Deadlift: how to do it and how much you should lift

Muscles the deadlift works

The deadlift works the whole back of your body. The main movers are the glutes, the hamstrings and the spinal erectors, the long muscles beside your lower spine. Your quads straighten your knees off the floor, your upper back and traps hold your shoulders in place, and your forearms hold the bar.

A review of deadlift muscle activity studies found the spinal erectors and the quads more active than the glutes and the hamstrings. Those studies measure electrical activity with sensors on the skin (EMG). That shows which muscles fire, not how much each one will grow. No study has compared muscle growth between deadlift styles.

How to deadlift

1. Stand with the bar over the middle of your feet, feet about hip width apart, toes turned out a little. Looking down, the bar sits over your laces, about 2.5 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inches) from your shins.
2. Bend over and grip the bar just outside your legs, arms straight.
3. Bend your knees until your shins touch the bar. Do not push the bar forward with them.
4. Lift your chest until your back is flat, with your shoulders just in front of the bar. Pull your shoulder blades down, as if into your back pockets.
5. Take a big breath into your belly and brace, as if someone were about to punch you. Pull up on the bar until it stops rattling against the plates, before it leaves the floor.
6. Push the floor away with your legs. Keep the bar against your legs the whole way up.
7. Once the bar passes your knees, drive your hips forward and stand up straight, hips and knees locked. Do not lean back.
8. Lower the bar the way it came: hips back first, then bend your knees once the bar passes them.

Under IPF powerlifting rules, a rep fails if the bar moves down before you finish, if you rest it on your thighs to hitch it higher, or if you lower it before the referee says "Down".

Where the advice differs

Most deadlift technique is coaching habit, not tested in studies. Where coaches disagree, the right answer depends on your build and your goal.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Sets, reps and rest for the deadlift

There is no single right number. The table is a starting point built on the research, not a rule any one study tested. No study in it tested the deadlift alone.

What the studies show:

• Heavy weights build more strength. Muscle grows about as well with light or heavy weights, if the sets go close to failure.
• More weekly sets bring more muscle, up to a point. Strength gains level off sooner.
• Training a muscle 2 times a week helps you fit in more sets. With the same weekly sets, training it more often does not add size.
• You do not need to reach failure. Stopping a rep or 2 short builds strength just as well.
• In trained men, 3 minutes of rest built more squat strength and more thigh muscle than 1 minute.

For longer answers, read how many sets and reps build muscle, how long to rest between sets and what RPE means.

Warm-up sets before a heavy deadlift

Climb to your working weight in a few short sets. Type your working set below, and the calculator gives you the warm-up sets and the plates for each side.

A deadlift starts from the floor, so the calculator starts with the bar and one 20 kg (45 lb) plate on each side, for 5 reps. That sets the bar at the height every heavier set starts from. When your working weight is less than 5 kg (10 lb) above that, it starts with the empty bar for 10 instead.

Then it climbs: about 40% of the working weight for 5, 60% for 3 and 80% for 2. Before sets of 5 or fewer reps, or a working weight of 100 kg (225 lb) or more, it adds 90% for 1. Before sets of 8 or more reps, it keeps only the 40% and 80% sets, and under 40 kg (90 lb) it gives one set at 70% for 3. It rounds each weight down to what your plates can make, and skips a set that would sit within 5 kg (10 lb) of the one before.

Smaller plates are smaller across, so the bar sits lower than a full-size plate would hold it. For any set without a 20 kg (45 lb) plate on each side, raise the bar on blocks or stacked plates, so it starts at the usual height.

No study has tested a warm-up for the deadlift. In the squat, a warm-up set at about 80% of the working weight gave faster reps than a light one, while another squat study found that a heavy warm-up single changed nothing. No study shows that warm-up sets prevent injury.

How much should you deadlift for your weight?

The table shows where each level starts, as a one-rep max (1RM), for ages 18 to 29. 1RM is the most weight you can lift once. These are Trackist's own strength standards, the same ones the strength calculator and the app use.

One thing to know before you read it: Trackist scores the deadlift in one group with every hip-hinge lift, so the sumo deadlift, the trap bar deadlift and the Romanian deadlift meet the same lines. The standards were written from published coaching tables, rounded, and they describe people who train, not everyone.

After 29, the lines drop: by 5% in your 30s, 12% in your 40s, 20% in your 50s and 30% from 60. The strength calculator adjusts for your exact age and scores all 4 main lifts.

Why other tables give different numbers:

• Strength Level builds its table from lifts its users log. Its intermediate man deadlifts 2 times body weight, the same line where ours starts intermediate. Its intermediate woman deadlifts 1.5 times body weight, and ours starts at 1.25 times.
• A study of 809,986 powerlifting meet entries found that the strongest 10% of men aged 18 to 35 deadlift 3.25 times body weight, and women 2.66 times. Meet lifters are stronger than people at a typical gym.
• Each table uses a different group of people and different cut-offs, so a level in one does not match a level in another.

Under 18? The table is for adults, and it sets no target for teenagers. For a young lifter, clean reps and slow, steady progress matter more than any number on it.

Find your deadlift max

You do not need to test a true one-rep max to know it. Type a set you did, and the calculator estimates your max with 7 formulas. Sets of 10 reps or fewer give the closest estimate. For more detail, open the 1RM calculator.

When the deadlift hurts

Pain is a reason to change something, not to push through. Diagnosis and treatment belong to a physiotherapist or a doctor.

• Lower back: the most common sore spot in lifters. In a survey of 104 Swedish powerlifters, 70% had something that hurt their training, most often the lower back and pelvis, but only 16% of them stopped training completely. Take weight off, cut your deadlift sets for a few weeks and keep training what does not hurt.
• A sore back does not rule the deadlift out. In a study of 70 people with recurring low back pain, an 8-week program built on the deadlift cut pain as much as gentle motor control exercises.
• Hip or knee: try the trap bar, the sumo stance or a Romanian deadlift with a light weight, and keep the one your joint tolerates.
• Front of the elbow: a sudden sharp pain on a mixed grip can be a biceps tendon tear. See a doctor soon.
• Shins and hands: the bar scrapes the shins, so wear long socks or trousers. IPF rules require shin-length socks in the deadlift. Chalk helps your grip, and IPF rules allow it.
• Call an ambulance or go to an emergency department if back pain comes with pain, tingling, weakness or numbness in both legs, numbness around your genitals or anus, or changes in your bladder or bowels.

For lasting pain, read what to do when a lift hurts.

Deadlift variations and alternatives

In Trackist's exercise library, the deadlift sits in one group with 11 other hip-hinge movements: the Romanian deadlift, the dumbbell Romanian deadlift, the single-leg Romanian deadlift, the sumo deadlift, the trap bar deadlift, the deficit deadlift, the stiff-leg deadlift, the dumbbell deadlift, the good morning, the cable pull-through and the weighted back extension. The app's deadlift page lists them as similar movements. When you swap the deadlift for one session or for the rest of your plan, the picker puts that group first, then other hamstring exercises, starting with those your equipment and joints allow.

How Trackist runs your deadlift

Trackist is an AI personal trainer for the gym. It writes your plan, and the deadlift gets this from the app:

• From your second session of the deadlift, Trackist suggests what to try from the last time you logged it. When every set at your top weight reached the top of the rep range, it adds 2.5 kg (5 lb). Inside the range, it keeps the weight and asks for more reps. There is no suggestion in a deload week.
• When you fall short of the reps, it keeps the weight, takes about 5% off or leaves the call to you, depending on how far short you fell and how hard the sets felt.
• From your second session, it logs a personal record when you beat your heaviest weight, your most reps at a weight or your best estimated max.
• The exercise page shows 4 form cues, the muscles worked and the joints the deadlift loads, your lower back and hips. From your second session, it adds a chart of your estimated one-rep max.
• When your lower back or hip hurts on the deadlift, you report it and rate it from 1 to 5. Trackist swaps the deadlift for an exercise that spares that joint. For the lower back, that is a hip-hinge movement that leaves the lower back out, such as the cable pull-through if your gym has a cable machine. For the hip, it is another hamstring exercise, such as a leg curl. Your profile remembers it, so later plans leave that kind of movement out.
• Your deadlift counts towards your Strength Score in the hip-hinge group, with the same standards as the table above, adjusted for your age.