My clients often ask me why I make them do deadlifts.  The simplest answer that I can give them is that it teaches how to properly lift something off the floor without hurting your back, and it uses so many muscles that it takes a lot of calories to execute this movement, therefore whether you are looking for fat loss, muscle building or simply functionality, the deadlift is a key exercise.

Here are 5 reasons you should be deadlifting!

1. Functional Fitness

The deadlift is one of the most functional movements.  Think of how many times in a day you have to pick something up.  Clothing, laundry detergent, dropped your phone, baskets, boxes etc…  If you can train your body to treat the hip like a hinge joint (even though it moves through a full rotational axis), you can keep your spine organized into a nice neutral line and protect it from injury.  It is all too often I hear people say “i threw out my back lifting a pen off the floor”.  Why?  It’s not heavy, therefore you don’t set your body up in an optimal position to lift.  Deadlifting will train your body to lift things properly automatically

2. Posture

Most of us sit at desks, in cars, at tables, for the majority of the day.  What happens when we get tired?  We slouch.  So the front of our body becomes really tight and we stretch and round out our back body all day long.  Deadlifting done correctly will counter this by tightening/strengthening up all the muscles that we constantly weaken, making it easier to hold an optimal posture

3.  Core strength

Again, it comes down to protecting the spine for a pain-free life.  Strong core = strong spine!  Think about the skeleton.  In your midsection you have your lumbar spine and that’s it.  There is nothing to reinforce your spine other than your muscle tissue.  If the muscles in the core are weak and unstable, you will have a very hard time in life due to low back pain caused by instability.  Ask anyone who has ever slipped a disc.  You don’t want to go there.

4. Grip Strength

Grip strength is one of the best indicators of total body strength.  Challenging your grip strength by lifting maximal weight will allow you to strengthen your grip which comes in handy for many things.  Ladies, you’ll never have to ask your man to open a jar for you again 😉

5. The booty!

Not only are the glutes one of the most aesthetically appealing muscles on the body, but they are the powerhouse muscles as well!  Power generation has a lot to do with the glutes (why do you think football players and sprinters have such nice ones? :P).  Having strong glutes (and posterior chain in general) will allow you to build powerful muscles to help with sports and activities like running, golfing, tennis, football.. and just about any other sport you can think of.

Bonus reason!  For those of you looking to lose weight, utilizing ALL of the muscles in your posterior chain (back body), you are using a ton of calories to get the movement done.

There are plenty more reasons to deadlift.  Fitness professionals, feel free to chirp in here 🙂

Let’s get lifting!

Deadlifting how to video to come…