While traditional fitness gurus will want to kill me for writing this article, you deserve the truth and it is my mission to deliver you the truth in order to sculpt your best possible physique.
For once and for all I will make a statement that will be frowned upon in the fitness industry, but things need to be settled once and for all. So folks, hold your horses and fasten your seatbelts, here it comes:
THE DEADLIFT IS NOT THE KING OF ALL EXERCISES!
I just instantly became public enemy #1 in the fitness world. Wanted dead or alive… but preferably dead.
However, all jokes aside, I’m actually not kidding. The deadlift, which is a staple in many workout routines is absolutely not the king of all exercises. This is especially true if your goal is maximum hypertrophy and sculpting the body of your dreams.
The deadlift is one of the most basic things you can think of when it comes to lifting weights and resistance training in general: picking a heavy object off the ground. It is a foundational lift in the sport of powerlifting and has been practiced by many people trying to build muscle as well.
While powerlifters will need to train the deadlift in order to become extremely strong and efficient at performing the movement for their specific sport, the same does not apply to people who simply want to look amazing.
The reason why the deadlift is praised so much and has acquired a royal title in the fitness world is because of the fact that performing a deadlift will involve most of your body’s musculature in one single movement and allows for extremely heavy weights to be used. I’m talking about hamstrings, glutes, lower back, hip flexors, quadriceps, the core’s musculature, lats, rhomboids, read delts and traps. Quite impressive, isn’t it?
The fact that so much muscle mass is recruited and stimulated with one single movement is the reason why people are of the idea that the deadlift one has the capacity to sculpt a body of a god.
While I’m a big proponent of getting the most bang for your buck by stimulating as much muscle mass as possible with as few exercises as possible (by centering your workouts around big compound movements), there’s one caveat to the deadlift story:
While recruiting a lot of muscle mass in one single movement, the deadlift only hits the muscle groups through a partial range of motion or with a static contraction!
In order to grow stimulate muscle growth, your muscles must be challenged by performing movements with a suitable level of resistance. As you repeat the process training consistently, over time you will see that you’ve become stronger, as a result of having more muscle mass.
Studies have shown that muscles grow optimally when they are trained with a suitable level of resistance through a full range of motion. This is exactly the deadlift’s pitfall. While the deadlift indeed involves a lot of muscles in order to execute the exercise, pretty much all muscles only get a partial range of motion and some even just get a static contraction. Will this contribute to muscle growth? Yes. Will this contribute to maximum muscle growth? No!
When training biceps, you also fully extend your arm to lift the weight back up from a fully or at least nearly fully stretched position. You won’t get an optimal growth stimulus if you only go halfway and then lift the weight back up. Essentially the deadlift is one big half repetition. the quads play only a supporting role, the hamstrings and glutes go through a partial range of motion and the lats, mid and upper back musculature only experience a static contraction.
Let’s not forget that deadlifting is a very taxing exercise that takes a heavy toll on the body. Since it recruits so many muscles, requires so much oxygen to circulate through the body, causes a ton of spinal compression and is extremely taxing on the central nervous system, only to get a suboptimal amount of muscle growth… that’s what I call a bad investment of time and effort.
A DEADLY COMBINATION LOWER BODY MUSCLE GROWTH
Now don’t get me wrong here. While I have my opinion about the deadlift not being a fantastic tool for building muscle, I definitely respect someone with a big deadlift and have a massive appreciation for the sport of powerlifting.
Here at Apex Framework, the goal is to create an athletic, aesthetic physique that is able to perform well in the most time efficient way possible. What if I told you that you are able to get your deadlift numbers up, without even specifically training for it? Would you believe me? I challenge you to do so.
Most people regularly performing deadlifts do so in hopes of building a pair of muscular legs and a broad back. Performing an endless amount of deadlifts is not the answer. In order to build strong, athletic legs, there is a deadly combination of exercises that will blow up your quads, pack meat on your hamstrings and that will sculpt your glutes. Your spinal erectors will get a fantastic workout from these exercises as well. And the beauty is, since they are responsible for increasing the muscle mass in all the areas required to have a strong deadlift, they will force your deadlift numbers to go up. The combination I’m talking about is a quad dominant squat movement such as high bar front squats paired with a hip/hamstring dominant movement such as Romanian deadlift.
Ass to grass squats will allow your quads to go through a full range of motion and do an amazing job at maximally stimulating quadriceps hypertrophy. Getting progressively stronger on quad dominant squat variations will give you such amazing results regarding quad growth that deadlifts never will. Not only will your quads blow up, but your glutes too will get a growth boost.
Combining a squat with a Romanian deadlift is a deadly combination for greatness. As your quads are taken care of by squats, Romanian deadlifts will make sure that your hamstrings and spinal erectors get thick. Contrary to a conventional deadlift, Romanian deadlifts allow your hamstrings and glutes to go through a full range of motion and will maximally stimulate muscle growth in these areas. Again, the conventional deadlift alone is like a jack of all trades, but a master of none, whereas squats are masters for the quads and Romanian deadlifts are masters of the posterior chain.
Combined, these two exercises will target all of the supporting muscle groups as well that only get a static contraction. The core musculature, spinal erectors, lats, mids and upper back muscles, forearms, will all work heavily during Romanian deadlifts and squats. This means that you’re not missing out on anything that the deadlift provides.
WHAT ABOUT BUILDING A BIG BACK
A wide, powerful, masculine back is a goal lots of men chase when hitting the iron.
Countless of people swear by deadlifts in their mission to sculpt a wide, strong back. Unfortunately, again, deadlifting is one of the most inefficient ways to build up the back musculature because of its lack of dynamic movement.
While the prime movers of a deadlift only experience a partial range of motion during the movement, the back only gets a static contraction. Sure, along with progressively lifting heavier weights this will make you grow a little bit, but definitely not to the extent that you want your back to look like.
In order to achieve a thick, wide back one should focus his attention on the true king of back builders, which is the chin up.
The chin up works the lats through a full range of motion and allows for easy strength progression by loading up a weight belt. As you progressively get stronger and stronger, you will have no lack of back size. Done properly, all areas of the mid and upper back will be stimulated for maximum growth.
Not only does the chin up give you wide, thick lats, it also blows up your biceps and gives you a rock hard pack of abs due to the heavy involvement of the core musculature.
While the (weighted) chin up is the allround king of back builders, if you want to make sure that your mid and upper back maximize in thickness, it is a good decision to supplement your chin ups with mid/upper back focused rowing movements. Combining chin ups/pull ups and rows will result in some crazy back development that most people can only dream of.
NO DEADLIFTS WHATSOEVER? NOT SO FAST!
Does all of the information in this article mean that you don’t have to deadlift in order to sculpt an amazing physique? You’re absolutely right!
What if you actually want to perform deadlifts and become really strong at deadlifts despite it being an inferior exercise for hypertrophy? Then I have good news for you.
There’s a training concept I absolutely love that will allow you to become really strong and that will teach your body how to handle very heavy weights and produce maximum force at 1RM level.
This method is called the conjugate training method. With conjugate training you progressively work your way up to a near max lift that you perform for a heavy single. Since you’ve been reading about deadlifts in this article, our lift in this matter obviously is the deadlift.
Your heavy single doesn’t have to be a true 1RM, but it should come pretty close to it. Something like 95% of your true max will suffice, since the goal is not to burn yourself out, but teach your body how to produce maximum force at near max weights. The lift should be challenging, yet smooth and clean, so it’s smart to leave some gas in the tank.
Once you’ve performed the heavy single on the deadlift, switch over to your hypertrophy work in a higher rep range with lighter weights. In this case, your hypertrophy work can be the Romanian deadlift.
Not only will you stimulate neurological efficiency and experience fast strength gains with conjugate training, you’ll also perform better on your hypertrophy work because your nervous system has been primed for maximum force output, which will maximize muscle fiber recruitment for the following lighter sets.
As a result of the heavy strength work during the top set on conjugate training, the following where you perform your higher rep hypertrophy work will be executed with a better performance and as a result, you will experience maximum muscle growth on a per set basis.
Combining the deadlift with an optimal hypertrophy lift may look like this:
Strength set 1: Deadlift 350lb x 1 @95% 1RM
Hypertrophy set 1: Romanian deadlift 240lb x 10 @75% 1RM
Hypertrophy set 2: Romanian deadlift 240lb x 10 @75% 1RM
Hypertrophy set 3: Romanian deadlift 240lb x 9 @75% 1RM
FINAL WORD ON DEADLIFTS
While it deeply hurt my lifter’s heart when I discovered that deadlifts weren’t a fantastic exercise for building muscle, I accepted that I should focus on what will give me maximum results in the least amount of time. If you too want to get the most return out of your time investment in the gym, I advise you to do the same thing.
Deadlifts can still be performed in a way that we train for strength gains as a preceding set of your hypertrophy work. Not only will that single set trigger fast strength gains, combined with the increased performance from your following hypertrophy work you will get the benefits of both gaining really strong and maximizing your muscle building potential.
In order to optimize the way our physique looks and sculpt it in the most efficient way and effective way, it’s better to focus on exercises that train the musculature involved in a deadlift through a full range of motion with big exercises that allow for effective strength progression.
For quad dominant movements, choose squatting movements such as back squats, front squats, split squat, safety bar squats, etc.
For posterior chain dominant movements, choose: Romanian deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, good mornings, glute ham raises, hyperextensions.
To develop the upper body musculature involved in the deadlift, get really strong at chin ups, pull ups and rowing variations.
Ironically, becoming extremely strong at the exercises I just mentioned will make you better and stronger at deadlifts without specifically training for it.
Kevin Mahjoubi