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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Stiff legged deadlifts: not for the weak at heart

I've been putting off how to do stiff legged deadlifts.  The main reason is that it uses bad form to pick the barbell off the ground.  You're basically standing with your shins resting against the bar. You bend over at the waist with a slight bend at the knees and latch your hands onto the bar with a hook grip and then you take in a breath of air through the mouth and then pull the bar off the ground with your lower back. In effect, you're lifting the bar off the ground with a rounded back. This puts severe stress on the lower back as you lift the bar past the knees to lockout because the weight severely compresses the vertebrae. The main thing you have to watch for is severe soreness in the lower back. When you experience a slight amount of soreness in the lower spine you should stop doing stiff legged deadlifts because they are definitely not something you want to get sore to the point where you can't even walk the next day.

As far as rep range goes, I'll hit a couple single rep sets and then go to a lighter weight and start putting in six rep sets and then do a couple three rep sets. I'm mostly aiming for lactic acid build-up and to stretch the spine into alignment.  The lactic acid build-up is for
irritation of the muscle to induce the production of intra-cellular fluid. The intra-cellular fluid while it doesn't directly lead to strength gains it adds fullness and rigidity to the muscle and you'll need structural support in your spine if you expect to lift big weights for the deadlift and squat. 

The only reason is I'm doing stiff legged deadlifts is I'm on a severe plateau and my acute angle deadlifts are not enough of a stimulus on my lower back muscles to make them adapt. I might alternate between doing stiff legged deadlifts and acute angle deadlifts when I'm not doing conventional deadlifts.

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