Stagnant Deadlift

Q. I have a stagnant deadlift, and my deadlift has completely stagnated the last few weeks. How can I get over this plateau?

The latest question (which I have shortened above) was from a follower who has been having a bit of trouble with their stagnant deadlift. They said it was going up great for a while, but now it has just started to stagnate. They didn’t say how long they were training, how strong they are or what training methods they were using, however. These are actually two quite important points, as obviously what will help someone who wants to go from 100 kg to 120 kg is a lot different than what will help someone who wants to go from 200 kg to 300 kg. What will help someone who has been hammering away at getting stronger at deadlifts for 10 years, versus what will help someone training them for 1 year is also different.

However, despite the inherent issues with the lack of information in the question, here are some more generic “tips” that may be of benefit for helping you increase your stagnant deadlift.

The first thing to assess is your actual technique. It doesn’t matter what training program, special exercises, or any other training advice you get, if you are deadlifting like a combination of a dog defecating and a question mark, your progress is going to stall quickly. It isn’t a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Now the issue with deadlifts is some people can get away with some upper back rounding, and this leads people to think that their hunched-over, completely rounded spine is fine because <insert genetic elite lifter’s name who does this here> does it. So if your deadlift isn’t going up, and you haven’t spent quite a while really perfecting it, then that has to be step one. There are literally thousands of instructional deadlift videos online from very well-respected powerlifters who have already spent countless hours perfecting the movement. So learn from them.

But you can’t stop there, as watching a video is nothing compared to getting some hands-on technique criticism from someone who knows what they are looking for. So, find out where the local powerlifters train and ask them for help. If there are people at your gym that are competitive powerlifters, use that resource. Now I don’t mean go over and ask them to spend 40 minutes coaching you through the lift. No, unless you are going to pay them for that time, you shouldn’t expect them to help you. However, if you ask them to watch one of your sets and give some constructive criticism, they will be more than happy to help more often than not. You can also pay for a coach to teach you how to do the lift, and this can be especially beneficial if the coach does actually compete in powerlifting. That isn’t to say just because a coach doesn’t compete in powerlifting that they can’t help you, but there are quite a lot of coaches out there that simply don’t have a clue about proper technique or how to coach the deadlift. However, as powerlifting is literally a sport dedicated to three movements, all powerlifters will at the very least be able to point you in the right direction with your technique.

You can also do a lot of good work just by filming your deadlift and then comparing it to what you think the lift should look like. If you think you are doing what the instructional video you watched says to do, and you record yourself and it looks completely different, well then you can work on adjusting your technique. You can also use social media to your advantage and upload said video and tag some of your deadlift inspirations and ask for their advice. As you aren’t paying for their time, don’t expect them to respond, but quite often, the lifting community is very much about helping the next generation of lifters carry the torch. This is a great way to get advice, but don’t abuse it and tag 50 different lifters and do so every time you deadlift. Do it once, tag maybe 2-3 lifters and then use their advice for 6-12 months and then perhaps consider tagging them again thanking them for their advice and potentially asking for more. Manners cost you nothing, and considering you aren’t paying them, it is the least you can do.

The next thing you need to address is your actual training program. Everybody seems to love deadlifts, and the likely reason is they can get way closer to failure than they can on any other lift, and combined with the fact you can generally lift a lot of weight with the deadlift, people feel like they are just absolute beasts when they deadlift. They see these numbers on the lift that are so much higher than any of their other lifts, so they get a really nice positive feedback loop where they really start to enjoy deadlifts. And don’t get me wrong, deadlifts are awesome and a really nice lift to progressively overload if you want to get stronger and bigger. However, due to the nature of the lift and your ability to get closer to failure with it, people tend to absolutely hammer it and get far beyond their technical failure point and throw all caution to the wind with their loading. This is because you will just end up not being able to lift the weight from the floor as you fail, so any immediately bad repercussions don’t occur. But imagine you trained this way with the squat or the bench press. You just go in, load up the absolute maximum weight you can lift and essentially just keep going until the bar literally isn’t moveable, and I don’t mean you feel like the weight is getting challenging, I mean actual failure like you do on the deadlift. You would get to the bottom of the squat or bench, and simply wouldn’t be able to move the bar. Not just technical failure, or where you feel it is getting heavy, or you feel your technique is falling apart, nope, complete failure. I hope that isn’t the way you are generally training, and I hope once you think about it a little deeper you realise that training the deadlift that way also isn’t likely a great idea.

But maybe you already know that and aren’t training it to complete and absolute failure like a lot of people. Well, you still must address the very first question with regard to stagnation on a lift. Are you actually stagnant, or are you just progressing much slower than you previously have? Most people have a hard time transitioning from the beginner phase of lifting, where you can just linearly progress. Every time you go to the gym, you can just add a couple more kilos to the bar and progress is coming along very nicely. This can last from anywhere to 6 months to 2 years, however, it will at some stage slow and eventually stop. So if your progression method has always been to just add more weight to the bar, every workout, you may need to look at more advanced progression schemes. You must also address whether you are just progressing slower than you have before, as quite often people will say they are stagnating when they are just getting stronger more slowly. So rather than adding 5kg to their lift every workout, they will be adding 2.5kg every workout. While this may initially seem like you are doing something wrong and your strength is stagnating, you must remember that even small progress is still progress. You shouldn’t be thinking on a weekly scale with strength, you should be thinking on a yearly scale. The work you are doing now is really only going to pay off in the future and getting truly strong is a multi-year endeavour. So if you are trying to linearly progress every week, and you have stopped progressing, you need to think bigger picture. If you are still progressing and it is just slower, well then you need to just learn patience. However, at some stage, weekly progress is going to slow and that is when you have to start utilising a more advanced progression method. Something that has you getting stronger over a longer time period like a monthly progression scheme would be a good start. But I don’t want to have this article be about progression schemes, as there are literally thousands to choose from out there on the internet, and we have quite a few articles planned to address this topic.

So, you have addressed your technique, and you have addressed your program, so what is next? Well, the next step is shoring up weaknesses. Very likely you are failing the lift because of one section of them lift, whereas the other portions are quite easily managed. This obviously makes sense considering the general strength curve of the deadlift, and then also how unique body structures alter this. The deadlift is generally hardest off the ground, and then easier to lock out as a whole. However, you may find it hard to get off the ground, you may find it hard to get it past the shins, and others may find it hard to lock it out. You may find your grip is limiting, and you may find your core isn’t strong enough. Or you may find any other portion/attribute of the lift is difficult. To solve this issue of limiting factors, generally, special exercises are brought in. You can use more “muscle” focused lifts (where the goal is to build more muscle and strength in a certain area), or you can use more “movement” focused lifts (where the goal is to build more strength at a certain portion of the lift). To truly understand the intricacies of when and why to bring in certain exercises is something that would take quite a few articles to cover, but I don’t think you need to understand all the subtle nuances of programming just to get a little bit stronger. So, using the basic principle of “strength is never a weakness”, getting stronger in some key areas and in some key lifts will help ensure your strength in the deadlift continues to climb.

 

Exercise That Can Help A Stagnant Deadlift

I know people are going to read this entire article and rather than focus on the first section and address their crappy technique, and/or accept they will likely have to drop some weight off the bar and not max out every workout, and/or accept their program is crap, they will immediately assume it is some special exercise that they are missing out on. So don’t be that person. Address the big picture stuff first, and then start thinking about filling in any weaknesses you may have. This is also not to say that just because you aren’t doing one of these exercises, you can’t progress, not at all. We certainly aren’t suggesting you must do all of these exercises to be successful in the lift, and I merely want to present you with a few launching points to start thinking about where you may be falling down strength-wise and with your overall programming.

 

Squat

This should be fairly intuitive, as the squat works pretty much all the same muscles as the deadlift, and has an obvious enough carryover as a result. Stronger squats will most likely manifest in better strength off the ground, especially if they are of the high bar or front squat variety, as that is when the quads will need to do a lot of work.

 

Leg Press

While the leg press gets vilified by a lot of people, it is pretty much the exact same position as your starting position in the (conventional) deadlift. Getting stronger here again will likely lead to better strength off the floor.

 

Deficit Deadlifts

Doing your deadlift from a deficit will make the range of motion of the lift bigger, and will generally translate into better strength from the floor. The only real issue with these is the fact that most people simply don’t have the active range of motion for these, so these can end up just leading to excess rounding at the lower back and no real carryover to the lift you actually want to help. For those that have the ability to do them, they are highly effective.

 

Snatch Grip Deadlift

Similar to the deficit deadlift, these build some nice strength off the floor due to the longer range of motion. They also are quite effective at packing on some dense muscle to the entire back, as you have both an extended range of motion and you have to hold the bar so wide. Don’t play yourself with these and actually use a snatch grip. This means the grip should have the bar resting at the crease of the hips when you are in the standing position. If you use a grip that is just a hairsbreadth wider than your regular grip, don’t play yourself and call these snatch grip deadlifts, and certainly don’t post them on social media and call them snatch grip (call them wider grip deadlifts if you like, but don’t call them snatch grip when you have absolutely no hope of being able to do a snatch grip with that grip width).

 

Clean Pulls/Olympic Lifts

Learning to perform a deadlift the way Olympic Weightlifters perform a deadlift will really help you learn to use your quads in the movement. This could be said about the Olympic lifts themselves and their derivatives, as they both teach you to use your quads and develop explosiveness from the ground.

 

Hip Thrusts/Glute Bridges

If you have a hard time locking the deadlift out, these can help. But please, if you are going to use them to strengthen your lockout, do them correctly. That means your hips actually have to lock out. The finished position of the hip thrust/glute bridge should look like you want the end of your deadlift to look like. The glutes should be fully contracted and you definitely should not be feeling these in the lower back.

 

Rack Pulls/Block Deadlifts

This is pretty obvious, but doing a partial range of motion of the deadlift will help with the deadlift. These can be especially beneficial for adding more deadlift-specific muscle, strengthening the grip muscles and strengthening the top portion of the deadlift. Unfortunately, people spend ages getting strong at a partial lift and feel betrayed when it doesn’t translate to the actual full lift. This can be the case with the rack pull, especially as people will do them from a very high starting position. There is a time and a place for that, especially in strengthening the grip, but if you want to maximise the benefit of the rack pull/block pull, pulling from just below the knee is probably best. I would also recommend block pulls over rack pulls because they are more specific to the deadlift as the bar is able to move more like the actual deadlift. With the rack pull, you get some stored kinetic energy in the bar unless you really pause between reps, and the bar doesn’t quite behave like it would if you were to actually be deadlifting. You aren’t as able to pull the slack out of the bar with the rack pull, whereas you can with the block pull. Also, bars aren’t really designed to take a beating on the actual bar itself, and neither are the supports, so slamming the bar down on the supports beats up your equipment faster.

 

Romanian Deadlifts

Much the same movement as the rack pulls/block pulls. Great for strengthening the entire posterior chain, and being able to control the change of direction with these will build a ridiculously strong lower back. They are a truer hip hinge movement than deadlifts and they essentially take the quads out of the movement, so you can really dial the tension in on the posterior chain.

 

Good Mornings

These are pretty much the exact same movement as a Romanian deadlift, although the bar is on your back. They target the same muscles, but due to the length of the lever your spine creates with the bar on your back, they will demand more of your lower back than Romanian deadlifts. These commonly get left out of the discussion outside of powerlifting circles, and like any exercise, they aren’t appropriate for everyone, but these are actually quite beneficial for strengthening the lower back for both deadlifts and squats.

 

Glute Ham Raise/Hamstring Curls

Getting stronger hamstrings will equate to more kilos on the bar. Hamstring curls are really nice to strengthen the hamstrings, although the glute ham raise is probably a more effective exercise (once you are strong enough to do them correctly), as they demand more muscle coordination between the hamstrings, glutes and core musculature. This obviously carries over quite a bit to the deadlift, but this is also not suggesting that hamstring curls aren’t effective, they clearly are and denying that is just ludicrous. Also, if you are going to use a glute ham raise machine, and make out like you are a beast at glute ham raises, and then not be able to do a single natural glute ham raise, well you have just played yourself. One of those rare instances where you will see powerlifters/strength athletes prioritise the machine version of a lift rather than its “real” version. Nordic curls and all the potential derivatives fall in here, and basically getting your hamstrings stronger, isn’t going to be a bad thing.

 

Rows

All the row variations will help to some extent. The lats and back as a whole have a big role in helping you hold the bar and obviously, your grip needs to be strong to hold the bar, so rows of all kinds will help. Bent-over rows probably have the biggest carryover as they challenge the whole posterior chain in a very position-specific manner, but combining heavy bent-over rows and deadlifts can be a real strain on the lower back for some people. But all rows will help strengthen the back and forearm musculature, which will help your deadlift.

 

Core

Strengthening the core as a whole will help your deadlift too, as will actually learning how to brace correctly. And I don’t just mean your “6 pack” when I say your core, I mean your entire core musculature. So the deep core muscles and the low back should be strengthened too. You can do weighted core work, isometric, bodyweight or any method you feel will help you, but getting a stronger core and being able to brace correctly will help tremendously. If you use a weightlifting belt for all your sets, doing more sets without it will help you strengthen the core in a very position-specific manner.

 

Grip

Strengthening the grip will help you with the entire deadlift, from your speed off the ground through to the lock out. You have quite a few options with this, and you can get very generalised or you can get very specific with this. I personally like isometric holds in the top position of the deadlift for 30-60 seconds although you could just as easily use something like farmers walks or dead hangs for similar benefits. Doing your back training work without the use of straps will obviously translate more to your grip strength than if you were to use straps.

 

Stagnant Deadlift Summary

That should give you some ideas as to how you can potentially get over this period of stagnation with your deadlift. At the end of the day, everyone will encounter periods of stagnation with their training and changing around a few variables and assessing what has been working and what hasn’t, will get you through to the other side. We didn’t address the diet here, but that is because I am making the assumption that your diet is on point and you aren’t trying to get stronger while not actually providing your body with what it needs to recover. So if you are not eating enough or you aren’t eating a nutritious well-balanced diet, you will always be at a disadvantage. Anyway, hopefully, this article gives you a few ideas as to how you can get your deadlift numbers ramping up again.

If you need specific help with your training, then reaching out for professional help with online coaching may be the answer. This article may help if your deadlift is particularly weak off the ground.