Originally Posted by
Michael Wolf
So, granted that the height of the plates that results in how far off the floor the bar sits is somewhat arbitrary, but my own experience teaching thousands of people to deadlift, as well as our collective experience coaching and observing people deadlifting, is that the gigantic vast overwhelming majority of humans can pull the DL in a straight line over the mid-foot, with a back set and held in rigid extension, from that height. Like 99.9% or something. Whereas once you start getting into deficits, the percent of the population's ability to do so reduces immediately. Obviously if you looked at the microscopic level, sure you could lower the height of the barbell 1 micrometer, and it wouldn't make a difference. But in terms of the reproducible-by-human-standards and reasonable-to-machine reality of barbell and plate manufacturing, where the bar sits at the bottom of the DL still represents an extremely reasonable place to call it a "longest effective ROM" and to be the parent/main version of the movement, with deficits and rack pulls being derivative variations used when a lifter gets to a sufficiently advanced place and there's a logical case for departing from the parent version.