Especially when trying out a 1RM, I feel I have to convince myself that I can do the lift before I attempt it. I've even imagined that I'm trying to lift a car off a child, to help me get the strength!
SAME. After a while, I start to get nervous and I have to give myself a pep talk before attempting it.
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This Mark Rippetoe video really helped me understand the bar alignment and how it needs to travel from mid-foot up your legs. I read and reread that concept in the book but watching him explain it made it click.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4AObAU-EcYE
Edited to add: You really need to watch until the end to see his response to dropping the bar at the top of the deadlift.
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Edited to add: You really need to watch until the end to see his response to dropping the bar at the top of the deadlift.
i liked it, although i kind of resent anyone using a section of my anatomy as a putdown . . . even him. someone was pre-notified to set him up with that question, i think
i haven't read the deadlift chapter in a while. i appreciated the sections about force transfer and the diagrams about all the upper-body muscles involved. plus, something about the hamstrings being in a war with the lower back to control the pelvic angle, and how the lower back has to win. that really concentrated my perception of deadlifting as being a thing that rotates around the hinge of the hip and the hamstrings providing the force to get you standing upright at the top.
my only thing is, if i do like he says and don't drop my hips once the bar's touching my shins, i'm more or less horizontal. that doesn't seem to be the way anyone else does deadlifts, and just pulling my chest up can't totally compensate for it either. i do a lot of tweaking and twiddling and second-guessing on that.0
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