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| By Eric Troy |
What is this thing with hip position in deadlifting? Why is it so hard for people to figure out where their hips should be without a qualified coach laying on hands and forcing them into the best position? Prodigious effort has been made by so many to demystify this very simple concept. Notably by Mark Rippetoe in Starting Strength, whom despite my not being a big fan of his training methods, has done a great job of teaching basic technique in his writings (if not his videos).
Yet every time I turn around some guy is talking about trying to get his butt lower or being told that his butt is too low and his back should be parallel to the floor. I think it was Jim Shmitz who said the butt (i.e. hips) should be higher than the knees and lower than than the shoulders. That sums it up. Where your hips end up is somewhat unique to you.
So I started looking around at instructional deadlift pieces I find some good instruction..up to a point..then I found out the writer is not really getting it either as they begin to give some type of formula for hip position based on parallel or some such thing.
They get that the shins should be damned close to the bar so that the bar is about midfoot over the feet. Good. They get that the shoulders should be forward of the bar so that the bar and the scapula are in a vertical line..in other words the bar is underneath the shoulder blades. Good. They get that the shoulder should be up and the back set in a tight natural arch..
But they still can't produce the proper position. So I studied images from people who seem to "get it" but still don't get it and I found one factor being the biggest culprit. More often then not the hips are TOO FAR FROM THE BAR. I take it that this is due to the cue "bring the hips back" (meaning to bring the butt back and use hip flexion rather than lumbar flexion). This is translating into the butt ending up a thousand miles form the bar. It won't work. Try it. Reproduce all the factors discussed above except mentally cue yourself to "bring your hips back". If it feels like a hamstring stretch rather than a deadlift you'll get what I'm talking about.
What happens is that people approach the bar correctly. If the shoulders and feet are in the right place and the shoulders are up and locked back the hips should be in place. But then they tend to allow the hips to drift back upon initiating the lift. This is a habit that reinforces weak hip drive thus locking in this faulty technique. So when I say to get the hips as close to the bar as possible that is a technique reinforcement to get you to plant the hips and pull UP on the bar rather than back.
The deadlift is NOT a 'squat where you pick the bar off the floor'! But it is also not the exact opposite. The trick is that the hips need to be as close to the bar as possible while maintaining all those other factors. It's actually simpler than it sounds. But mental cues won't do it. While your focusing on one 'cue' you make that more important than the next 'cue'.
When I say mental cues I mean stuff like "my butt should be just lower than my parallel squat". Instead focus on benchmarks. In this case the bar is the best benchmark. You find your position relative to the bar not relative to some mental picture of another movement such as the squat. If you notice in the above example all the positions of every part of the body were found relative to the bar but then when it came to the hips suddenly this tried and true formula was abandoned for mental cueing. Always stick to something you can see, feel, and touch.
In this way we use a "frame of reference". Using your hips as a frame of reference is more complicated since they are moving RELATIVE to the bar. Using the BAR as a frame of reference is simpler. The bar is stationary on the floor.
-Eric Troy
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