The hinge, and a safe deadlift
Every suitcase, bucket and gas cylinder you will ever pick up.
- Length
- 4 weeks
- Sessions
- 2 a week
- Each
- 25 min
- Improves
- Sit to Rise
Done well, the hinge is the strongest position the body has. Done badly, the load moves off your hips and onto your lower back.
The session
Same movements every time. The load changes, not the list.
Deadlift or trap bar deadlift
3 × 6-8
Good form is key, and the ten-point checklist is below. The lowest rep range in any guide, deliberately: form fails here first.
Romanian deadlift or dumbbell rdl
3 × 8-10
Hip thrust
3 × 8-12
Shoulders and feet on the floor, ribs down. Squeeze at the top rather than arching your back.
Four weeks
- 01Week 1: bar or light dumbbells only. Groove the pattern.
- 02Week 2: add weight to the RDL, leave the deadlift alone.
- 03Week 3: add weight to the deadlift if your back stayed flat all of week 2.
- 04Week 4: hold the weight, sharpen the technique.
Then retest your Sit to Rise
Four weeks is long enough for this number to move. Take the Body Quotient before you start so you have a baseline worth comparing against.
The reasoning behind this
The hinge, and a checklist for the deadlift
The pattern behind every suitcase, bucket and gas cylinder you will ever lift. Ten things to check before the bar leaves the floor.
What a sit-to-rise score actually predicts
A simple floor test tracked mortality across 2,002 adults. Here is what that finding supports, and the part almost every summary of it gets wrong.