Now before the Starting Strength and the 5×5 purists get their panties tied up, I want to make it clear that deadlifts are a great exercise.
It’s one of the best strength exercises out there. It trains your entire body as a unit from your grip to your nervous system.
However, from a muscle building perspective, they are MASSIVELY overrated. This does not mean it doesn’t do anything for your muscles, it just means that it builds far less muscle than what people expect.
The 5×5 purists love the deadlift because you can lift heavy weights on it.
All of the “beginner” barbell programs love the deadlift because this is one of the only exercises where you can lift heavy weights on in just a few months of training.
Deadlifts being a full body exercise allow linear progression to go on for a long time (linear progression means you can add a bit of weight every workout, usually 2.5kg or 5 pounds).
But when was the last time you saw an actually muscular 5×5 guy?
They exist, but most of them are just overweight dudes. Some are strong while others are just merely fat.
The deadlift is a LOWER BODY LIFT.
The deadlift trains pretty much all the muscles in your body, but it primary trains your glutes and hamstrings.
Those are the main muscles which are “doing the lifting”. The upper body is being trained isometrically (i.e. staying in their place holding the weight – there is no range of motion)
You can get some growth from the isometric training but doing deadlifts will not give you big arms or a muscular back.
You can get very strong glutes and hamstrings from it though – although there are plenty of other exercises that help you do the same thing with lesser injury risk (for some reason this fact makes some people very upset).
The Deadlift is NOT a back builder.
Somehow a lot of people think that deadlifts will help them build a very muscular back. They think it’s the “king of back exercises”. I was guilty of this for a long time too.
But let’s look at all the back muscles:
- Trapezius
- Levator Scapulae
- Rhomboids
- Latissimus dorsi (Lats)
- Erector Spinae
- Teres major and minor
- Rear deltoids
Do you know how many of these muscles are being trained through their full range of motion?
NONE OF THEM.
Yes. NONE OF THEM.
Not even one back muscle gets trained across its full range of motion.
This is why guys who do programs that only have the deadlift as their exercise for the back don’t have muscular backs.
They have strong glutes and hamstrings because that’s the thing they are training. They don’t have muscular backs.
The deadlift simply uses the back isometrically to pass the force generated by the glutes and hamstrings into the bar.
If you want to build your back, you need to do back exercises. This means ROWS and PULLS.
No one builds a big back from only deadlifting. No one.
If you want to build a big muscular back, you must do rows and pulls (pullups/pulldowns). All the people who have massive backs grew them by doing rows and pulls.
If you want to grow your back well, you need to do at minimum 2 variations of rows (horizontal pull) and 2 variations of pulls (vertical pull). Do one exercise with a wide grip and one with a close grip.
Pick the ones you like from this list:
| Horizontal Pull (Wide Grip) | Horizontal Pull (Close Grip) | Vertical Pull (Wide Grip) | Vertical Pull (Close Grip) |
| Wide grip seated cable row | Close grip seated cable row | Chin ups | Close grip pulldown |
| Barbell row | T-Bar row | Pull ups | Neutral grip chin up |
| Chest supported row | Chest supported T-Bar row | Lat pulldown | Straight arm pulldown |
| Yates row | Single arm dumbbell row | Upright row | Single arm pulldown |
| Pendlay row | Meadows row | – | – |
| Seal row | Chest supported dumbbell row | – | – |
This list is a little rough because you can’t neatly categorize all exercises into these columns but it does the job.
How to build a big back (my recommendation)
Train back twice a week, and do these exercises:
| Day 1 | Day 2 |
| Chest supported row | Close grip pulldown |
| Lat pulldown | Close grip seated cable row |
| Upright row | Rear delt row / facepull |
Note: You don’t have to solely train the back on a given day. You can also do other muscles.
2 to 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps each.
Progressive overload applies. Read How to Increase Muscle Density for more information.
You don’t need to deadlift.
You just don’t. The deadlift is just another exercise.
It’s not mAnDaToRy.
It’s just another exercise and always was until the internet really hyped it up in the last few years. (The internet hype is largely because even otherwise nonathletic and overweight people can lift “heavy” weights on the Deadlift and fast.)
If you want to do it, fine. If you don’t want to do it, there are numerous other ways to train.
Does this make the deadlift a bad exercise? No. It just makes it like any other exercise – replaceable. Unless you’re competing in a powerlifting competition of course.
There’s nothing special about the deadlift that you can’t get from other exercises. In fact, from a muscle building standpoint, it’s a below average exercise because it doesn’t build much muscle, tires your central nervous system (CNS) out, and has a very high injury rate compared to other exercises.
Should YOU deadlift?
Now, “you don’t need to deadlift” does not mean “you should not deadlift”.
MOST PEOPLE should be deadlifting. At least till they get reasonably strong.
My father is 58 years old and can deadlift 120 kilos. Objectively stronger than most adult males.
My wife is a 24 year old girl and she can deadlift 100 kilos. Objectively stronger than most adult males.
Their lives have gotten immensely better by deadlifting.
MOST PEOPLE should deadlift.
On the other hand I can deadlift 180 kilos. I’ve also been injured from it multiple times (and it takes a few weeks to heal each time). So I don’t deadlift heavy anymore (because of the recurring injuries).
Yes I’ve had my form checked by multiple coaches. My form is fine. There is something pathologically wrong with my back (pinched nerve) and after a certain weight, it sometimes causes my back to spasm. When I trigger it I go days in pain where it feels like someone is shooting electricity in my spine.
So I don’t do deadlifts (I do rack pulls and back extensions instead).
The back is like the ankle. The easiest predictor of you getting a back injury is if you’ve injured your back before (same for your ankles).
If you have recurring back injuries from the deadlift despite good form, you should not deadlift.
The other reason to not deadlift is as simple as you not wanting to. There is no rule that says you must do the traditional barbell deadlift. You can just substitute it with a different exercise.
You can also decide to stop doing heavy deadlifts and just do light deadlifts after your back training.
We are all reasonable people here and know that pretty much all exercises have alternatives and variations. We are not ideologically captured people who will attack someone for the blasphemy of not doing our favorite exercise.
What do you substitute the deadlift with?
If you decide to not deadlift, you need to add a hip hinge.
Assuming you are doing a proper program where you are training your back (see above) and your glutes and hamstrings with different exercises, the main thing the deadlift gives you is the hip hinge movement pattern.
You need to add a substitute lift.
There are lots of exercises that can train the hip hinge:
- Rack pulls or block pulls (very close to the deadlift, much safer for the back)
- Hip thrust
- Back extension
- Romanian deadlifts
- Kettlebell swing
- Good mornings (not recommended because of high injury risk)
My recommendations are rack pulls and back extension.
For back extensions, I got the idea from Alexander Cortes’s Bar Zero Program <— Highly recommend this program for anyone with an injury prone back.
He has a great tutorial on it. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people in the fitness space and definitely worth listening to.
The main thing you want to make sure is that you DO NOT HYPER-EXTEND YOUR BACK (don’t make it a banana).
I’ve never understood why this exercise is also called hyperextension because if you’re hyperextending your back, you’re doing it wrong. Your glutes and hamstrings need to pull you up like a crane. It’s a glute and ham exercise that also trains the erector spinae.
For rack pulls: Use an old beat up bar and not a new bar on the rack pulls because it will bend the bar. This is why most commercial gyms don’t allow rack pulls.
But that’s really it.
Nothing is MANDATORY.
If you want to deadlift? Good.
If you don’t want to deadlift, just use something else to train the hip hinge.
In both cases you need to train the back separately through its full range of motion if you want a strong muscular back.
Hope that helps.
Until next time.
Your man,
Harsh Strongman
P.S. If you want a program that doesn’t have the deadlift at all I strongly recommend checking out the Bar Zero Program by Alexander Cortes. This is the best program to do if you find yourself constantly getting injured with the barbell lifts (squat, deadlift, etc.)
Contrary to internet wisdom you can get quite big and strong without ever touching the barbell. This doesn’t mean barbell training is bad, it means that it is not the “only way”.
