The Deadlift aka Picking Something Up (Part 2)

Continuing our discussion from last week (Part 1), we will now look at how you can progress to using the Deadlift in your exercise program and in every day life. 

Step 3: The Hip Hinge. Once you feel that your butt and hamstrings know how to work, it is time to use your new-found abilities while on your feet. We still are not looking to lift up any weight though, as your body will quickly revert to old movement patterns if overloaded. So start by just practicing the hip hinge. A hip hinge is where you push your butt back while keeping your knees in the same place. You goal is to get your butt back as far as you can while keeping your back straight.

A few tricks that can help: First, practice with your knees touching a bench. As you sit back keep them touching as your butt moves away. Second, as you are coming back up, think of your bridging and try to replicate the motion. You should feel that your butt, not your back, is working to extend your hips helping you to stand up tall. Once you have practiced this move, step away from the bench and practice the movement again. As you will see in the video below, I also use two other cues to help clients achieve proper form. The first is having them hold a stick so that it stays touching their head, upper back, and tailbone. You should be able to perform the movement without the stick coming off of these points. The second cue is to use your hands to press your hips back. Your hips should hinge just below your hip bone, so place your fingers here and press back.

Step 4: The Straight Leg Deadlift (aka the Romanian Deadlift). Now that you have practiced the hip hinge, it is time to pick up some weight. We will still not be picking up anything from the floor though. The goal now is to just learn how to move weight using the hip hinge. To do this, start with a light barbell and set it on a rack at hip height. Take the bar off the rack, move back, and then perform the hip hinge with the bar in your hands. The bar should stay in contact with your thigh on the way down, keeping your arms & back straight. (Note: Pick the bar up from the rack using the same hip hinge you use in the movement. I see too many people that go to lift the bar off the rack before a deadlift, but do not use their deadlifting skills to pick it up!)

Lower the bar as far down as you can while keeping your back straight. If you feel your back bend, you have gone too far. From the bottom position (bar is usually just past the knee) drive through your heels and extend your hips, using your butt just as you did in the hip hinge.

Now that you are starting to use weight, we should also talk about breathing. While it will not be as important with a light weight, learning the proper breathing for lifting weight is always a good idea. For this movement, you will want to take in a breath at the top and brace your abs before lowering. Hold your breath on the way down and halfway on the way up. When you breathe in, you help to stabilize your spine, so it is important that you keep your breath during the most vulnerable position of the lift: the bottom. Once you have momentum on the way up, you can let out some of the air (starting around halfway up), finishing your exhalation at the top.

Step 5: The Deadlift. This step is actually broken into a series of movements that each can be used depending on your abilities. Chances are, even after you have mastered the Straight Leg Deadlift, you may still not have the mobility to properly deadlift (this will depend on how much other work you are doing to loosen up your hips and shoulders). Just because you cannot perform a traditional deadlift does not mean that you cannot progress. Other lifts such as Rack Pulls, Sumo Deadlifts, and Kettlebell Deadlifts can serve as progressions from the Straight Leg Deadlift.

 

With these more advanced deadlifting variations, you will now need to be especially conscientious about your breathing and positioning. You should take in a big breath before you pick up the weight, and hold it for at least the bottom half of the lift. Some people like holding their breath for the whole lift, some like letting out a little at the top, then holding on the way down, and others like letting out at the top and then taking in another breathe on the way down. I prefer to just hold the whole way, with a slight release on the way up. This is something that you can play with and find what comes naturally to you. As long as you have air in your lungs during the lower half of the movement, you will be helping to stabilize your spine.

For positioning, your main concerns should be keeping your back straight and keeping the bar/weight right beneath your shoulder blades. If we look again at our deadlift picture, you will notice how the figure’s shoulders are actually slightly in front of the bar, but the shoulder blades are right over it. By keeping your shoulder blades over the bar, you will be able maintain a vertical pull.

Step 6: Apply to real life. Now that you have learned how to pick up a weight off the ground, it is time to apply these principles to your everyday activity. The next time you go to pick something up, think about these three things: First, how is your body positioned? Make sure that your back is straight (shoulders pulled back and down), heels are on the ground, and that your hips are pushed back. Second, is the object as close to you as possible? Ideally, whatever you are picking up should be right between your legs. Third, did you take a big breath? This becomes more important for heavier items, but it is a good habit to get into. As you will see in the movie below, your positioning can vary greatly depending on the size, shape, and height of the object you pick up. The lower the object, the harder it will be to get into a good position. If you can consistently go through this checklist, you will be better prepared for lifting and able to avoid a lot of unnecessary back pain. 

The Deadlift aka Picking Something Up (Part 1)

1The concept of functional training gets thrown around a lot these days and I think the most fundamental meaning of the term is often lost. Functional training should describe movements and exercises designed to enhance every day function. I don’t know about you, but standing on a stability ball while doing dumbbell curls does not much mimic my every day activity. Contrarily, bending over to pick something up happens to be a very common movement in most people’s daily lives. The weight room equivalent: Deadlifts.

I find it interesting that many people think of deadlifting as bad for the back, and yet they will bend over to pick up a child, rounded back and all, and not think twice. I believe the misconception about deadlifting is that most people do not have the mobility to put themselves into a proper position to deadlift, meaning the only way to get down to the weight is by rounding their backs. This is why deadlifts and hip hinge movements are more important than ever. We do not need to start with 200lbs deadlifts; we need to start by teach our hips and butts how to work properly! We need to learn how to disassociate hip movement from back movement. We need to refocus on breathing and learn how to brace before lifting. When we sit all day, we lose our ability to move properly, and we need to slowly, but deliberately, work to regain our movement. So where do we start?

Step 1: Recognize deadlifting (hip hinging) as one of the most important movements you can learn. For a long time, general wisdom has said to lift with your legs (meaning a squat position), not your back. Well I am here to say that you need lift with your butt! Lifting from a squatted position is rarely optimal and if you are not mobile enough to lift with your butt, then I doubt you are able to squat low enough to lift with your legs anyway.

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Just look at the two pictures below. In the first, we have a relatively accurate depiction of what lifting with your legs looks like. Rounded back, heels off the ground, object out in front of you. This means that your back will be doubly stressed: first to help you lift the object, second to help you counterbalance the object. In the second picture, we see a deadlift: back straight, heels flat, with the object right in line with your center of gravity. This means that you can produce more power (driving through your heels, not your toes helps to engage your posterior chain: aka butt & back) while moving the object in a straight line. The line of the pull is important because it influences the force required to complete the lift. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so when lifting a weight, the most efficient way to lift (requires the least effort) is to move the object in a straight line against gravity. If we look back at the “lift with your legs” picture, we see that the object will inevitably travel in an arch, increasing the amount of work required, mostly from the back.

Step 2: Start on the ground. Just because the deadlift is the proper way to pick up an object does not mean that your body can get into the right position to make it happen safely. So first things first, we need to make sure that your butt works and that you back is kept out of the movement. This is where I like to incorporate bridging variations. Two leg bridges, single leg bridges, stability ball hip extensions, and leg curl variations are all great exercises for working the glutes without getting the back involved. It is important to establish a base level of strength and activation before moving on to standing exercises.

As you start out, these should be your main hip focused exercises. Start with 2-3 sets of 10-15, and include at least one of these movements with every workout. Once you have mastered the floor variations, you can move them to your warm up and move on to the standing variations that we will talk about next time.

That is all I want to go over this week as I want you all to have some time to test out the movements, and start working to incorporate them into your workouts/daily activity. If you sit in a chair for a large part of the day, you NEED to start working on this. Most back pain results from the inability to properly recruit your butt muscles to do their job, resulting in overuse of the back muscles. One of the ways we can help to avoid back issues is to increase our hip movements. Another is to increase our stretching which I talked about in Pull Yourself to Better Posture. Start with the floor work, and we will be back next week to go over the best progressions for getting you to the deadlift.

Only One Body

I was looking through my old posts this week and I ran across this one from last year. I feel like this is timeless advice, so here it is again. Enjoy!

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Imagine you are sixteen years old and your parents give you your first car. They also give you simple instructions. There is one small hitch, you only get one car, and you can never get another. Never. No trade-ins, no trade-ups. Nothing

Ask yourself how would you maintain that car? My guess is you would be meticulous. Frequent oil changes, proper fuel, etc. Now imagine if your parents also told you that none of the replacement parts for this car would ever work as well as the original parts. Not only that, the replacement parts would be expensive to install and cause you to have decreased use of your car for the rest of the cars useful life? In other words, the car would continue to run but, not at the same speed and with the efficiency you were used to.

Wow, now would we ever put a lot of time and effort into maintenance if that were the case.

After reading the above example, ask yourself another question. Why is the human body different? Why do we act as if we don’t care about the one body we were given. Same deal. You only get one body. No returns or trade-ins. Sure, we can replace parts but boy it’s a lot of work and it hurts. Besides, the stuff they put in never works as well as the original “factory” parts. The replacement knee or hip doesn’t give you the same feel and performance as the original part.

Think about it. One body. You determine the mileage. You set the maintenance plan.

No refunds, no warranties, no do-overs.

How about this perspective: One of my clients is a very successful businessman. He often is asked to speak to various groups. One thing he tells every group is that you are going to spend time and money on your health. The truth is the process can be a proactive one or a reactive one. Money spent on your health can take the form of a personal trainer, massage therapist and a gym membership or, it can be money spent on cardiologists, anesthesiologists, and plastic surgeons. Either way, you will spend money.

Same goes for time. You can go to the gym or, to the doctor’s office. It’s up to you. Either way, you will spend time. Some people say things like “I hate to work out”. Try sitting in the emergency room for a few hours and then get back to me. Working out may not seem so bad. Much like a car, a little preventative maintenance can go a long way. However, in so many ways the body is better than a car. With some good hard work you can turn back the odometer on the body. I wrote an article a while back that discussed a study done by McMaster University which showed that muscle tissue of older subjects actually changed at the cellular level and looked more like the younger control subjects after strength training.

Do me a favor, spend some time on preventative maintenance, it beats the heck out of the alternative. Just remember, you will spend both time and money.

(This article was taken from an e-mail blast I received from Mike Boyle, one of the leading strength and conditioning coaching in the world.) 

What Makes Soda So Bad?

While most of us have heard that soda is not healthy, it is not often that we stop to think about WHY we should avoid soft drinks. While there are a large variety of drinks on the market today, let’s look at one of the most well-known: Coke.

The average Americans drinks eight hundred forty-eight (848) 8-ounce cans of soda per year. This is an astonishing quantity of soda, meaning that Americans are consuming upwards of 75 lbs. of sugar from soda alone! (The average total consumption of sugar per year is 180 lbs.) Even with all of the efforts to educate, millions of Americans still suffer from sugar addiction and its consequences on weight and health. So how have we fallen so far off track?  For one thing, most people do not even realize how much sugar is in the products they are eating. As we talked about in Read the Label, Then Put it Back, a big step toward eating healthier is to get in the habit of reading nutrition labels. Let’s take a look at our can of Coke and see what we find.

The Breakdown

One 8-ounce can of coke contains 27g of sugar (the label below is from a 20oz bottle, which would contain 65g of sugar). Compare this with the USDA recommended 25-50g of sugar PER DAY and you will find that with just one 8-ounce can you have possibly reached your limit! Take into account all of the other products that have sugar (even “natural” sugar, e.g. fruit) and it can really add up.

 If sugar should be avoided, shouldn't we just switch to diet soda? Unfortunately, it is not that simple. Diet Coke (along with many other soda) contains Aspartame, a widely used artificial sweetener. Aspartame has been linked to headaches, cramps, memory loss, and fatigue, while artificial sweeteners in general can lead to increased hunger signals and cravings for sweet foods. Some artificial sweeteners have even been shown to damage gut flora and increase insulin release. While more research should be conducted, man-made chemicals just never seem to be the best dietary choices.

If we look at the other ingredients in Coke and Diet Coke, the story does not get much better when it comes to our health. Phosphoric acid, more traditionally used for rust removal, can also be used in foods to give it a sour taste. Research has linked the consumption of phosphoric acid with lower bone density (as is common when eating acidic items) and issues with kidney disease and kidney stones (also common with an acidic diet).

Our next item, potassium benzoate, is added to inhibit the growth of bacteria and yeast (good for shelf life, potentially harmful for gut flora). The scary thing about potassium benzoate is its potential to combine with other substances to form benzene, a known carcinogen that has been linked to leukemia. Heat, light, and time increase the rate at which benzene is formed, so it is hard to know what you are getting when you pop open a can.

We have already gone over natural flavors and citric acid, so we can move on to the final ingredient, caffeine. While caffeine is not always a bad thing, I would argue that most people would do better to avoid it. We live in a stressful world with poor sleep, poor nutrition, long hours at work, and not nearly enough sun. When we are stressed out all the time, caffeine only adds fuel to the fire by stimulating the release of adrenalin. Adrenalin intensifies your reaction to daily stressors leading to chronically elevated levels of cortisol, a bad sign for overall health. Sleep, weight, illness, and mood can all be negatively affected if cortisol is not kept under control, so anything we can do to prevent unwarranted cortisol release is a good thing.

What’s The Point?

When it comes right down to it, why do we drink any of this stuff? If you had a bottle of rat poison, but you knew that it tasted delicious, would you drink it? Most people would not (I hope), but when it comes to soda, which is full of chemicals that are poisonous to our bodies, we don’t think twice. I like to think of food and liquid as opportunities. Every time you eat or drink something, you have an opportunity to either help yourself to feel better, or cause yourself to feel worse. You can extend your life by a day or you can cut it short by one. How we look and feel will reflect EXACTLY what we eat and drink. You cannot expect to look and feel great when the food and drinks you consume are not great—it is impossible. So take this new (or maybe refreshed) knowledge of soda and start asking yourself if this is what you want your body and brain to use as fuel. If not, maybe it’s time to start looking elsewhere for your energy…I would start with lots of water and sleep.

In Related News: Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?

After last week’s blog regarding posture, the New York Times published a piece that makes for a great follow-up. In the article, Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?, the author gives a great overview of the dangers associated with sitting. One of the most intriguing topics is the concept of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), which refers to the metabolic effect of micro-movements we make in our everyday activities. This can include walking, cooking, putting on clothes, getting in and out of the car, and even fidgeting.

The most interesting thing about NEAT is how important it can be in relation to weight loss. Diet is always number one when it comes to weight loss (especially fat loss) but exercise is only as good as its surrounding activity. If you exercise for one hour a day, but then sit for the rest of the day, you will not have achieved nearly the same effect as if you had worked out that one hour and been active throughout the day. All of these micro-movements burn fat, help your muscles to recover, and can lead to increased metabolic demand. Our bodies are meant to be doing A LOT of little movements throughout the day and they can really add up. Just think how much more you would move if you had to walk everywhere, pick, clean, and cook all of your food, and wash your clothes by hand.

This plays in beautifully with our need for better posture, because the most detrimental activity we can do for our posture is sitting. Sitting is just an all-around bad idea, and any way we can avoid it would be worth the effort. If you have not already, please read the New York Times article and start thinking of ways to add more movement to your day!