Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2362: The 4 Best Deadlifts Everyone Should Be Doing

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Busting the myths surrounding the fears of deadlifting. (1:22) If you don’t use it, you lose it. (3:28) The muscles involved when performing a deadlift. (5:39) The aesthetic carryover. (10:5...9) The 4 Best Deadlifts Everyone Should be Doing #1 – Conventional. (13:08) #2 – Sumo. (18:52) #3 - Single leg. (23:11) #4 – Romanian. (28:01) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code 25MINDPUMP at checkout for 25% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01® Daily Synbiotic** June Promotion: MAPS 15 Minutes | Bikini Bundle | Shredded Summer Bundle 50% off! ** Code JUNE50 at checkout ** Mind Pump #2122: Deadlift Masterclass Ben Pollack Shares The Proper Deadlift Setup (AVOID MISTAKES) | Mind Pump 4 Cues To Improve Your Deadlift With Eugene Teo The BEST Deadlift Warm Up & Mobility Routine | MIND PUMP How To Hip Hinge Properly (Fix THIS!) How To Start Deadlifting (REGRESSIONS) How To Sumo Deadlift (The RIGHT Way) | Jordan Syatt THIS Is The BEST Side Butt Exercise! GROW Your GLUTES with a SINGLE LEG DEADLIFT! Romanian Versus Stiff Leg Deadlift: How and When to Use Them Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Layne Norton, Ph.D. (@biolayne) Instagram

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Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. In today's episode, we talk about deadlifting. In fact, it's the four types of deadlift everybody should be doing. There are variations and they're all valuable in their own right. Now this episode is brought to you by sponsor, Seed.
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Starting point is 00:01:03 Symbiotic. We also have a sale this month. MAPS 15 is half off. The Bikini Bundle of workout programs is half off. And the Summer Shredded Bundle is also half off. All of that is 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code JUNE50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. All right, deadlifts. Everybody knows they're super effective. In today's episode we're talking about the four styles of deadlift that everybody should be having in their workout. Deadlifts. You know, we've done a couple episodes like this and they get really, people really enjoy us communicating like the different variations of kind of
Starting point is 00:01:42 these foundational human movements. So it's natural we're gonna get to deadlift. This is one of the most basic foundational types of human movement that you should train. You should have at least one of the exercises we're gonna talk about today, but definitely all of them at some point belong in your routine. Still a lot of fear around it I would say. Even like promoted from physicians and people that are having kind of aches and pains, like they're just going to avoid it entirely, which I, you know, I would love to get in front of them and tell them the benefits. And there's ways to, to really build that back up, build that strength back up and support system.
Starting point is 00:02:19 But it's such a valuable exercise to just discard it completely. I feel like it's gotten so much better. And mean even so much that it garners an episode like this because this isn't just an episode about why you should deadlift it's the four you know four different variations that everyone should do and I think that that's a good sign that we've arrived to hear right that most people especially if you listen to a podcast like this, are aware of the benefits of deadlifting and know that, hey, this is important
Starting point is 00:02:50 that I learn to do this movement. The next level to that, in my opinion, is understanding the differences. And I think that most people, and this goes for the squat and the squat variations, deadlift, many other exercises, Yeah, that we tend to like incorporate, you know, one of those variations and go, Oh, I'm cool. I do that. But if they understood the value, the individual value and benefits of all the variations and
Starting point is 00:03:16 why they're so valuable, then you're, you might be more likely to incorporate those into your routine more often. I think that's the desired outcome of this episode. Totally, and you know, when we say foundational human movement, what we're referring to is a type of movement that is important, especially to not lose. So here's how the human body works when it comes to movement. If you don't repeat a movement regularly enough, or if you don't practice
Starting point is 00:03:47 a movement regularly enough, if you don't strengthen a movement regularly enough, you will actually eventually lose the ability to do that movement. The human body only maintains and keeps what it thinks it needs. And it discards what it thinks it doesn't need when it comes to movement. And this is just, I mean, the argument is made that this is an evolutionary factor in the sense that in order to conserve energy, why would my body maintain ability to do things
Starting point is 00:04:16 that I never do, right? It doesn't do that. So if you don't deadlift, if you don't practice deadlifting over time, you will actually start to slowly lose the ability to do so. To the point where when I would get clients in their 50s or 60s and they hired me, and these weren't totally deconditioned people,
Starting point is 00:04:35 but they weren't exercising, they were just your average person. Getting them to do just a simple hip hinge, it was like not processing in their brain. I would have to like put my hands on their hip and their back and really do all these different cues just to get them to figure out how to hip hinge. Cause it's like their body forgot how to do it because they never practice it. They never did it.
Starting point is 00:04:56 Strengthening foundational movements, uh, like dead lifts and all the different variations has a ton of carry over to other types of movement in the body. So it's a huge also bang for your buck. It's a small investment in terms of- Big systemic effect. Yeah. The results you get from it are huge.
Starting point is 00:05:18 Deadlifts and their variations are some of the best exercises for function, for muscle gain. They're excellent for muscle gain, and of course for fat loss. So you don't want to avoid any kind of hip hinging deadlift type of movement. And again, we're going to make the argument today that you should practice at least the four that we're going to talk about today. Now the muscles involved in deadlifting and its different different variations. Really, we like to
Starting point is 00:05:45 refer to them as what's called the posterior chain. Posterior, it's the back of the body. Chain because they're all connected through this movement. Although all the muscle in the back of the body technically could be connected to the posterior chain. Mainly we're talking about the hamstrings, the glutes, all the muscles of the back, erector spinae, the lats, the rhomboids, the trapezius. Those really are the main kind of muscles that you're going to be using in these, especially the glutes and especially the hamstrings. Well, this is one of those movements that from the traps all the way down to your soleus is getting worked. And we've made this argument before.
Starting point is 00:06:29 A long time ago we did an episode where we argued and debated the true king of all exercises and there's a case to be made that the deadlift is the king of all exercises. So I can make a case for the squat or the deadlift because of how valuable the deadlift is. And specifically to our clientele that we would train, what you would get with most people that you would train
Starting point is 00:06:55 or that would hire us was they neglected the posterior chain. They did a lot of things. And that's just because most everything that we do is in front of us. And so very few jobs or sports require a lot of the posterior chain, a lot of it's anteriorly driven. And so you have this overdevelopment of all the muscles in the front, this underdevelopment in the muscles in the back.
Starting point is 00:07:18 And that causes this kind of rounding shrimp like posture, which tended to be one of them, the number one things that we were always combating as trainers, was always working on forward head and rounded shoulders. You can only do so many mobility moves to try and get you back to a proper upright posture and you really need to strengthen these muscles to keep the balance and check. There's really not a lot of options for the posterior chain that's gonna be effective like the deadlift is effective. Yeah, and if you neglect strengthening and training
Starting point is 00:07:51 the posterior chain, especially as a chain, meaning working together, okay, not just isolating these specific muscles, but rather having them work in unison, what happens over time, yes, you forget, your body forgets how to do that movement, right? Use it or lose it, that's what that refers to. But you also, and this is the big one, you start to slowly and then over time quickly
Starting point is 00:08:15 increase your risk of low back pain in particular. This is typically where it shows up, right? So if you have a weakness in your hamstrings, your glutes, erector spinae, right? Mid, you know, your rhomboids. If you, and also especially if you have an imbalance between them working together, the weak part of the chain, right? The weak link tends to be the lumbar spine.
Starting point is 00:08:39 It tends to be the lower back. So this is one of the main reasons why low back injuries are so common. It's the most common form of pain and injury. And by the way, most people's low back pain today are not the result of some major injury, like a car accident or I fell. It's like some minor thing. Chronic, chronic pain. And then it's just this lingering kind of chronic issue. And the reason again is that, you know, the human body, there's an optimal way to move and then there's, there are less optimal ways to move. And the further away you move from optimal, the more likely you are to feel pain.
Starting point is 00:09:14 And again, if you look at the spine, the spine has got a lot of joints in it, right? So you've got all those discs in the spine and the spine anchors at the pelvis. Then the pelvis attaches to the bones of the legs, right? The femur and so on. And then all the muscles that work together. Well, if they're not working well together, if I get that pelvis and I tilt it down to the right, or I tilt it forward or back excessively, or I cause the heels to come up off the floor, because you even mentioned Adam the soleus,
Starting point is 00:09:45 that's part of the calf muscles, right? Or the muscles that support the spine are too weak, so then the spine can kind of flop and move in different directions. You're going to potentially, and oftentimes you will experience back pain and back problems. So one of the best ways to bulletproof your back literally is to get really good at different kinds of deadlifts. Like is to get really good at different kinds of deadlifts. If you get really good at the different kinds of deadlifts that we're going to talk about
Starting point is 00:10:09 today and you train the rest of the body appropriately, your back is going to be pretty damn good. It's going to be hard to hurt it. In fact, I remember because you mentioned this, Adam, today you see a lot more people deadlifting, which is true. When I was training in the late 90s and then even the early 2000s, you'd be hard pressed to find anybody deadlifting ever, unless you went to a powerlifting gym. You just didn't see it. Nobody deadlifted. In fact, when I deadlifted as a 19-year-old or 20-year-old general manager, I would actually have members stop me and come up to me and say, you're going to hurt your back.
Starting point is 00:10:46 Cause I've never seen that exercise before. So you do see it much more commonly today, which is a very, very good thing. So it's a great exercise to perform and get strong at. And again, the carryover. And then from a muscle building standpoint, if you are motivated for working out because you want to look better, the way that the back of your body looks, especially your hips, says a lot to other people.
Starting point is 00:11:14 Athletes and coaches know this. Like you could tell if an athlete's fast or strong oftentimes. Them hips don't lie. Yeah. You look at their hips, you look at their back, their mid back in particular. This shows strength, it shows stability. For in particular as this this shows strength that shows stability
Starting point is 00:11:26 For a woman obviously this this is something that is considered attractive It's healthy to have a strong posterior chain and because it's healthy. It looks really good So in terms of aesthetics, these are some of the best exercise I hundred percent so this used to be you've heard us talk about this on the pot if you've listened to the podcast For some time you've heard us talk about like one of the moves that we used to do with clients, like when you take them on an assessment, then, and a lot of times the clients were needed to lose weight and they felt a certain way about themselves, right? And I would put them in better spinal alignment, like I would actually move their shoulders and I'd have them look at themselves, their reflection,
Starting point is 00:12:04 the way they were standing, their posture just comfortably when they were talking to me. And then I would go over and I put them on this like posture check where I'd make them get into more of a neutral spine where their chest is upright, their shoulders are pulled back. And then I'd have them look at themselves in the
Starting point is 00:12:17 mirror and like, look at a difference. You look like you just lost 10 or 15 pounds. Like look how much better your physique looks just by holding it upright. And so you'd be surprised how many people aesthetically look so much better just holding their posture upright. Forget that they need to lose 15 or 20 pounds of
Starting point is 00:12:36 body fat on them just by standing upright. That's how valuable that is from an aesthetic perspective is like, man, when you have, you could have the most banging body in the world, but if your posture sucks, your body looks that way. And so it, just by standing upright and that's this exercise supports that more than arguably any other exercise that I could teach a client would be the deadlift. The deadlift hits all of those muscles in the back. And since almost everybody is interiorly dominant,
Starting point is 00:13:05 that ends up helping posture for everybody. Totally. All right. So let's start with the first type of deadlift known as the conventional deadlift. And it's called conventional because it's, I guess, the most commonly done or expressed form of a deadlift. Now with the conventional deadlift, the shins are inside the hands, your grip on the barbell is probably about shoulder width or a little bit wider. You are squatting down to some extent to
Starting point is 00:13:33 grab the bar, although it's more of a hip hinge. Let's talk about that for a second. If you were to stand up tall and bend over, there's a couple of ways you can bend over. One of them is by rounding the lower back, right? Or by flexing the lumbar spine. The other way is to bend at the hips, right? To flex at the hips. Flexing at the hips is known as hip hinging. So you want, when you do this deadlift, when you do, especially conventional deadlift, is you don't want to bend over to pick up the bar by flexing the lumbar spine. You want to bend over to pick up the bar by flexing the lumbar spine.
Starting point is 00:14:06 You want to bend over to pick up the bar by bending the knees, so squatting somewhat lower. And then also, and more importantly, hinging at the hips, maintaining neutral spine when you do this. This is what makes the deadlift safe. This is why when people look at it, who don't know what a deadlift is like, Oh my God, you're going to hurt back. You won't hurt your back if you maintain a nice neutral, strong, tight spine.
Starting point is 00:14:27 And if it's the hips that are hinging, if you're bending at the hips, then you're okay. Well, this is really what, uh, you know, creates the, it gets pretty technical in terms of it looks pretty simple to apply. Uh, but when you actually go into it, there's all those factors where you're, you're a bit squatted, but you're also hip hinging. And hip hinging is something you have to learn. It's not a natural inclination. Like you said earlier, the natural inclination is to reach forward and to kind of curl forward and round your back, or it's to squat all the way down and kind of stay super upright. So this is somewhere in between the two of those. And then to be able to create that tension. So now all of a sudden, I'm lighting up,
Starting point is 00:15:12 I'm engaging all my muscles correctly. So that way I'm stabilized, supported. So a lot of that impact doesn't go to those places. The weak points, you mentioned like lower back and things like that. When you pick it up and really driving through your legs the legs are Pretty much the most important part of that lift another reason why this is so extremely important to learn how to hinge at the hips is that this is what's going to Protect you for the rest of your life So you're most likely not gonna get away with moving into your 30s 40s 15 60s and never have to pick up a grandkid Never have to pick up a bag of dog food,
Starting point is 00:15:46 not have to move a bag off the ground, pull a weed. And if you don't learn how to load the hips and to hinge and all you do is round at the back to pig or like eventually you're going to get hurt. Eventually you're going to throw your low back out. And that's unfortunate that that's what is also what scares people from doing that movement, but that's even more reason why you learn it.
Starting point is 00:16:07 What you need to do is just regress all the way down to a really light weight that isn't going to risk any sort of injury and learn how to hinge versus rounding at the low back, because that is a skill that you need in the real world. It's a skill that you need to learn how to do so you don't hurt yourself doing little mundane things around the house. And it's almost always, by the way, how a client has gotten hurt that I've trained with. I've talked about this before where they've either rotated to the left or right and out of there doing something really easy, or they didn't hinge at the hips to pick something up and they rounded their low back and they threw it out doing something stupid,
Starting point is 00:16:43 picking up dog food or a little baby or something that should have not thrown the client's back out, but because they don't hinge at the hips properly, they do that. So important to learn this skill. Yes. Now when you grab the bar, arms need to stay totally straight when you're doing a deadlift. So the arms and hands are really just there to hold onto the weight. The prime movers are the hips, the knees to some extent, the ankles, but you're keeping the arms totally straight.
Starting point is 00:17:06 You want to lock the shoulders down and back, maintain that good position. Justin mentioned something that's really important. Rather than trying to lift the bar off the floor, think of that you're driving your feet through the floor. It's a nice cue that'll create a nice deadlift. Now with the deadlift and with all of the ones we're going to talk about, you can definitely do continual reps, but with some of these, it's better to pause at the floor, reset your form and then start again.
Starting point is 00:17:29 Conventional deadlifts is one of those. I think it's far superior. Doesn't take anything away from the exercise, if anything, I think it adds, but when you do one rep and you put it down, let it sit on the floor, get in proper position, get real tight, then do the lift again. What you don't typically want to do, not that this is necessarily wrong, but there isn't a ton of benefit to just touching and coming up each time.
Starting point is 00:17:51 I don't think it's wrong, but it's the true definition of what the exercise was designed for. It's a dead lift. It's designed to teach you how to take something from a complete dead position and lift it up. Yeah. No momentum, no bounce, no rhythm, completely dead position, which is what you would have to do if you walked up and helped your buddy move a couch in the house or lift something up that
Starting point is 00:18:10 was in a dead position. And so learning how to lift something from that position, I think is important. It doesn't mean that we can't build muscle in the glutes and the hamstrings doing it with a touch and go and other things. But like when you, when you're talking about learning the skill of the deadlift
Starting point is 00:18:26 and all of the benefits that come with it, at one point in your lifting career, you need to learn to lift it from a dead position. Not just the intention on the bracing mechanisms and really like keeping that tension consistent and in terms of protection. So, you know, you can get into that sort of touch and go rhythm and what tends to happen, just like
Starting point is 00:18:45 when you're squatting sometimes as well, you start to kind of relax a bit in terms of the bracing and then that leaves you susceptible for injury. Totally. Now the sumo deadlift, which is the second one, very similar to the conventional except now your arms are in between your legs. Your legs go out wide, feet pointed out slightly and there's different variations. Some people could do a really wide sumo, other people more of a moderately wide sumo. But really the key here is that your legs are wider than they were when you're doing a conventional and instead of your hands
Starting point is 00:19:15 being on the outside of your shins, they're on the insides of your legs. Now biomechanically speaking, on paper the sumo deadlift is and it should be biomechanically advantageous. Now this doesn't always turn out correct in the real world. In other words on paper I should be able to sumo deadlift more weight than I can conventional. That's just not true. I can conventional deadlift more than I can sumo. In the sport of powerlifting both are interchangeable meaning if you do a deadlift in the competition you could pick sumo or conventional.
Starting point is 00:19:46 I will say this though, they're not, they're not the same exercise. They work a lot of the same muscles, but it feels very different. A sumo deadlift, you get down much lower. There's less hip hinging involved, less stress on the erector spin a muscles of the back. More hip emphasis is what I tend to find, but they're both, they're both, I think you need to do them both. Now, what for you highlights it as a, a must do. I can think of some reasons from an aesthetic, like a purpose, why it's like,
Starting point is 00:20:13 so sumo deadlifting, um, was one of my favorite go-to exercises for like glute development, just because the glute med is neglected in. And you got to keep your knees apart. And in order to perform the sumo deadlift really well, you have to for like glute development. Just because the glute med is neglected in. And you gotta keep your knees apart. And in order to perform the sumo deadlift really well, you have to keep your knees open, right? And you'll feel yourself wanting to allow the knees
Starting point is 00:20:36 to collapse inward. And so the glute med has to activate and fire to keep those knees pushed out. Plus it is more of a squat, squatted position than it is a stiff legged deadlift type of position. So it has a little bit more glute involved in there. So for that reason, it used to be one of my go-to movements, especially for my female clients
Starting point is 00:20:56 that wanted to develop the glutes. So for me, it has always been in the rotation, especially for clients that are asking things like that. Are there other reasons why you would say, okay, this has to be in our rotation of, of deadlifts other than just varying it up from the conventional? Yeah. For, for, for me in particular, in the real world, when you're having to lift something off the ground, you're going to be in either position,
Starting point is 00:21:19 conventional or sumo. And just because you're, you're trained one doesn't mean the other one feels very natural. In fact, I went for a long time. When I first started deadlift, this is my own personal experience. When I first started deadlifting, I learned how to do it sumo. That's how I was taught. I very quickly switched to conventional, fell in love with it, didn't do sumo for
Starting point is 00:21:35 years and years and years until I was hit a sticking point, wanted to hit a PR. And I thought, okay, let me try these other variations. My first two months of sumo deadlifting was rough. Like I couldn't get near the way I could do conventional when I should be able to get at least close because I never trained it. And that's when I realized like, okay, just cause I'm strong at one. Two different skills. Two different skills.
Starting point is 00:21:57 And so, and I noticed when I did them both, I was less prone to injury. I felt more balanced. Everything just felt better. It's a different position. It's a different position. It's a different position. And it seems to fill some of those gaps, right? From conventional in terms of that stance and like which muscles to secondarily kind of help stabilize.
Starting point is 00:22:13 And so I think they're both valuable and interchangeable in that, that aspect. Just like when we were talking about the squats and the front squat versus the back squat, like two completely different exercises, but they definitely fill the gaps of like, uh, each other's needs. Now taller people tend to do better at the conventional shorter people tend to do better at the sumo, but that's not always the case. Our friend, Lane Norton is my height, long limbs. Like I, like me, he likes to pull sumo.
Starting point is 00:22:39 It's just the way he likes to pull. I like to pull the venture conventional, but I, like I said, both, you got to train them, I think both, by the way, of all of these, as we go through them, uh, cause people are going to ask, this doesn't mean you have to give equal time to every one of these variations, you can like one or two and do that, uh, more than the others. Prioritize it. Just don't not do the others, right? Just do the others to the point where you don't, where you're not going to get
Starting point is 00:23:03 into a position, like I just explained where I never do them. And then I go try to do it. Oh my God, it's so awkward and strange for me because I haven't done this for, you know, a year or two. Next up is in my opinion, uh, one of the most underrated, underperformed yet valuable variations deadlift, which is a single leg deadlift. Yeah. Tremendously beneficial, tremendously beneficial exercise. You're still hip hinging. The weight is going to be much lighter because you're only on one leg.
Starting point is 00:23:32 But man, you want to talk about stability and balance in the hips. You want to talk about QL, strength and stability because you're balancing on one leg, the stability of the pelvis and that twist and torque while you're doing this exercise, like all of that, and that twist and torque while you're doing this exercise, like all of that, all the counter rotation and counter, you know, kind of stabilization. Revealing how immediately you want to rotate or like actually rotate and to go through that with like a really slow tempo and be very controlled with the mechanics you're applying. That translates so well once you have both feet
Starting point is 00:24:07 on the ground and now we have those mechanics that are nice and stabilized and perfected. So there's so many muscles in the hip complex and when we talk about people that have low back injuries and we have people that have weakness, it's always like weakness, right? When you talk about mobility issues, it's always, there's a weakness in an area. And I found with clients that the hip complex was probably one of the number one places
Starting point is 00:24:37 where we had some sort of dysfunction. That dysfunction was related to some sort of hip, uh, strength and, and, and stability in that area. And the single leg deadlift, it starts off as a single leg toe touch for most clients that eventually progresses to a single leg deadlift. Um, that movement was a staple. I trained everybody. And all my clients did it. It was a, and I, and I've said before, it was one of the best low back protecting exercise. And I've said in this podcast before, I've brought it up where I've given an example that there's a move that I've always told my clients, especially my advanced agent, and I would teach them how to do this step up from the side, right?
Starting point is 00:25:15 So they step up to a balance to a single leg toe touch come down, which is basically what that is, right? So the ability to step up, the ability to stabilize, the ability to hinge at the hips and balance in a deadlift position and come back. I would tell my clients after I taught that movement, like if there's anything that you get from me and that you maintain for the rest of your life, don't lose this skill because having that skill to be able to do that will eliminate a lot of issues that I think I've seen in most clients if you can just do that. And so I'm glad you started this rant on the single-leg deadlift as seriously one of the most underrated exercises.
Starting point is 00:25:52 I don't see enough of this. I don't see enough of it in programs. I don't see enough of it with people training in the gym. And I know why. It sucks. It's hard. It's hard. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:03 It took me a really long time to get to a point where I could like grab like 100 pound dumbbells and do this. It's hard to go heavy. I had to work. Yeah, cause your balance is all over the place. Really, really difficult. But let me tell you, and you can go far enough back, I went on a kick when we were doing this podcast
Starting point is 00:26:16 where I would do that when I was going on the mobility kick where that's where I stopped doing a lot of bilateral stuff where I jumped from my knees, I balanced on one foot, bare foot, and then I would deadlift dumbbells up and I was progressing that. That's some of the best I have ever felt. Strength wise, mobility wise, no chronic pain in the low back and hips area. Like that movement is so, in fact, I would argue that if you got really good and strong at the single deadlift, of all the ones you could only do just for that for the rest of your life, that one.
Starting point is 00:26:47 You're not going to develop an imbalance. You're not. No. It's also really good for ankle and foot strength. You do the spare foot, so that's why I do them, right? I do them because I watch my foot and prevent it from collapsing in as I'm doing this movement. So my foot has to stay in a good position to do this. And the carry over by the way, so people watching who are like, I'm into just aesthetics or strength, like a single leg, I'll tell you what,
Starting point is 00:27:12 if you're hitting a plateau with your deadlift, go do three, four weeks of getting good at a single leg. You have to go back to your traditional deadlift, watch what happens. That's how I broke the plateau with my deadlift. I was stuck at like 500 and I couldn't get through that. And then I went to the, and got to a place. And I think I had to start, I want to say I was like 30 pound dumbbells was the heaviest I could
Starting point is 00:27:32 do with the single leg, the barefoot like I was doing and worked my way all the way up to do 100 pound dumbbells from that position. And boy, I came back to that. And not only did I feel stronger, but I felt so much more grounded and stable. I was just, I felt planted. I felt way better doing that movement in addition to being stronger. And so, yeah, I would make the case if I was, if we were playing this game, which is what I think
Starting point is 00:27:56 is the most important, I would say of all the deadlift variations, this to me is the most important one for sure. Next up is the Romanian deadlift. Now this is called Romanian because Romanian weightlifters in the Olympics, this was an exercise that they did that became popular because they did pretty well in their sport. Now Romanian deadlift is a pure hip hinging exercise. Your knees are bent, but they stay fixed. And then you bend at the hips sticking your butt out and and this is the best hamstring development exercise you could do
Starting point is 00:28:31 period hands down like from an aesthetic standpoint you get good at this exercise you're going to develop nice hamstrings and nice glutes it's also a great glute exercise you can also get really strong at the Romanian deadlift. This is a staple in a lower body workout. I mean, I have yet to write workouts for people for lower body and not include a Romanian deadlift for the hamstrings. I'm much more likely to put this in than a leg curl, for example.
Starting point is 00:28:56 Well, I imagine both of you guys were similar to me, too, that this is most likely where you started a lot of clients, right? Teaching somebody conventional deadlift, sort of always, is really tough where you started a lot of clients, right? Teaching somebody conventional deadlift. Instead of all the way from there. Is really tough to do for a lot of clients. I mean, obviously if I could get to you to get to
Starting point is 00:29:11 a conventional deadlift, ride the gates, of course I would, but more often than not, I had to start with a Romanian deadlift just to teach what hip hinging is and it was a safer, more functional way for me to get them to understand that movement and how to keep the spine rigid before I could then incorporate the kind of bending at the knee and picking the bar off the movement and staying stiff and tight at the same time.
Starting point is 00:29:36 So most of my training, when I first started with a client would start with a Romanian deadlift for them to get that skill set down, and then I would have to progress them to say like a conventional deadlift and them to get that skill set down. And then I would have to progress them to say like a conventional deadlift and then eventually like I would start with the like a waiter's bow Romanian deadlift, you know, hands behind the back, elbows back type, just teaching the hip hinges. Good are one of those PVC pipes on your back just to make sure you keep that nice engagement there in your core to keep a flat back. So yeah, all that stuff is super important going into when you get back to
Starting point is 00:30:06 convention as you get more advanced. Like I said, this is a, this is, this could be a great aesthetic and strength exercise. I mean, you can get the weight up here pretty high as you get better and really develop like just really nice, strong shaped glutes and hamstrings from this one exercise. Look, if you love this episode, we have a guide It's how to squat like a pro It's literally guide that teaches you how to squat better better mobility better types of ways to warm ups types of squats It's a free guide. You can find it mind pump free comm you can also find all of us on social media
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