Very, very interesting, thank you!! I could not have imagined this would be happening.
His knees do indeed dart backwards as the bar approaches from above. It's right there in the vid. BUT then his shins remain mostly vertical until the barbell hits the ground! He breaks contact with his shins on the way down. It's plainly visible, no two ways about it, he is not keeping the bar in contact with his shins on the negative. On each rep he moves his shins forward to the bar after putting it down and before lifting it again. Should I be doing THAT??
brkriete, what do you think of the point at 1:15, e.g., where his knees dart back as the bar goes past and forward again under it? I may have to slow it down to see what's happening with his hips as his knees dart backwards.
I am also aware that very experienced lifters' forms when lifting for themselves are not necessarily examples for me to follow, but MBasic posted this in reply to my request. What I gather from it is that, yes, my knees may dart backward from under the bar on the negative, but they don't have to dart forward again if it's OK to break contact between the bar and my shins.
And regardless, model or not, this vid is motivation!
-Chuckk
Well, I like to think. I'm trying to figure out what *should* happen, an ideal deadlift. I don't have a vid yet, but I detect something questionable in the many descriptions I've seen which don't account for the knee between lockout and the bar at knee level. Either the bar breaks contact OR the knee is under it. Or, as I've managed to avoid so far, the lifter falls over... :P
You don't need to keep the bar in contact with your shins on the way down. No one does this.
And yes, you should bring your shins to the bar at the start of each pull. This is a very basic step.
Thinking about darting your knees backwards or whatever is not useful. I've never hit my knees on the way up. I've probably hit them on the way down early on when I was learning to deadlift, but I learned how not to do that again.
I think you're overthinking the "negative" portion of the deadlift. The deadlift really doesn't have an eccentric or negative phase. The book gives a game plan as a means to set the bar down in a way that won't include crashing load into the top of your knees. Don't think about intentionally darting your knees back that little bit. Yes, you should be resetting and bringing your shins to the bar on every rep.
I hope it does. I guess it must, if so many people do it correctly and never have this problem. I can see in vids of heavy lifts that, yes, it happens pretty fast and is largely the lifter knowing how to react to the momentum of the bar, not necessarily putting much effort into controlling it.
I've seen in other places people recommending sumo barbell DL for those with problematic backs. What do y'all think of that one? Less knee flexion, less altitude. I found it a little tempting to "squat my deadlift" from sumo position, but nothing a little attention won't fix.
Tomorrow's DL day, one way or another...
-Chuckk
I don't know what I should worry about more - my intervertebral discs or my knees. I don't think a little weight on my patella will rip my meniscus (so far it's been from twisting and, of course, degeneration), but not being careful enough with my lumbar discs is going to fuck me up for real one of these days. So Rip says over and over that performing these lifts "correctly" is perfectly safe, well, I want to be able to say I always did them correctly.
What surprised me in this vid was that bringing his shins to the bar after a rep was necessary, I mean, that means they were not still touching the bar at the end, which breaks the rules I've seen so far - but seems to make sense.