Deadlift weakness off the ground is a common issue for many deadlifters. They load up the bar and it just doesn’t budge from the ground, but if they get it off the ground, it feels relatively light. Now, obviously, the issue is incredibly nuanced. Giving you a generic article addressing this topic will give you just that, generic information, and it certainly shouldn’t be seen as the only way to go about things. I am only trying to get you thinking about things and in what direction you can start looking, so you can address this issue. So take from it what you need, and if you truly want individualisation, you will have to get some form of coaching. So with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into the article.
Deadlift Weakness Off The Ground
Deadlift weakness off the ground is due to a number of reasons, which we will touch on briefly in a second, but most often it is due to having too much weight on the bar. Most people get far closer to (and beyond) their true technical max for the deadlift, and wonder why things don’t move off the ground. For a second, imagine you did this on the bench or the squat. Load up a load of weight, despite the last jump in weight feeling heavy, and then try to move the weight. You wouldn’t do that, as the weight would just fold you over like a pretzel. So why do it for the deadlift? Well, most people do it for the deadlift, because you don’t have to start with the eccentric portion of the lift like you do the bench press and squat, so you don’t get that feedback of the eccentric telling you this is a bad idea. With the deadlift, you are starting from the bottom, and have to perform the concentric portion of the lift first, which leads you to feel weak off the ground. It isn’t due to weakness in the glutes, the quads, the erectors, the grip or any other muscles, it isn’t due to technique issues either, it is just due to the nature of the lift, the nature of biomechanics and the fact you are trying to lift way heavier than you actually are able to. This can also be seen in the other “main” lift that starts with the concentric, the overhead press. Funnily enough, you see people also complaining that they are weak out of the bottom with this lift too. Now the overhead press is a little easier to fix, as you can essentially start it from a midpoint and then use stored elastic energy to bounce the weight out of the bottom position. This would be the same as starting the deadlift by walking it out from a rack and then lowering it and bouncing it off the ground, however. So overall, most people say they are weak off the ground, but in reality, they are just reaching the limit of human biomechanical capacity and are using crappy training methods. So for most people, the issue isn’t really an issue, and they don’t need to employ some new advanced training techniques or exercises, they just need to do some sub-maximal work and stop trying to max out every time they come to the gym.
However, for some, the issue of being weak off the ground is a real issue, and a few modifications to their technique and the introduction of some exercises into their program can really help. So let’s discuss that now.
Technique
Before looking to change up your entire training program and bring in various exercises, you must actually assess your technique. If your technique is absolute trash and you are complaining about being weak off the ground, you need to get your priorities straight. If you record yourself deadlifting and your hips are the highest point of your body, you are always going to be weak off the ground. Your legs are supposed to be used to break the bar from the floor, if you are trying to use your spine as a lever arm for the entire exercise with incredibly high hips, either your hamstrings or your spine are going to hate you. So you may have to drop the weight and actually learn to deadlift correctly and actually use your quads to break the bar from the ground. Yes, there are many people who deadlift with ridiculously high hips, but they are mainly mutants who are stronger than you could ever even imagine and their spines are like steel, or they are people with extremely long femurs, making it impossible for them to deadlift with lower hips. Some people are just not built to deadlift from the floor, and they would get way more out of the exercise by just elevating the bar a little bit. It is arbitrary that we MUST deadlift from the same height just because a weight plate manufacturer decides that the plates are to be a certain diameter. If you are a powerlifter, you must deadlift from the floor, if you aren’t then you don’t necessarily need to. Maybe deadlifting from an inch or two higher is better, maybe it isn’t, I don’t know your goals and your unique mechanics. The easiest way to assess whether you need to work on your technique or whether you need to work on strengthening certain areas, is to get a knowledgeable coach to assess your technique. As we have discussed before when talking about your deadlift stagnating, you can do this by asking for help on social media, asking for help from local powerlifters or by paying for someone to help you in person.
That will literally cover most people, tidying up your technique (and actually using your legs while deadlifting), and not trying to max out all the time. However, some people will do all of that and still have trouble off the ground. Yes, for some of you that will literally be the luck of the draw and due to your unique anatomy, you will always be weak off the ground, but for some, you can do a hell of a lot to get stronger off the ground. But do remember that as you get stronger and approach your maximal genetic potential (or more likely your maximal lifestyle limited potential) you will have to be “weak” somewhere, otherwise, you would never fail and your strength would be unlimited.
Fear Off The Ground
If you have done everything above, you can start to address the next issue, which is fear. The fear that you either won’t move the weight or the fear you will drop the weight. A surprising amount of people go slowly off the ground because they feel the weight will slip out of their hands if they go faster. This can be solved to some extent by using chalk, using lifting straps (not a good idea if you are a powerlifter, but not an issue if you are just looking to build stronger hip extension) or building confidence. Now you can build confidence by just practising with sub-maximal weights, or you can use some rack pulls or timed bar holds to allow you to feel comfortable with holding heavy weights. Farmer’s walks can also help as they both strengthen the grip and allow you to feel confident with the weight wobbling around in your hand. However, there are some very specific ways we can build your speed and confidence off the ground at the same time. Speed deadlifts are one way, and generally, these are done banded to enhance the effect, although you don’t necessarily need to perform speed deadlifts. Just pulling your sub-maximal deadlifts as fast as you humanly can off the ground will build your confidence in your grip and make you stronger off the ground. Cleans, and its derivatives can help, although that is a lot of learning for most people to maybe help a little bit with strengthening your deadlift. I likely wouldn’t go out of my way and spend two years learning to clean correctly, unless you have already exhausted every other option. For some of you, you just need to learn to grind a little bit. The amount of times I have seen someone who is clearly strong enough to do the lift, just completely back out of it as soon as it gets a little bit hard off the ground. The nature of the lift for most people means it will be hard off the ground, that is fine, you just need to pull a little harder and once it breaks from the floor, you will be fine. Now I amn’t suggesting that you just yank at the bar, and despite your form going to crap, keep pulling. Not at all, you still need to pull the slack out of the bar, keep your form tight and perform the lift correctly, but just because the lift starts feeling a little bit difficult doesn’t mean you need to stop pulling. There is a fine line though, as I have already discussed, we don’t want to end up just maxing out every time we train. So basically learn to pull through the difficulty, but also don’t use it as an excuse to try pulling on weights you have no chance of pulling yet.
Once you have done all the above and addressed your training style (not maxing out all the time), addressed your technique (getting help is the quickest way to do this) and you actually committing to lifts and breaking the ground with speed as the intent, you may still be weak off the ground. As I said before, for some, this is just the nature of the lift for them, however, there is still hope for these individuals and everyone else who is in this boat. That hope comes in the form of strengthening muscles and movements.
Muscles and Movements
As discussed in this article on how to address a stagnant deadlift, there are a few generalised muscle groups you can strengthen to help your overall deadlift strength. This applies very much here, and as we are talking about strength off the ground, the area of most interest is the quads. The quads are what are giving you that initial push off the ground, unless your technique is awful or you have such long femurs that your hips are higher than your shoulders at the start of the pull. Some lifters do pull with pretty straight legs and purely hinge at the hips, essentially performing a straight-legged deadlift, but I am going to presume you don’t fit into the extremely small proportion of lifters who would actually benefit from pulling that way, and I am going to presume if you are pulling that way after having already assessed your technique, as I suggested earlier, that you have a very good reason for pulling the way you do.
For most deadlifters, getting stronger quads will translate to better strength off the ground. You can go about this by squatting, although most people squat very posterior dominantly in the powerlifting world, and when I say squat, I mean Olympic style. So don’t get your wires crossed and think your wide stance hips back parallel squat is going to cut it. Yes, for sure it will help strengthen the quads to some extent, but not nearly as much as a more Olympic-style squat. You will see many powerlifters recommend front squats for this purpose, and that is perfectly cool too. So is using the safety squat bar, or even the hack squat machine. Using a leg press is probably the most position-specific way to build quad strength for the deadlift (and not overloading the low back in the process). Whatever way you feel is best to go about it, getting stronger quads will likely help you enormously with your strength off the ground. Personally, my preferred method is on the leg press as you can get hyper-specific with things and isolate the quads to a huge extent and effectively imagine you are breaking the bar from the floor as you do the leg press movement, as you don’t have to worry about the more technical aspects of the other squat variations.
A stronger core will also help immensely, and if you lose hundreds of lbs from your deadlift when you take off your lifting belt, then this would be an area that I would put a huge degree of focus on. You can do this through either specific core work, or you can just do more of your training without the belt.
Then we move on to some more specific stuff to help build strength off the ground as we get into some deadlift variations. The first one is the paused deadlift. With this variation, you are going to break the deadlift into two parts, the first segment of breaking it off the floor, and then the second of the final pull-through to completion. You are going to perform a rep by breaking the bar off the ground, and then pausing for 1-5 seconds, and then finishing the lift. This is a pretty good exercise for engraining an extremely efficient technique, but only if you do it correctly. So don’t let your technique get sloppy with this just to complete the reps.
The next variation you can use is low-handle trap bar deadlifts. The trap bar (or hex bar) gets a lot of hate from deadlift purists, but it is a very versatile and valuable tool. Due to having to perform this kind of hybrid between a squat and a deadlift when you do trap bar deadlifts, it is extremely effective at teaching you to pull strongly off the ground. I would avoid using the high handles, as they aren’t going to allow you to sit deeper into the movement, and thus won’t help build the strength off the ground to the same extent. They also tax the upper body musculature slightly differently than using a straight bar, and I have always found them to be very beneficial when looking to strengthen my deadlift overall.
You can also use clean deadlifts to build strength off the ground. These are basically the deadlifts that Olympic weightlifters perform. They generally use weightlifting shoes, and squat much deeper into the start position. They are a lot more technical, so you should either watch a LOT of videos, or get someone who knows what they are talking about to coach you through them.
Then you have the deficit deadlift. Elevating yourself using a step, mats, box or plate, perform your regular deadlift from that elevated position. Due to your body being higher relative to the bar, you will have to use the legs a lot more to actually get the bar off the ground. However, do realise that this is probably a bad idea if the reason you are weak off the ground is due to not having the range of motion to actually be in that bottom position normally. Adding an increased requirement will just lead to excessive rounding of the lower back if this is you. So your technique still has to be very sound and competent to increase the range without exceeding your capabilities.
Related to the deficit deadlift is the snatch grip deadlift, as you are essentially increasing the range of the lift by virtue of widening your grip. Now, despite what you might see on social media, a snatch grip refers to the grip you would perform a snatch with. It is not a grip that is about a centimetre wider than your normal deadlift. If you can perform a snatch like that, I would be pretty impressed. A snatch grip will vary from person to person, but as a very good reference point, the bar should be resting at the crease of your hip in the top position. If it is below that, and you don’t have superhumanly long arms or your grip is limited by the bar collars, then it is likely not a snatch grip. Please don’t call it a snatch grip, unless it is actually a snatch grip. In the eyes of lifters who know what they are talking about, it is like saying an incline bench press is the same as a flat bench press. Yes, they are similar, but they are not the same by a long shot. Using the wider grip, either in the form of a snatch grip or a slightly wider grip (or anywhere in between) will cause you to have to sit deeper into the lift and thus use your quads more to break the barbell off the ground. However, most people (especially when the grip is very close to their normal grip) just use this to reinforce their already bad positions and start with their hips extremely high in the air. This is fine for some body types, and if you are intentionally doing this (as some Olympic lifters do), but if you are trying to build strength off the ground, those hips are going to need to get lower.
Deadlift Weakness Off The Ground Summary
Solving deadlift weakness off the ground is something many people struggle with a lot. This may be due to a variety of reasons, but hopefully, this article has given you a few ideas to start guiding your training. For most of you, it is simply a case of just using a lighter weight, fixing your technique and actually learning to deadlift more effectively. However, for some, you may need to bring up your quad strength and/or bring in some position-specific strengthening exercises. If you are a sumo deadlifter, then you have a whole other beast to deal with, and we will have to discuss that elsewhere another time. So, give the ideas presented here a try, and see if it helps!
Paddy Farrell
Hey, I'm Paddy!
I am a coach who loves to help people master their health and fitness. I am a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, and I have a degree in Biochemistry and Biomolecular Science. I have been coaching people for over 10 years now.
When I grew up, you couldn't find great health and fitness information, and you still can't really. So my content aims to solve that!
I enjoy training in the gym, doing martial arts and hiking in the mountains (around Europe, mainly). I am also an avid reader of history, politics and science. When I am not in the mountains, exercising or reading, you will likely find me in a museum.
