could i ask whether the smith machine is your only option? i don't like to push people away from what they're settled on, but so much of what i know about deadlifts is based on the idea of having to control the bar path my own self. i'm not sure i even know what smith-centric feedback ought to look like.

i do like your flat back though. also your stance - it seems very even to me in the 'rear' angle. but i think you'd benefit from different shoes, with a rigid, flat sole. or no shoes at all. squishy-soled runners just rob you of stability without giving you anything back in return. and with heavy weight a little wobble from the shoes can tweak little muscles that aren't really ready for taking the strain.

for what it's worth, here's some of the things i'd say if i thought that bar was just a regular one:

- keep the bar on your legs all the way. i think you get closer as the set goes on, actually. but at the start there's a fair bit of air. somewhere out there mark rippetoe had a nice checklist of 'six (or however-many) steps to a perfect deadlift'. starting out by making sure the bar is right over the middle of your foot as you look down at your feet was the first one.

- with regular deadlift, another one of the things you do is 'take the slack out' of the bar. you get your grip into position, and then without trying to take it off the floor, you just pull on it. that tightens everything up and usually brings your body into natural alignment for doing the pull. but my experience of smith machines is as soon as you pull on them they come up. so i think you're missing out on that and you probably have a lot of latent strength in your lats and back which is not getting its fair share of the lift.

- i think your hips get lower as you go through the set. i don't think it can injure you, but when i do that i always end up feeling it a lot more in my quads and a lot less in my glutes and hamstrings.


sorry i can't help more.

lol. i just saw the words on the shirt really like that.

it just occurred to me that if you're stuck with the smith and you can't bring the bar to your legs, you could always do it the other way round and try to keep your legs on the bar. i think you're already doing it - i'm judging mostly from the way your hips don't seem to shoot up and you're coming forward 'into' the bar, which is great. it looks like you have the hip hinge thing going. so setting up a little bit closer might take care of this other point right away, actually.

for free-weight deadlifts it's sort of necessary, because if you don't control that then it often swings 'out' in front of you and then your whole body/centre of gravity tends to get pulled after it. i'm just spitballing, so it's VERY subject to whether you think that it's safe and you feel okay about doing it. but it's one thought. for most of us, we do it by activating our lats and back muscles, and pulling the bar 'into' our legs. i think you could get the same thing, because it's more of a horizontal pull so the smith's not gonna help you with that