When listing strength training exercise staples, the sumo deadlift rarely gets top-tier recognition. But adding sumo deadlifts into your training repertoire is a surefire formula for producing top-level gains. Once you start pulling from the sumo stance, you might just consider it one of your top movements.
Underrated by reputation, the exercise’s versatility makes the sumo deadlift a muscle-building must. Besides being a great glute exercise, deadlifting sumo style—with a wide stance and narrow grip—is the ideal barbell deadlift option for those with long legs. At the same time, many powerlifters commonly use the sumo deadlift in competition to decrease their range of motion to pull bigger weights.
The objective is the same as conventional deadlifts, as Men’s Health fitness director Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S. and fitness editor Brett Williams, N.A.S.M. demonstrate: Line up with your legs close to the bar, take a tight grip, squeeze your glutes, push your butt back, and removing any slack from the bar, begin your pull.
What makes this lift so effective? According to Samuel, sumo deadlifts allow you to move greater weight at a shorter distance, allowing for greater strength gains. “[With the sumo deadlift], you have a lot of freedom to move over a shorter range of motion,” Samuel says. “[Because] we get our legs wider, we don’t have to hinge quite as far.”
Sounds easy, right? It is, sort of. Before you begin scoring new pulling PRs however, Samuel says you need to be aware of this trio of common mistakes associated with sumo deadlifts.
How to Sumo Deadlift
Men’s Health
Don’t Lose Tension
You dig your feet into the floor, grip the bar tight, take a deep breath—then overthink the movement, relax your muscles, and fail to nail the lift. Samuel notes that losing tension prior to executing the sumo deadlift is a major no-no, and one of the most common mistakes people often make. “People are going to drop their arms a little bit, and then pull up because they don’t trust themselves in the lift,” he says. “You can get away with it early on, but when it comes to PR time, it’s gonna cost you.”
Instead, work on keeping constant tension during each rep and for each set, including the lighter loads. “Get good habits now when you have 135 or 225 on the bar,” Samuel continues. “That way you’re set up to attack 315 and 405. So, make sure you keep that tension there.”
Don’t Butt Up
Another common deadlift dilemma is when people lift their glutes first in the movement before any other body part. “This is a huge problem,” Samuel says, “because essentially, now you’ve made your lower back the lever, the driving lever here, and you can’t do that. You want to make sure that your hips, glutes, and hamstrings are driving this motion.” Make sure your hips are lower than your shoulders with each rep, emphasizing glute and hamstring tension.
Don’t Drift When Your Deadlift
Allowing the bar to drift way too far out in front of you is a common error you want to avoid at all costs. Keeping the bar tight to your body before pulling—to the point in which the bar scrapes your shins—is essential for a successful lift. One of the main reasons we set our lats is so we can lift in a straight line, allowing the hips to drive the motion. With the weight too far in front of you, your lower back once again becomes the lever, and you don’t want that. “That’s a risk factor for your back. And that’s also not what we’re trying to train,” Samuel says. “So you want to make sure that bar stays close the entire time.”
Master those moves, and Samuel says the sumo deadlift is where you’ll more than likely be pulling your max. “You can still mix in the other deadlift forms during your training cycles and get acclimated with them all,” he says. “Maybe four or five weeks, do four sets of 6 to 8 reps. And don’t be afraid to throw on some weight.”
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