Most of us should be deadlifting. And by most of us, I mean all of us. We should follow the novice progression, deadlifting every day. Then alternate in power cleans, then chin-ups. After that probably some sort of heavy-light-medium variation. Or, if you have access to your youth, whole milk, and XY chromosomes, the Texas Method. If you have moved beyond weekly progressions, then you have probably been exposed to the rack pull, maybe paused deadlifts, and if you have offended your coach, haltings. At some point in your intermediate to advanced programming it might behoove you to introduce other deadlift variations.

These children of the parent movement can serve multiple purposes. If there are egregious technique errors, then it is almost always better to reduce weight and get the conventional deadlift correct. However, there are times when assistance movements might be helpful. A paused deadlift, for example, may teach a lifter to extend his knees before the hips, maintain shoulder extension, and keep his back set in rigid extension in the first part of the pull.

A paused deadlift could spread out the stress-recovery-adaptation cycle – it is artificially felt to be heavy (because of the pause) even though it is necessarily lighter (because of the pause). In this way, an athlete can deadlift, but not at a load that will produce as much systemic stress as a conventional deadlift. And sometimes, when things line up, an introduction of the variation could serve both purposes of addressing technique while also spreading out stress – it takes some skill and experience on the part of the coach for it to work out this way.

Here, I would like to examine the snatch-grip and the deficit versions of the deadlift. They both must be lighter because of the increased range of motion, but in quite different ways.

The Snatch-Grip Deadlift

The hallmark of the snatch-grip deadlift is just that– the snatch-grip, called thus for the wide grip taken on the bar that resembles the Olympic snatch. The wide grip, the abduction of the arms as seen from the frontal plane, means that there is contractile force from the lats both keeping the bar over mid-foot and keeping the arms from adducting to plumb. This means that the athlete will have to pull the bar much harder into their legs, which might be a beneficial variation for teaching athletes to use their lats during the pull.

This also means that the hips will be much higher in the setup, closing the hips angle and opening the knee angle – like a snatch start position. Even with this anatomical manipulation, the hamstrings remain in isometric contraction at the start of the pull since the knees are opened to the extent the hips closed, as in the conventional deadlift.

The image on the far right might be the hip height or the start position of the snatch-grip deadlift (more closed), but because of the wider grip, the knees will need to be bent further, as in the middle image. A correct set-up puts the hamstrings in isometric contraction at the start as well as the lats angled to insertion at 90 degrees from their origin, the strongest angle for them to pull to keep the bar over mid-foot. Just like the hamstrings reaching further than ideal extensibility in the far right image, and less so in the middle image, the lats too will be brought into isometric contraction with the higher hips and more bent knees.

The grip width need not be your actual snatch grip width in an attempt to mimic your snatch (your hip height will approximate itself based on grip width for the lats and hamstrings to “lock-in” isometrically). Further, to attempt to mimic your actual snatch would violate the analysis and evidence that suggests training should not mimic sports practice. That analysis, germane to this topic, is discussed in The Two-Factor Model of Sports Performance. In other words, we are doing the snatch-grip deadlift to get stronger, not to practice a snatch.

Approach the bar and do your 5-step-setup for the deadlift. In step 2, take a grip on the bar that is wider than your conventional deadlift grip width. It needs to be wide, but not necessarily your snatch grip width. If it is, fine. Whatever it is, it needs to be consistent. Then finish the last 3 deadlift setup steps. Do this and you will have done a successful snatch-grip deadlift. But it is going to be vastly different from your conventional deadlift in important ways.

Rewind to step 1: the stance. The bottom position of the snatch and snatch-grip deadlift manipulates your anatomical angles in uncomfortable ways. You are going to have to have your back angle more horizontal and hip angle more closed, and therefore more of your torso between your legs. To facilitate this you might have to do one or a combination of the following: turn your toes out more so you can point your knees out, angling your femurs out more, thereby making more room between the thighs. Or you can take a wider stance with feet at the same angle as your conventional deadlift– also putting more room between your thighs. With toes out more the adductors will be more extended, as opposed to the with wider stance, tightening the hip capsule.

Both of these in combination are probably unnecessary unless you have some physiological characteristics that deem it necessary, such as a big gut or decrepitude; and even so, both in combination may cause some interesting sensations medially in the adductors near their origination at the pubis and ischium, as well as laterally in the psoas, iliacus, and tensor fasciae latae. Irritation in this area can cause unwanted deviations in training progress, so take heed: The Active Hip 2.0.

Either way, wear tall socks, because the toes-out stance or the wide stance means a date between your shins and the knurling – and blood is awfully inconvenient to clean off of barbells. A straight bar-path and the correct pulling mechanics are the immediate remedy for this, but it takes some practice with these stances. I have seen athletes attempt to use shin-guards to remedy grating their shins, but this fixes something that ought otherwise be fixed with proper technique. If shin-guards are how you keep your shins from being bloodied, then there is something wrong with your setup and how you deadlift.

Step 2 is where the mechanics of the situation are brought to bear. The width at which you take your grip determines the final height of the hips in the setup, and for that reason the hip and knee angles when the shins come to the bar in step 3. A narrow grip means more closed knees and open hips. A wider grip means the opposite. With the snatch-grip, there will be more range of motion about the hip joint and less around the knee joint than in the conventional deadlift.

Step 4, setting your back in rigid extension, will be harder to do because of the new anatomical angles necessitated by the grip width. The wider grip width will have, effectively, shortened your arms. This means that you will have to have a more horizontal back angle than in your conventional deadlift. So setting your back will require more attention and probably discomfort. The toes-out/knees-out stance will assist in this difficulty.

The landmarks of this variation will be the same as in the deadlift with respect to the vertical bar vector, mid-foot balance, and the scapulae. The bar will still begin over mid-foot and under the scapulae and shins will be inclined about 7 degrees. The resultant exercise is one that challenges your will in the setup, demanding hard contraction of the lats, then taking your hips through a longer range of motion. And at lockout the bar will be higher on your thighs, demonstrating a longer bar path than the conventional deadlift as a result of these intentional variations.

The Deficit Deadlift

Like the snatch-grip deadlift, the deficit deadlift increases the range of motion of the bar path, but rather than artificially shortening the arms, it appears as if it lengthens the shank and femur segments. That is, if the bar is over mid-foot with a deficit – a block under your feet lifting your stance off the ground – then the relative shin angle would be very different with longer shins as opposed to starting with the bar lower on the shins with the bar closer to the ankle. If you have very very long shins, for example, and the bar is set up over mid-foot with the bar under the scapulae then your shin angle would be more vertical than it would be if the bar started lower on your shins as a result of the deficit.

Think about what your shin angle would have to be if the deficit put the bar just on top of your foot— the shin angle would be quite horizontal, comparatively speaking. So the deficit does not necessarily increase the shin length; it puts the bar lower on your shins, bringing the bar closer to the ankle joint, and therefore changing the ratio of upper to lower segment lengths moving through space. It changes the ratio of the respective ranges of motion of the segment lengths moving through space above versus below the hip. The deficit deadlift essentially puts platforms on the feet, raising the ankle joint off the floor and allowing for more dorsiflexion.

This mechanical manipulation comes to bear in the setup. And like the chosen grip width in the snatch-grip deadlift, the amount of platform block you choose to use in the deficit deadlift is arbitrary. But we should exercise some prudence. I like to use a 25-lb bumper plate, which is about 1.5" in width. The limiting factor in choosing the amount of deficit might be what you can reach with your hands while maintaining your back in rigid extension.

Consider the squat as a comparison: just as correct depth in a squat can have some minute variation within reason as long as lumbar extension and knee positioning remain correct. A too-deep squat might easily be characterized as knees that have traveled too far forward potentially accompanied with lumbar flexion/posterior pelvic tilt. This just amounts to a shortening of the hamstring from the proximal joint (the hips) and a continued shortening of the hamstring from the distal joint (the knee).

If one can get into a very deep squat, deeper than just below parallel and maintain a neutral lumbar spine and knee positioning, then that excess depth would be unnecessary and less effective for getting more weight onto the bar, thereby getting you less strong. But the deficit deadlift violates the movement choice criteria in just this way, since that is what it is designed to do.

To set this up, you will approach the barbell as you would a conventional deadlift, with your toes slightly turned out and shins 1" from the barbell, so that the barbell is over mid-foot. If you need a wider stance due to physiological limitations, then you might need to have 2 bumper plates side-by-side. Step 3 will feel very strange as you will bend over more at the waist than you are used to in order to grab the bar since it is farther away. Take your normal grip.

Step 3, squatting down to the bar/bringing your shins to the bar will mean bending the knee more than in a conventional deadlift, since the bar is 1.5" lower on the shin and the shin will be angled more than the standard 7 degrees due to the increased dorsiflexion. This puts more range of motion about the knee than in either the snatch-grip or conventional deadlift. Depending on limb lengths, the hip will also go through a longer range of motion than the snatch-grip and conventional deadlift, since the hips begin lower too.

The rest of the movement is the same as the conventional deadlift. Setting your back in step 4 is hard, but should be doable if you have chosen the correct deficit height, and the back angle will be more vertical. And pushing the floor down to extend the knees in step 5 will take longer since the bar will also be going through a longer path.

Anthropometrically speaking, the bar still begins over mid-foot and underneath the scapulae. This new exercise will challenge you through what will feel like a very long way to travel with the barbell off of the floor. It can encourage you to learn to push harder with the knees to initiate the first part of the pull, which is a hallmark of the conventional deadlift, but is by no means necessary, nor the best way to teach the first push.

Although both of these variations can increase the size of the arsenal for any good athlete or coach, they can easily be crutches for the neophyte, using them to fix movement patterns occurring in the parent movement. Stick with the parent movement if there is a deviation within that movement. You can get impressively heavy deadlifts using simple variations (see the halting and the rack pull). If, on the other hand, you are trying to introduce a new, light pulling option, then these are novel tools that can keep training fresh and a little more interesting. But if by more interesting you are thinking of doing a snatch-grip deficit deadlift (I have no-shit seen this) because you think more always equals more, then you are better off getting your deadlift to 600 first. That is much more interesting.

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