Deadlift Versus Leg Press

Often neglected the legs are an important muscle to train for numerous reasons that are beneficial to your overall muscle development. Without strong legs, you will find it increasingly more difficult to lift weight up to the initial starting position for upper body exercises, such as the barbell curl or standing overhead press.

Just because the legs are hidden under clothes most of the time and aren’t on show, doesn’t mean you should forget about them. A good heavy leg workout will increase the amount of testosterone your body is producing for a short period, and that can’t be a bad thing for any guy.

The 2 main exercises to develop your legs are the deadlift, which some regard as the king of all exercises, and of course the leg press. The deadlift is simple in that it’s just a matter of lifting up a barbell, standing up straight and then lowering it back down again in a controlled and safe manner. The leg press is usually performed on a leg press machine whereby you lay on your back and thrust your legs in to a weighted plate and push the weight up and away, and then lower back down bending your knees.

Comparing the deadlift versus leg press is relatively easy in so much as the deadlift works almost every muscle in your body while the leg press isolated mostly your legs and very little else. It is for this reason I would opt to perform the deadlift over the leg press when training your legs. Due to it involving numerous other muscles such as your biceps, triceps, shoulders, legs, glutes, forearms, traps and back, it is a far superior exercise and should be incorporated in to your workout program.

The leg press could be used once you’ve been training for some time simply to vary the exercises or further exhaust your legs after a deadlifting session to ensure maximum stimulus to the muscle fibres. Training with the leg press alone and not performing the deadlift is a route you do not want to consider, but many guys do for an easier but a far less effective and inferior workout.

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The Trap Bar Deadlift

by Adam Vogel – 1/24/2012

Of all the bizarre looking pieces of equipment that inhabit the weight-room floor, none draw as many confused looks from new clients as the trap bar. The sometimes hexagonal, sometimes diamond-shaped bar has been described as a cross between a car chassis and a tenth-grade geometry problem.

But despite the awkward appearance, the trap bar (also known as a Hex Bar) might just be the greatest innovation in strength-training equipment in the last thirty years.

The trap bar was originally patented in 1985 by a powerlifting aficionado named Al Gerard, who was trying to find a way to train around a recurring lower back injury. It has since gained widespread support among many coaches as a back-friendly alternative to both traditional straight-bar deadlifts and squats.

This article will examine the use of the trap bar deadlift in modern strength programs, not only as a means of working around injury, but as a stand-alone exercise whose benefits may surpass that of the traditional straight bar deadlift.

As others have pointed out, the biggest drawback of both the straight bar deadlift and the barbell back squat is the amount of harmful stress it puts on the lumbar spine. Both exercises require the weight to be some distance away from the axis of rotation where the work is being performed (i.e., the hip), thus relying on the back to act like a crowbar to move the weight.

As a result, your training weights are limited to the capabilities of your back extensors to resist flexion as much, if not more, than your legs' ability to produce maximum force. And as you might expect, when things don't go strictly according to plan, it's your spine that's stuck paying the bill.

Since the trap bar configuration allows you to step inside it rather than behind it, the long lever is shortened along a horizontal axis, thus significantly reducing the amount of sheer force on the spine.

Earlier this year, research by Swinton et al. on the biomechanics of the hex bar deadlift versus the straight bar deadlift confirmed what many coaches had theorized for years – that the hex deadlift produced lower peak moments on both the lumbar spine and hips, moving it several notches to the right on the risk-reward spectrum.

Here's where the Swinton study gets interesting. Not only was the trap bar deadlift a safer exercise than the straight bar version, it was also a more effective exercise for building maximum power.

According to the authors, significantly greater levels of peak force, velocity, and power were produced with the trap bar compared to the straight bar across a range of submaximal loads. Since power is a measure of an object's force times its velocity, this means the hex deadlift allows you to lift more weight, over a greater distance, faster.

The authors go on to explain that the peak power values measured with the trap bar deadlift were on par with those captured in other studies that looked at Olympic weightlifting exercises like the power clean. This, of course, is a critical piece of information for coaches looking for a high-benefit, low-cost (in both time and potential for injury) exercise for increasing maximum power.

Why is this the first time we're seeing such high power outputs with a deadlift?

Simple – we've always measured these quantities with a straight barbell. And unless you've completely abandoned all prospects of having children in the future, chances are you spent as much time decelerating the bar as it sped its way toward your nether regions, as you did accelerating it off the ground.

This is obviously a lot less of a problem with the trap bar. Since there is no pelvis-cracking impact at the top of the movement, there's no reason to start pumping the breaks early.

Most beginner-level trainees deadlift with about the same level of skill that a chef at the Olive Garden prepares authentic northern Italian cuisine, which is to say, not very much at all.

For the majority of the population, getting into a good deadlift position with a straight bar is a huge challenge requiring a lot of upfront coaching and a generous helping of mobility work. This is especially true among the desk-jockey demographic who spend eight hours a day practicing lumbar flexion and posterior pelvic tilt.

Sure, there's that occasional outlier who comes walking into the gym – back arched, abdominals braced, shoulder blades retracted, looking for something heavy to lift off the floor with perfect form – but these people are rare.

That's where the trap bar comes in so handy. Its configuration leads to a much more upright torso position, allowing you to "sit" into the movement with far fewer technical requirements than a traditional straight bar deadlift. It also allows the knees to move more forward and the hips to sit lower than normal, avoiding the bar scraping your shins at the bottom of the movement.

The only potential drawback some coaches have with the trap bar setup has to do with the final stage of hip extension or lockout at the top of the movement. In the straight bar deadlift, you essentially lock your hips into place against the bar, preventing your back from overextending, whereas with the trap bar there's no such stopping mechanism. However, this problem can be easily coached away.

To setup for the trap bar deadlift, first step inside the perimeter of the bar, making sure your feet are positioned equidistant between the front and back of the bar.

Grip the handles tightly on either side so that your middle finger is in horizontal alignment with the front of your shin, while rotating the insides of your elbows forward. This will help to pick up any slack at the shoulder capsule.

Squat your hips down with an arch in your back.

Once in position, stand up by driving your feet into the ground, straightening your legs, and thrusting your hips forward. As you approach the top of the movement, squeeze your glutes together and brace your abdominals to finish the movement.

Here's a video to help you out.

Your ability to achieve maximal force and acceleration during a lift is in large part limited by the need to decelerate the weight at the end of the movement. That's why Olympic lifts, plyometric jumps, and medicine ball drills are all so effective at increasing power – they're all gas, no brakes – and why traditional resistance training exercises are good for building strength, but not that great for increasing power.

While the trap bar goes a long way toward fixing the problem of deceleration, it still requires some deceleration as you reach the top. About thirteen percent of the total range of motion is devoted to it, which might not be a huge leak, but a leak nonetheless.

That's where the use of resistance bands comes in handy, as they force you to work as close to maximum power output as possible throughout the range of motion.

Simply loop a stretch band around both ends of the trap bar and anchor it to either side of the bottom of a squat rack or a pair of heavy dumbbells. As you approach the top of the movement, the increasing pull of the band will do the deceleration for you so you can focus on increasing terminal velocity throughout.

For decades lifters have used plyometrics as a part of their lower body training programs, with one exception. Unlike the squat, lunge, step-up, and running stride, the biomechanics of the deadlift don't lend themselves easily to plyometric modifications (at least not without a good pair of shin pads and a heavy supply of topical ointments).

The trap bar deadlift changes this equation, allowing you to take advantage of both the elastic component of your muscles, as well as the stretch-shortening cycle that defines plyometric training.

These are an advanced version of the exercise that should only be attempted after mastering the feet-on-the-ground trap bar dead. Limit yourself to 3-6 reps, and try to use rubber plates on the bar rather than metal ones for a better rebound.

One criticism of the trap bar is that the handles on most bars are too high off the ground. This might be a blessing if you're lacking in the mobility department, but can be something of a liability if maximal muscular activation is your priority. The good news is that it's easily fixed.

Simply place a 1-3 inch step (or Olympic plate) under your feet before the lift to get a lower start on the weight. Make sure to take a slightly wider than normal stance so your hips have plenty of room to drop into the movement. Resist the urge to cheat the bottom range of motion by flexing the lumbar spine and curling your shoulders forward.

It depends on the goal. If you're concerned about the risk of lower back injury, the trap bar is definitely the safer choice. However, if you're trying to achieve maximum back extensor and hamstring recruitment, then the straight bar is the better option.

Keep in mind that the hamstring's primary role will always be to bend your knee and extend your hip when you're bent forward. While this does occur during the trap bar deadlift, it's to a lesser degree than during the straight bar version, which keeps most of the load on the hip joint, rather than the knee and ankle joints.

Another great thing about the trap bar dead is its versatility. Here are a few of the ways I have used it in my programming:

As the primary, knee-dominant exercise of the day, in place of squats, especially for those with back or shoulder injuries.As the primary, hip-dominant exercise of the day, in place of traditional deads, especially for those with a history of back problems.As a hybrid hip-knee exercise to use as a stand-alone on days where I'm not performing squats or traditional deadlifts.As an assistance exercise on days where squats or deadlifts are the core lifts of the day.As an assistance exercise on dynamic effort days where speed and power generation is the primary focus.

The important thing to remember is that if you're going to truly "replace" the traditional deadlift, plan on adding a bunch of other hip-dominant exercises like glute/ham raises, kettlebell swings, hip thrusts, etc., to your program.

Whether you're a beginner, a seasoned veteran, someone trying to train around an injury, or just hoping to corner the market on being able to lift a crap-ton of weight, the trap bar deadlift may be for you.

While 2011 might have been the year for single-leg training, in 2012, trap bar deadlifts are the new black. You heard it here first.

Swinton, PA, Stewart, A, Agouris, I, Keogh, JWL, and Lloyd, R. A biomechanical analysis of straight and hexagonal barbell deadlifts using submaximal loads. J Strength Cond Res 25(7): 2000-2009, 2011

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Are You Ignorant When it Comes to the Deadlift?

by Mark Rippetoe – 12/06/2011

It's not always apparent, and is often poorly understood. Stated succinctly, stupid is not your fault – you were born that way. You're just dumb. You can't learn.

Ignorance means you just don't know. Ignorance probably is your fault, because you've failed to inform yourself. This is especially true since the advent of the internet has enabled the most universal and thorough dissemination of information in the history of human communication.

The obvious problem is that 95% of that information is wrong, which follows my popular maxim: 95% of all the shit that occurs everywhere is completely fucked up. The internet is no different.

But you can, with a little diligence, tease out the facts if you want to. If you're interested in a subject, it eventually falls upon you to distill the truth from the bullshit.

This you'll do gladly, if you're interested enough to devote significant amounts of time and effort to it, because an intelligent person realizes that bullshit is a waste of time. A stupid person might not appreciate this, and therefore continue to be ignorant of the truth of a matter.

Take the deadlift, for example. It's the most basic, obvious movement in barbell training, the one with the most carryover to everyday tasks and the easiest to learn of all the basic exercises.

You just step up to the bar with a vertical-jump stance width, with toes out and your shins about an inch from the bar, grab it just outside your stance with your knees still straight, then bend your knees forward and out a little bit until your shins touch the bar, squeeze your chest up until your back is flat, take a big breath, and drag the bar up your legs until you're standing up straight.

See? One (admittedly run-on) sentence describes the whole thing.

But just because a task can be described simply doesn't mean that there aren't any important details. Fortunately, they can be built into the instructions, if the instructor is clever. Our one-sentence deadlift instruction carries a lot of important information, and if it's followed correctly and intelligently, it'll result in a perfect deadlift every time.

Let's take it a step at a time and see what we can learn from this simple approach to an uncomplicated movement.

The stance width of a vertical jump is narrower than most novices' deadlift, but it shouldn't be. A push into the floor should have the mid-foot directly under the hip joint, and this is the stance width that allows you to push the floor without losing force to any shear that will develop along a laterally-angled leg (the sumo stance intentionally widens the stance to artificially shorten the legs, and trades the benefit of a more vertical back for the inefficiency of the angled legs – but we're not sumo-ing right now).

Most people jump with toes pointed slightly out, and this toes-out stance is very helpful for the deadlift. It gets the thighs out of the way of the belly, which helps set your back flatter and it gets the groin muscles and the external rotators involved in the pull. Konstantinovs demonstrates this when he pulls, as have many great deadlifters through the history of powerlifting.

Placing the bar about an inch from your shins puts the bar directly over your mid-foot, precisely where the bar wants to be anyway, because that's the point over which the load balances.

When you stand up straight with your feet even, where are you in balance? On your toes? On your heels? Bad idea. In either of these positions, you have to exert more effort to stand than when balanced in the middle. The mid-foot is the place that's furthest away from both those positions of imbalance. This also applies to the deadlift.

An intelligent person will verify this by watching YouTube videos of heavy deadlifts where he'll see that every heavy deadlift travels up in a vertical path, sliding up the shins from a fairly vertical shin angle. Even if the lifter starts with the bar forward of this position, the bar will roll back to the mid-foot before it leaves the ground.

Likewise, this same intelligent person will notice that the bar locks out at the top directly over the mid-foot. Why would you intentionally pull the bar from a position that's horizontally different from the one you're pulling it to? Well, you wouldn't unless you're stupid, so that's where the bar starts.

Your grip should be designed to make the bar travel the shortest possible distance to lockout, and this means that the arms will hang parallel to each other when you grip the bar. This is accomplished by taking the narrowest grip you can without your hands rubbing your legs on the way up. So your grip will be where your hands line up with the widest point of your stance.

Most novices take too wide a stance, and therefore too wide a grip. Most elite lifters take a close grip. Verify this for yourself. If your stance is correct, your arms will hang straight down when seen from the front and you'll have pulled the bar the shortest distance it can travel to lockout.

During the process of taking the grip you do not move the bar, because you just intentionally put it exactly where it needs to be, over the mid-foot.

You haven't bent your legs yet, but now you need to drop your knees forward until your shins touch the bar. This motion places the shins at a slight forward angle that leaves the bar over the mid-foot while in contact with the shins.

If you drop your hips, your knees will travel forward and shove the bar forward of the mid-foot. So don't drop your hips.

Remember, don't move the bar. That would be stupid.

Just after you touch the bar with your shins, push your knees out very slightly. This keeps your thighs lined up with your slightly pointed-out toes and allows your groin muscles and lateral hip muscles to engage during the pull.

If you're a bigger guy, you'll immediately notice that it's easier to get in position over the bar if your thighs are out of the way of your gut, as mentioned earlier. The knees-out motion takes full advantage of the toes-out stance, the smartest thing to do as you prepare to pull.

Now comes the most important part of the procedure. Squeeze your chest up to set your back. Don't drop your hips like everybody else does, and like you've been doing, too. Just leave your ass where it is after your shins touch the bar and set your back from the top down by squeezing your chest up into thoracic extension and letting that wave of extension carry itself down to your low back.

Watch Brad Gillingham do his 881-pound deadlift and you'll see that it can be done quite effectively without a drop of the hips. It's hard, because your back is fighting with your hamstrings for control of your pelvis and your back has to win. It may feel odd the first couple of reps, but as you warm up it will get easier. Regardless, the chest-up motion will always be the hardest part of the setup.

The fact is, if it's easy, you did it wrong.

You must understand this: you're not trying to squat the weight off the floor with the bar in your hands. This doesn't work, as you may have noticed if you've watched enough deadlifting to be informed about what really occurs when heavy weights are pulled off the floor.

When the weight gets heavy, you can drop your hips as low as you want to and push the bar as far forward as it takes to make you happy, but what actually happens before the bar leaves the floor is always the same: the bar comes back toward the mid-foot, the hips come up until the shoulders settle into position just in front of the bar, and the bar comes up in a straight line, if you haven't fucked up the pull too badly.

The shoulders-just-in-front-of-the-bar position is a feature of all pulls that are heavy enough, whether deadlift, clean, or snatch. I take a shot at explaining why in the new 3rd edition of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training (hint: it has to do with the lats).

By now you've looked again at all the deadlift videos and seen this position establish itself every time, regardless of whether the lifter initiated the lift correctly or incorrectly (if the lifter initiated the lift incorrectly, the hips rise and the back angle changes until the shoulders are just in front of the bar anyhow).

You can identify this position because the arms don't hang straight down plumb, but rather hang at a slight angle when viewed from the side. While you were looking at them again, you also noticed the bar travels a vertical path. In fact, if you fuck the pull up too badly (i.e. let it get forward of the mid-foot anywhere in the pull so that the bar path isn't vertical) it won't go up – unless it's a sub-maximal attempt.

So squeezing the chest up as the best way to set your back merely incorporates the facts that you've gathered by watching the videos and informing yourself. If you set your back in the position it likes to pull from anyway, you minimize wasted motion before the pull and you create a simple procedure for doing it the same way every time.

All that remains is dragging the bar up your legs to lockout. "Dragging" implies contact, and contact all the way up ensures the vertical bar path; if you let it go forward as it passes your knees on the way up, you'll have let it drift forward of the mid-foot, and thus gotten out-of-balance.

But if you've set your back correctly and started the pull with the bar over mid-foot, it will come up your shins and your thighs in a straight vertical line, which I'm sure you'll agree is a mechanically pleasing configuration.

Of course, you have to keep your back flat, and that takes strength in the lumbar erectors that can only be built with heavy deadlifts done correctly. It has become fashionable in random exercise/"functional movement" gyms to permit the use of bumper plates and a bounce off the floor for all the reps of a set of deadlifts after the first one.

This isn't "functional" – no sane, responsible person picks up a heavy object by bouncing it off the floor because that might break something. An informed person knows that if you don't use a muscle, you won't train that muscle. Common sense dictates this fact, and no particular intelligence is required to arrive at this conclusion.

Simple observation tells us that people who bounce their deadlifts aren't very strong off the floor. Experience informs me that if a 185-pound man with three years of barbell "training" comes to my seminar lacking the ability to deadlift 300 pounds with a flat back, he's probably been bouncing his deadlifts.

The lumbar erectors are the muscles that hold the lumbar spine in extension. If you fail to use them for that purpose during a deadlift, they won't adapt to this isometric task, and you'll have turned the most basic back exercise in the gym into a ridiculous circus trick.

Let's be honest: you bounce your deadlifts because it's easier to do more reps that way. But you know this already, because you were never that ignorant.

Reset all your reps and make your low back get strong enough to hold itself flat during a maximum deadlift attempt. Even if more reps are the goal, a stronger back is the only way to achieve it.

There may be a slight tendency for the bar to drift forward as it comes off the floor. When this happens, it's usually because you've rocked forward during the setup so that your weight is forward of the mid-foot. Shoes with heels can do this, as can a misperception of your start position.

If this happens, you're probably too far forward, with your shoulders too far in front of the bar and your back too horizontal. To correct this, rock back off of your toes, reset your chest up, and think about actually pushing your mid-foot into the floor, instead of pulling on the bar.

Deadlifts are one of the easiest lifts to learn and do correctly. It usually takes me about five minutes to fix an incorrect deadlift, and everyone I fix tells me that the movement feels "shorter." We know that the trip from floor to lockout is pretty much the same distance, wrong or right, unless your grip is very wide, so what is responsible for this change in perception?

There are two components of the system – the lifter and the barbell. If the bar travels the same distance from floor to lockout, it can't be the source of the difference in perception. It's the lifter, whose ass is no longer waving around in the air before the lift starts. This decrease in body movement and increase in efficiency results in the perception of a shorter pull, even though the bar travels the same distance.

So, now that you're not ignorant, stop acting like you are. Do your deadlifts correctly, efficiently, and with impressive weights. Usually, the simplest method is the smartest method to use.

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