Until recently, the deadlift was the bastard child of the strength and conditioning community! Many lifters have shied away from deadlifts due to their immense difficulty, only to walk away with suboptimal strength gains and back development. Lately a contingent of the game’s top trainers have covered the deadlift, seemingly from every angle, in attempts of resurrecting it as the cornerstone lift in one’s program.
With all of this new interest in deadlifting, one would think a casual YouTube search would net beneficial technique cues for your deadlift. However, further examination reveals that many of these techniques look like they were designed by Barnum & Bailey and would be of more benefit to a Coney Island side show than your deadlift!
The Evolution of the Deadlift
Picking up a heavy object from the ground is a plain and simple primordial instinct. The deadlift is the most basic lift there is. Over the years, my deadlift philosophy has evolved, as everyone’s philosophy should. The key is the right kind of evolution! In biology, macro evolution involves major evolutionary changes at, or above, the level of species. Unfortunately, in many gyms throughout the country, the deadlift has morphed into a rendition of Cirque de la Soul with a barbell – its form butchered as it’s executed without much purpose by misguided trainees. It is contrasted with microevolution, which is mainly concerned with the small-scale patterns of evolution within a species or population. An example in biology would be Darwin’s finches; the finches with the longest beaks would survive because of natural selection, meaning because of their beaks, they could eat food that the shorter beaked finches could not. This is the survival of the fittest! This is my training micro evolutionary training philosophy in a nutshell. I'm excited to share a technique with you that has survived training natural selection and helped propel some of my lifters’ deadlifts to new heights; the exercise is the lightning deadlift!
Explode Through Deadlift Plateaus
The deadlift epitomizes an assessment of limit strength, but if you can lift a weight fast enough, sticking points are systematically by passed! Explosive power is crucial to deadlifting big.
Louie Simmons bluntly puts it, “It is essential that explosive strength play a large role in training, as it is not only a means of developing absolute strength, but also a method of raising physical fitness that is directed towards solving a sport-specific task.” In layman’s terms, becoming more explosive means lifting more weight.
It’s widely known that if you want to develop more explosive power in the deadlifts, you’d turn to a combination of plyometrics, accentuated medicine ball throws, compensatory acceleration deadlifts and of course, speed deadlifts against accommodated resistance. These methods are tried and true, but one technique is missing from the list.
Try this out
Go ahead and try to deadlift 50 percent of your 1 rep max (RM) slowly, then attempt it with maximum velocity. The maximum velocity deadlift will feel much lighter. Besides the obvious physiological benefits of deadlifting explosively, it yields a wonderful psychological benefit. Weight that feels light is light!
Enter the Lightning Deadlift
The lightning deadlift was inspired by the late Bob Peoples of Tennessee, the first man to deadlift over 700 pounds. Bob would lift a weight out of a jack at lockout height. Bob would then lower the weight to the floor and lift it back up, taking advantage of the stretch reflex. I’m not sure if Bob knew why it worked, but he knew it did! I wanted to acknowledge Bob for inspiring food for thought!
Let’s take a look at what a lightning deadlifts is. I have recently implemented this method with some of my lifters. I am not claiming to have invented this technique, but I have never seen anyone else use this lift. A lightning deadlift is very similar to using a weight releaser in the bench press or squat. Because of the increased weight on the eccentric, the concentric is effectively sped up. I thought there was no true eccentric in the deadlift? With lightning deadlifts, you can circumvent this obstacle and use the stretch-shortening cycle to develop maximum explosive power.
Develop Force Production with the Lightning Deadlift
Every athletic endeavor will be enhanced by an increased rate of force development!
RFD is more important for the deadlift than the bench press or squat. Here is why both the squat and the bench press have a true eccentric phase and true concentric phase. Even with a one second pause at the amortization phase, approximately half of the original stored elastic energy is available to aid in the concentric portion of the lift. The deadlift, at best, has a pseudo-eccentric phase you can choose to create. Some studies show eccentric contractions are able to handle as much as 160 percent the amount of weight as their concentric counterparts. Truly your limiting factor in completing a lift is your level of concentric strength. Studies show that the force produced at the beginning of a concentric contraction that followed an eccentric contraction, is much greater than force at the beginning of a concentric contraction that was not preceded by an eccentric contraction.
Programming Considerations
Lightning Deadlifts are performed for doubles. The first rep is performed with a chain on the bar, generally for speed. These are done with 40-50 percent of one’s maximum deadlift and the chains are an additional 10-20 percent added on the bar. The first rep is performed with the chains on the bar. Immediately when the bar touches the ground, have the two people on the sides pull the chains off the bar. Then, pull the weight as explosively as possible to lockout without chains. This will be the most explosive deadlift you have ever pulled – you will literally feel like you are going to fall over backward. Why? Simple, because you have intensified the effect of elastic energy that aids you in the lift. You have created an eccentric portion to a lift that does not have one. Lightning deadlifts will teach you new meaning to pull explosively – it will train your CNS to learn and adapt to that explosive motor pattern, resulting in bigger pulls and if you’re a powerlifter – bigger totals!
Some Guidelines to Remember with Lightning Deadlifts
- Have two component helpers
- Do not pull the second rep until you hear "go" from the designated helper
- Pull each rep as explosively as possible
- Do 3-6 sets
- Do doubles – any more or any less will eliminate the benefits
Check out this video of Travis “the bar bending barista” Chrystie performing Lightning Deadlifts