Sumo Deadlift
Trains the Hamstrings.
- Equipment
- Barbell
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Set the bar over the middle of your feet and take a wide stance, feet well outside shoulder-width with your toes turned out.
- Push your hips back and down and reach for the bar with your arms inside your knees, hands about shoulder-width apart.
- Your shins should be close to vertical and your hips lower than in a conventional deadlift, with your chest up and your back flat.
- Push your knees out in the same direction as your toes — this opens the hips and lets you get down to the bar.
- Take a breath, brace, and take the slack out of the bar before you pull.
- Push the floor apart with your feet and stand up, keeping the bar against your legs the whole way.
- Finish standing tall with the hips forward, then lower by pushing the hips back and bending the knees once the bar passes them.
Common mistakes
- Letting the knees drift inward at the start. Pushing them out toward the toes is what makes the wide stance work; knees collapsing in is the position failing before the bar moves.
- Setting the hips too low, as if it were a squat. A sumo deadlift is still a hinge — the hips are lower than in a conventional pull but not as low as a squat, and starting too low means the hips rise first anyway.
- Letting the bar drift away from the shins. Same rule as any deadlift: every inch forward increases the leverage the weight has against the lower back.
- Choosing between sumo and conventional as though one is correct. They load the same muscles in different proportions — sumo asks more of the adductors and quadriceps, conventional more of the erectors and hamstrings. Hip structure decides which feels better.