That upper back rounding scares me. Make sure to pull your shoulders back.

It was an ego lift, but it felt good.

This post was edited by ozzyarmy3 on Sep 5 2018 07:29pm

Pulling your shoulders back makes your arms shorter, putting you in a less optimal position to pull from - and your shoulders will pull forward regardless under heavy load

with pulled back shoulders he probably wouldnt break the floor, then as the shoulders slide he will sloppily break the floor. Better to start in the strongest position

This post was edited by Excusemem8 on Sep 5 2018 07:22pm

I did lose a bit of tightness, but I associated that with not getting completely planted in the bottom. I typically have the bar off the ground before I even start a pull, but my mind got to me with the 495 for some reason.. Here's a quick 315x5 after my working set @ 80%



I need to learn to keep tight through the entire movement.. I lost a complete rep on my AMRAP set today because I lost tightness on the last rep and couldn't regain it in the bottom.. I knew I had 9 in me, but just couldn't budge it.

i meant that your shoulders were fine, and they are fine in this vid too

dont try to pull your shoulders back lol

Good news, my T-Rex arms wouldn't allow me if I wanted to.

Chest day.. worked up to 195x7, than 205x3x5

Bunch of shoulder and back accessories

When the shoulders are forward like they were in his previous video, his centre of mass is in the wrong place. Pulling on deadlift isn't pulling just up, it's pulling back too. You want to compensate for the bar being in front you and pulling you forward. His shoulders don't have to be all the way back, but with how forward they were, it caused his upper back to round up. No bueno.

Other than a bit of chest drop, the pull was clean. When center of mass changes, hitching happens..

And thoracic rounding is actually ok, it’s lumbar rounding that you’re trying to avoid. Watch any elite lifter pulling heavy, they nearly always have some upper back rounding



This post was edited by ozzyarmy3 on Sep 7 2018 05:11am

Even on a max effort, there's nowhere near the rounding that happened in your vid.

Anyway, obviously rounding your lower back is much worse. I'm just recommending you work on strengthening your upper back and shoulders otherwise as you go heavier, your upper back rounding is going to shift where your centre is and you'll find yourself trying to pull upwards too much. Note that your rounding was a lot more pronounced than in the video you're using as an example.

If you observe the top athletes doing sumo deadlift for example, you'll see how much leverage they get from positioning their upper body differently.

I'm telling you this because I had the same problem you did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aa1VijSZrk (scroll towards the end for the farmer's walk practice).

My max deadlift was 795, at the time of the video it was around 700 tho (it's a bit easier with farmer's walk handles. The last set is with 380/hand). I went from having a rounded upper back at lower weights, to a rounded back in general as I went up in weights. It was starting to cause some annoying back pains and deadlift sessions always felt awful. I went to see a guy whose gym I trained that (Hugo Girard who was a top strongman) and got some coaching on deadlifting. I ended up doing a bunch of exercises like banded deadlift, really heavy upright rows, partial deadlifts, etc. Focused on pulling back (which allows you to drive your hips forward faster) rather than just pulling up and adjusted my form. Obviously there's going to be some rounding, but I kept it in check enough that I no longer had back pains and the weight went up another 95 lbs within a year.

This post was edited by CMBurns on Sep 7 2018 05:47am