Conventional Deadlift
The deadlift punishes position more than any other lift. There is no rack to bail into and no eccentric to warn you — the setup you build in the first two seconds determines whether the rep is safe or expensive.
These are the seven deadlift form mistakes that appear most often in commercial gyms, why each one happens, and the correction that actually works rather than the cue that only sounds good.
| Primary muscles | Gluteus maximus, hamstrings, spinal erectors |
|---|---|
| Secondary muscles | Quadriceps, lats, traps, forearms |
| Equipment | Barbell, plates |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Most common failure point | Just off the floor, and again at the knee |
| Best camera angle for a form check | Side view, at hip height, full body in frame |
Stand with the bar roughly over the middle of your foot, about 2 to 3 cm from the shins. This is the single most important measurement in the setup — get it wrong and every other cue fails.
Push the hips back and bend the knees only enough to reach the bar. Grip just outside the legs. Do not move the bar toward you and do not let your hips drop into a squat.
Take the tension into your arms and lats until you hear the plates click against the collars. Lifting from a loose bar is what causes the jerk that rounds the back.
Chest up, lats engaged as if squeezing oranges in the armpits, lower back in a neutral curve. Breathe into the belly and brace hard before anything moves.
Drive through the whole foot and keep the bar dragging up the shins. Hips and shoulders rise together — the shoulders should stay slightly ahead of the bar until it passes the knee.
Finish by driving the hips forward into the bar and squeezing the glutes. Stand tall without leaning back or hyperextending the spine, then reverse the same path to set the bar down.
The deadlift is a sagittal-plane lift — almost every fault, from back rounding to bar drift, is visible from a clean side view. Set the phone at hip height, not on the floor.
You need the bar path from the floor to lockout. Cropping the top of the rep hides hyperextension; cropping the floor hides the setup.
Nearly every deadlift fault is decided in the break from the floor. Slow that portion down and check whether hips and shoulders rise at the same rate.
If your position at 60 percent looks nothing like your position at 90 percent, the problem is load management, not technique knowledge.
Film the set, and Stance returns the specific fault and the correction instead of a raw video to interpret yourself. The clip is analyzed and then deleted, never stored.
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Usually one of three things: you start pulling before the slack is out of the bar, the bar sits too far forward of your mid-foot, or the load is simply heavier than the position you can hold. Rebuild the setup, add a deliberate slack-pull, and drop the weight until every rep keeps a neutral spine. Paused deadlifts just off the floor build that position faster than anything else.
Directly over the middle of your foot, roughly 2 to 3 cm away from your shins when you stand up. This puts the bar in line with your centre of mass so it can travel in a near-vertical path. Almost every deadlift fault downstream traces back to getting this measurement wrong.
High enough that your shins are close to vertical and your shoulders sit just in front of the bar. Starting with the hips very low turns the lift into a squat the bar cannot travel around, which is why the hips shoot up as soon as the weight moves. Your correct hip height depends on your limb lengths, so find it by looking at the shin angle rather than copying someone else.
A slightly rounded thoracic spine with a neutral lumbar spine is a deliberate choice for many strong lifters and is far less concerning than lumbar flexion. The lower back is where the risk lives. If your lumbar spine flexes under load, treat it as a fault regardless of how your upper back looks.
Yes, and the deadlift is the easiest lift to self-check because a single side view captures nearly everything. Film at hip height with the full body and the bar in frame, then judge the break from the floor. Stance analyzes the clip and reports the specific fault — back rounding, hip rise, bar drift — instead of leaving you to compare frames yourself.
This guide is general training information, not medical advice. Stop and consult a qualified professional if a movement causes pain.
