The hinge, and a checklist for the deadlift

Bend at the hips with a flat back while your knees stay mostly straight. That is a hinge, and it is different from a squat in one way that matters enormously: the load travels through your hips and hamstrings rather than your knees.

Get it right and it is the strongest position the human body has. Get it wrong and the load moves onto your lower back, which is how one ordinary lift becomes the injury everyone in the family remembers.

The pattern before the weight

Before touching a bar, find the movement.

Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Put the back of one hand on your lower back and the other on your stomach. Now push your hips backwards (not down, backwards, as if you were closing a car door with them), letting your torso tip forward and your knees bend only slightly.

The hand on your lower back should feel nothing change. The moment you feel your lower back start to round, you have reached the end of your hinge. That point is your current range, and for a lot of people it is considerably shorter than they assume.

Practise it against a wall: stand a foot away, hinge back until your hips touch the wall, return. Twenty of those, and the pattern starts to feel like a hip movement rather than a back movement.

The ten-point checklist

The order and the cues here follow Sebastian Oreb, written in our own words.

Work down the list before every heavy set. It takes fifteen seconds once it is habit.

1. Bar over mid-foot. Look down. The bar should cut your foot roughly in half, neither against your shins nor out in front of them.
2. Feet about hip-width. Any wider is a sumo deadlift, a different lift with different demands.
3. Grip just outside your legs. Your arms hang straight and stay straight. They carry the load, they never lift it.
4. Take the slack out. Pull up gently until the plates settle against the collars and the bar stops rattling. Pulling from a slack bar is how backs round.
5. Chest up, armpits tight. Draw your shoulder blades down and hold them there. That is what stops your upper back folding.
6. Flat back, not an arched one. Neutral is the spine's own shape. Over-arching is its own problem.
7. Neck follows the spine. Eyes on a point three or four metres ahead on the floor. Do not crane up at a mirror.
8. Drive your feet down. The bar rises because the floor went away, not because your arms pulled. Closer to a leg press than a tug.
9. Keep the bar against you. It should brush your shins and thighs the whole way up. Daylight between the bar and your body is leverage working against your back.
10. Stand tall, then stop. Squeeze your glutes at the top. Leaning back adds nothing and loads your spine.

Lowering it counts too

Most people are careful going up and then dump the bar. The descent is the same movement in reverse: push your hips back first, keep the bar against your legs, and control it to the floor.

If you cannot control the way down, the weight is too heavy, regardless of whether you got it up.

The variations, and who they suit

Trap bar deadlift. If your gym has one, and especially if you are returning after a long break, start here. The handles sit at your sides so the load line runs closer to your centre of mass, which is far more forgiving of an imperfect back position. It is not a lesser exercise. For most people over forty it is the better one.

Romanian deadlift. Starts from standing and never touches the floor. It emphasises the hamstrings and trains the range hard. Lighter weight, more control.

Hamstring curl. If deadlifts are off the table entirely (a genuine back history, a recent injury), the machine still trains the muscle even though it does not train the pattern. Better than skipping the day.

How heavy, honestly

The free program puts deadlifts at 3 sets of 6 to 8, which is the lowest rep range in the whole block. That is deliberate.

The deadlift is the lift where form fails first and where the cost of failure is highest. Start meaningfully lighter than you think you need to. Add weight when you can complete every set with two reps still in reserve and your tenth-point checklist still intact at the last rep.

A perfect set of eight at a modest weight is worth more to your future than a heavy single you were not ready for. Nobody is watching, and the bar does not care.