The Stiff-Legged Deadlift
is one of the best posterior-chain exercises you can
do (posterior chain is all the muscle running down the
back of your body from the traps, spinal erectors, glutes,
hams, down to calves).
There are plenty of variations
of it out there but here's one you may not have seen
before.
You may have heard of
one-leg stiff-legged deadlifts (another great exercise)
- this is one ARM instead. You're still using a full-size
barbell so balancing that in your hand becomes a big
factor.
It demands a lot of stabilization
in your lower back and core as well because of your
body position when you're putting an uneven tension
on your lower back. This is excellent for injury prevention
because in life and sports, it is VERY rare where you'll
get directly even tension on your body.
So load up a barbell with
about 40 to 50% of the weight you'd normally use. You
want to start light with this one because your body
position and because you're just using one hand to grip
the bar.
The start position is
the same except you'll grip the bar in the middle with
one hand (hence the name...duh). It may take a couple
of tries to hit dead center on the bar, just fyi. You'll
see me readjust grip in the video.
For me, I find that I
need to grip with my index finger in dead center on
the bar even though my hand is not dead center on the
bar. I find the index finger is the balance point of
my grip. You'll see what I mean when you try this one.
I like to put one arm
behind my back to help cue keeping the arch in the lower
back. I find it also helps tighten up the core. When
I left my non-working arm dangling, it seemed to throw
off the exercise a bit.
Pull the bar up, just
like you normally would. Arch in the lower back, tight
core, head looking forward to maintain the arch in the
lower back, keep the bar close to your legs, hold your
breath at the bottom to maintain core stability, etc.
Here's the top position.
Lower back down and repeat
- as for reps, I like to alternate reps with hands either
in pairs or in singles, meaning I'll do two reps with
my left hand then two reps with my right, or one rep
left, one rep right, going back and forth.
This gives you more even
workload on the body. Make sure you keep the reps even.
Here's the left arm demo.
You'll notice at the top,
I'm not 100% vertical. I found if I stand completely
up, the bar then starts swinging around sideways because
of how it then hits my legs. So stay a bit short and
keep the bar positioned in front of you.
Here are some head-on
views.
You can see in this pic
how there is some rotation in the lower back at the
start of the rep at the bottom. This is what makes this
a valuable exercise.
That's the exercise! You'll
find it really hits the hamstrings well in addition
to targeting the core and the lower back with uneven
tension. It's like training awkward movement on purpose
to help strengthen the body in cases where perfect technique
is not possible.
