Should You Deadlift to Build Muscle?
Thought experiment: If your goal is to build muscle, get and stay lean, and not get injured . . . and you don’t care about lifting as much weight as possible or competing in powerlifting . . . is there any point in deadlifting? Dyed-in-the-wool deadlifters blow a gasket if you even pose this question. OF COURSE YOU MUST DEADLIFT! IT’S ONE OF THE BIG THREE LIFTS! IT TRAINS LITERALLY EVERY MUSCLE IN YOUR BODY! You can see their yellow calloused fingers smashing these words into the keyboard as they spew whey protein across their computer monitor. Then you have the overly cautious gym marms who warn that deadlifting is playing Russian roulette with your spine because bio-mechano-magical functional voodoo reasons. As you can guess, my position is somewhere in the middle. When programmed and practiced correctly, the deadlift can be a safe and effective muscle-building exercise for many. But it also has real downsides that may make it a suboptimal exercise for others. Allo...