Deadlift help!!

[moleculargainz]

Hey guys, so I've been struggling to get my form down on deadlifts, my hips always shoot up and my back rounds. Even with lighter weights my form isn't that great and it gets progressively worse as i go heavier. Right now my set up is: big chest, sitting back on my heels with my butt pushed back, squeeze my lats, get my glutes/hams fired up, pull the slack, and explode while pushing my feet through the floor. I mainly workout at an LA Fitness and the bars there are terrible for deadlifting, there's hardly any whip. My form is a lot better when I use an actual deadlifting bar but unfortunately that doesn't happen very often. Whenever I do reverse band deads with a band that's 420 at the bottom and 545 at the top my form is pretty good but I can never get it to cross over to conventional deads.

Here's a video of a few sets of 405, 455, then 470.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey4pkHUIAtU

Any tips/constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated!!

[Cobalt]

Lean back more, bar should be almost dragging against your shins (hence lifters using deadlift socks to keep the skin on the leg). You straighten your legs out too early. Wait until you get the bar above the knees to straighten out your legs, then pop your hips forward to finish.

Same problem I was having with DL's.

[QTip]

There are two schools of thought to help you out:
1) Pack your neck -- elongate your cervical spine and keep your chin packed in. Your form is very back dominant, but some deadlifters prefer this technique. Also, to prevent excessive rounding, work on your upper back stability/strength. You need to keep that upper back tight, some thoracic rounding is ok at the start, but you should get it straightened out as you come up.
2) What Cobalt said. Lean back and get your hips lower on your heavier attempts. Your hips are going to come up on your heavier sets, so start with them a little lower to compensate. When you start to pull, lean back -- think of it like a teeter-totter (Dave Tate explains this well). Like a see-saw, your body is leaning back which allows your bodyweight to leverage the bar up to break it from the ground. I get indentations in my shins from the bar on my heavy sets. The bar will pull away from your shins as you start to come up, so don't worry about excessive dragging and scraping your shins. It may scrape a little, but you should not lose a strip of skin!

Check out some of my IG vids, have a vid of me deadlifting 625, and some competition deadlifts. Some are not the best example but you can see some of the neck-packing technique which I recently switched to. I still do the 2nd type as well, getting my hips low because I am somewhat quad-dominant and it helps to allow the quads to help break the bar from the ground.
http://ilovegram.com/p5alm1

[moleculargainz]

Thank you guys, I'm gonna try all that out tomorrow!

[Rodja]

One glaring issue is that your scapula are completely protracted and it's inhibiting you from completely engaging your lats and traps, which is leading to you rounding the thoracic and the hips shooting up. The positioning is from postural deviation from an imbalance of internal:external rotator strength and usage.

[Hank!]

Rodja

I see you on forms here an there and you have given me some good pointers over the years not to mention what you do for others . Thanks .

hanK


Now if someone can translate what Rodja said I would be grateful

[weekend]

QTIP!

where did you get those shoes in your vid with horse mask. do you like them? they look good

[weekend]

hank, i think what hes trying to say is that his shoulders are not pulled back far enough in the beginning.

needs more rows and facepull and to start at a lower weight for a while to practice?

[moleculargainz]

Rodja, I know exactly what you're saying. That's what I've been working on these past two weeks. I've been completely rebuilding my deadlift starting really light and it has gotten much better. Still trying to keep my chin tucked but its been tough to break that habit. The retracted scapula is a great point. I used to squeeze my lats as part of my setup but now that I've been pulling my shoulders back and down and I can feel it already engaging my lats without even squeezing them. Thank you for your response!

I've still been keeping it light, trying to get my form down perfect before increasing the weight. I feel like my hips are still coming up a little too soon. Here's a set of 315, let me know what you guys think. Anymore critiques? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VinZ...-C63ZKREx2ZZ0A

[Rodja]

Basically, what I'm saying is that his shoulders appear to be rounded forward at all times and it's caused his humerus to sit slightly in front of the socket. When this happens, it's hard to activate the RC, lats, and midtraps to stabilize the upper back. Due to this, his upper back rounds as soon as the movement is initiated.

Internal and external rotator imbalance is due to doing too many things that's involved pressing or pull-ups/pulldowns and not enough things that involve retracted the shoulder blades and/or rear delt work. The easiest way to tell is my your hand position while resting. If the hand is rotated towards the thigh, then you have work to do regarding your humeral position in the socket.