Deadlift
Conventional barbell deadlift
Works
Also works
Equipment
How to do it
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart and the bar over the middle of your foot.
- Bend your hips and knees to grip the bar with your hands just outside your legs.
- Drop your hips, lift your chest, and set your back in a neutral position before pulling.
- Push the floor away and extend your hips and knees, keeping the bar close to your body.
- Finish standing tall with hips and knees extended, without hyperextending the lower back.
- Lower the bar under control, sending your hips back first.
Common mistakes
- Rounding the lower back on the pull
- Raising the hips before the chest (pulling with the back)
- Letting the bar drift away from the body during the ascent
What the evidence says
Sumo and conventional aren't the same lift with a wider stance: sumo activates the quadriceps (vastus medialis and lateralis) and tibialis anterior more, while conventional activates the medial gastrocnemius more.
Escamilla RF, Francisco AC, Kayes AV, Speer KP, Moorman CT 3rd. «An electromyographic analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts». Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 2002;34(4):682-688. View the study
With a hexagonal (trap) bar you lift more weight at higher velocity and power, with lower moments at the lumbar spine, hip and ankle but a higher moment at the knee: it's the pick when you want to load the legs without loading the back as much.
Swinton PA, Stewart A, Agouris I, Keogh JW, Lloyd R. «A biomechanical analysis of straight and hexagonal barbell deadlifts using submaximal loads». Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2011;25(7):2000-2009. View the study
The stiff-leg deadlift doesn't cover the whole hamstring: over 9 weeks it grew the semimembranosus (11%) but barely the semitendinosus, which did grow (24%) with the Nordic curl. If you only hip-hinge, you're missing knee-flexion work.
Morin T, Doguet V, Nordez A, Caillet A, Lacourpaille L. «Minimal Role of Hamstring Hypertrophy in Strength Transfer Between Nordic Hamstring and Stiff-Leg Deadlift: A Blinded Randomized Controlled Trial». Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2025;39(9):924-932. View the study
What isn't settled: There is no study that trains one group with sumo and another with conventional for weeks and compares the muscle and strength gained. Everything we know about that comparison comes from single-rep lab measurements: pick the one you can load and hold well, not because a winner has been measured.
Other variations
Log it in two taps
All 340 catalogue exercises are in the app, with their technique and your history. You log the set and Myosin works out volume, records and estimated strength.
