Deadlift progression when forms breaks down

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Currently when I deadlift heavy my form breaks down and I get lower back rounding as soon as the bar leaves the floor, no matter if I’m in a good starting position or not. Other then that the lift feels ok to me and moves fine in terms of bar speed. However, what tends to happen is I get some back pain in the following days. This has happened over and over for months so I have now concluded it’s not me adapting to an increased load or anything like that. If I didn’t have any pain I would probably just keep going. But now I’ve gotten a bit scared of hurting myself.

So the question is, how to progress from this point on? I know I can decrease weights to where the form is good and go from there. But then RPEs and all that go out the door. Not possible to do a 1@8 or something like that. I could pick a weight where I can do a single with good form, but it wont be a 1@8.

2

Got a video of your deadlift so that I can see what you mean?

3

Yepp, here is one.

4

I was hoping to see a multi-rep set, however I can see that the bar is too far forward and your hips are too low- which forces your back to round in order to get your shoulders in front of the barbell.

That being said, I don’t think this is causing any back pain per se’ outside of load management- which would need to be evaluated over the previous month.

If it were me, I’d raise your hips by getting closer to the bar, hold your back a bit tighter and squeeze the bar off the floor vs yanking it. I don’t know that I’d be doing a bunch of singles while working on this, however, unless you had a meet coming up.

1 Like