Originally Posted by
Maybach
Paused deadlifts are often thought of an "underloaded" variation. And anecdotally, they certainly seem to "feel" harder than an unpaused deadlift. It's not clear exactly why this is. A paused squat or bench press is harder because it eliminates the stretch reflex, but there is no stretch reflex in the deadlift.
You might compare it to a paused, or hang clean. However, this is not even universally regarded as an underloaded variation: some Olympic lifting coaches claim that one should be able to hang clean MORE than one's full clean. This is perhaps untrue, but it's worth considering that some people observe this, whereas almost no one does for the paused deadlift. Second, when it IS an underloaded variation, it's probably due to having a shorter ROM over which to accelerate the weight.
The deadlift naturally divides itself into two phases: the knee extension off the ground, and the hip extension to lockout. This is roughly where the "halting/rack pull" pair is divided. The paused in the paused deadlift is effectively in between these two phases: it is a rack pull which is pulled to the pin position by the lifter.
However, something about these two phases makes them somehow un-deconvolveable. There's a few other places this shows up. The position of the shoulders in the clean and deadlift is one of them: when you plan to lock the bar out at the hips, your back angle becomes more vertical than when you plan to accelerate it rapidly perhaps the knees. It also shows up in the rack pull and the halting: most people can rack pull more than their deadlift the first time, but haltings take a little time to get used to because the goal is to "hold" yourself over the bar, and therefore hold your back angle more horizontal higher up the legs.
I would suspect this is where the potential to make the exercise "harder" comes from: if you are planning to "pause" the bar below the knee, you will hold your back angle horizontal, because "holding" the pause position requires the muscles involved (I would guess the lats and the hamstrings, but will need to think about it further) to work too hard in the "vertical back" intermediate position. So the movement ends up doing something similar to a clean grip deadlift or halting, in that it "stops" hip extension and works the lats harder.
The variation in loading being so unstraightforward makes its use for training...questionable. How much harder is an 80% paused deadlift than a 90% deadlift? Is either one working? They certainly don't have any advantage over the clean and the row. But it's an interesting special case of the movement that may provide some insight into the deadlift, if one is inclined towards theorizing.
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