Many people ‘squat’ their deadlift. That is, their deadlift starting position resembles the squat bottom position. Maybe someone told them that the deadlift is really nothing more than knee bending with the bar in your hands. Or maybe they do the exercise wrong automatically, because of relatively weak hip muscles.

TWO DIFFERENT EXERCISES

Anyway, the squat and deadlift are two fundamentally different exercises, with two different movement patterns. The difference extends beyond any other position of the bar – on your shoulders versus in your hands. For example, the squat is a push and the deadlift is a pull movement. And although in both exercises the power is mainly generated by the hips and thighs, the way and the extent to which you use those muscles differs significantly per exercise.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

The conventional squat is a knee-dominant exercise. The conventional deadlift, also known as hip stretch, is a hip-dominant exercise.

In the bottom position of the squat, the knee angle is much smaller than in the starting position of the deadlift. In the bottom position of the squat, your hips should be level with your knees or lower, at least. In the deadlift starting position, however, your hips are well above your knees. In fact, the vertical distance between your knees and hips in the deadlift is about equal to the distance between your hips and shoulders.

THE PROBLEM

When you ‘squat’ your deadlift, your hips are not only too low, but too far away from the bar. This results in an unnecessarily long load arm. This not only makes it more difficult to lift the weight off the floor, but also puts an unnecessary burden on the lumbar spine, or your lower back. With your hips higher, you decrease the (horizontal) distance to the bar and thus also the load arm, which puts you in a stronger position and also protects your lower back.

THE SOLUTION

If you analyze an incorrectly set up deadlift, i.e. with the hips too low, you will see the same thing happen over and over: the moment the bar is pulled off the ground, the hips shoot up to the ideal starting position. That is, the position they should have been in before you started pulling. By this ‘shooting up’, you lose muscle tension and you do not perform the exercise efficiently and suboptimally. So start the exercise with your hips in the correct position: somewhere in the middle between knees and shoulders.

Right: squatting your deadlift. The correct starting position on the left. (Barbell Rehab)