Greg Glassman, founder of the Crossfit movement, was once quoted saying: “if you cannot deadlift, you are injured but asymptomatic”.

Many people feel like they cannot or worse, should not perform deadlifts as part of their training. I remember once during a certification workshop having the instructor (and the manual) label the deadlift as a “contraindicated” exercise. With the years of experience, knowledge and education I’ve gotten since, I now view this as pure baloney. To me, contraindicated is anything that will hurt you, and yes, if you have herniated discs, you shouldn’t be doing a deadlift. But sitting on a machine that allows you to perform a movement which you normally wouldn’t be able to do has ZERO carryover into the real world and face it, the average person spends maybe 3 hours in the gym, and the remaining 168 hours undoing what they tried to accomplish!

If you cannot deadlift with proper form, you should have your posture checked (chiropractor, orthopedic doctor, functional movement specialist) and corrected BEFORE you do ANY kind of exercise program. Ignoring it by stacking “perceived fitness” on top of dysfunction is as useful as building a house of cards outside on a windy day!

Watch toddlers picking things off the ground: perfect squats or perfect deadlifts. Then we step in, as modernized humanoid urban cage animals and ruin everything. Ergonomic chairs, back braces when lifting 5-lb dumbbells, “supportive” shoes which actually atrophy your foot/ankle complex muscles, the list goes on.

Even trainers can improperly cue you into performing a deadlift (classic bad cue: “bend at the waist”. WRONG! “hinge at the hips” is the correct cue. Bending at the waist rounds your back, going into spinal flexion, resulting in injury. Hinging at the hips by pushing the butt back and pulling your hips back, promotes a straight -though not vertical, there is a difference- back, sort of like a silverback gorilla).

We perform deadlifts day in, day out: picking things off the floor, moving light, moderate or heavy objects -the movement remains the same-. The light load is actually more dangerous because we feel we can get away with it. A heavy load, we might just avoid. The light load still causes an injury which over time is like a flood in your basement caused by a small drip in your plumbing.

Deadlifts recruit the most amount of muscles in your body: latissimus dorsi, erector spinae, transverse abdominis, hamstrings, gluteus maximus, biceps, triceps, retractor scapula, trapezius, scalene, carpal flexors… Lost yet?

More muscles recruited, more calories burnt, more fat burnt, more strength in less time. Sounds like a winning formula to me!