What is this thing people do with their shoulders before deadlifting?

[jnow]

I've seen people on ig doing this with conventional and sumo.. they will roll their shoulders forward and then back before they pull... is the purpose of this to help keep your back straight and does it work?

Example https://instagram.com/p/6YBS0VSLt7/?...hael_bielmeier

[jnow]

They are retracting their shoulder blades. Inwards and downwards towards the hip. It's very close to the squeezing of the chest upwards (note the effect in your reference video on the chest). It shortens the lever arm of the spine and gets the shoulders very close to the position they will be in at lockout.

It's effective albeit analogous to Rip's setup steps.

If I remember your deadlift videos from months back, you had no trouble setting your back in extension and rotating your chest upwards.

Eeryone on here was telling me that I wasn't keeping my back straight all whatsoever from the videos I posted... my back rounds all the time...

that's why I was wondering if this shoulder thing is a result of "chest up" or if they are doing it as a separate cue which achieves the same result as chest up.

[TeamOmega]

Your removing the space from the shoulder capsule so that there is no slack in the system. You do have to be careful not to pull the shoulder blades very far back or you increase the distance to the bar and give up pounds.