Nothing can strengthen your posterior chain like a deadlift. Your glutes, hamstrings and back all benefit from deadlift training. Apart from the obvious benefits of increased strength and muscle size, deadlifts have many benefits such as reducing lower back pain, increased sprinting speed, increased jumping and developing a stronger core.

However, what can you do when you are struggling to improve your deadlift performance? Or maybe you are just looking for more deadlift training inspiration? We asked Powerlifting World Record Holder and Mirafit athlete Bobbie Butters to give you all the advice you need to improve your deadlift performance.

What Are Accessory Exercises?

Accessory lifts are any exercises that you can include in your routine that will help improve the performance of your targeted lift, in this case the deadlift. Accessory lifts do this by improving your strength for certain parts of the lifts or by reinforcing the correct form to make your lifting technique more efficient.

Block Pulls

The block pull deadlift is a variation where the bar is set at a higher position by having the weights resting on raised platforms such as Jerk Blocks or pulling blocks. This lift focuses on the top part of the deadlift movement by removing the initial phase of the lift. Bobbie recommends using lower reps and with higher weights for this exercise. By doing this you are improving the “sticky” part of the deadlift when you are trying to lock out. It also helps improve your form because you won’t be able to lift the heavier weight if your set up is wrong with the bar being too far forward. Remember, the deadlift is a hinge movement, not a squat. Your armpits should be over the bar and the bar should be close to your shins. Keep the front of your chest facing the wall so that you don’t lean too far forwards.

Bobbie uses Coan style bracing for this deadlift accessory. This style of bracing involves Bobbie resetting her breathing at the top of the lift as opposed to the bottom. You therefore don’t need to rebreathe and reset your hips at the bottom of the deadlift movement. This creates greater time under tension in the upper body and spine which is one of the main goals of this accessory exercise. It also creates an eccentric component by lowering the bar slowly before lifting the weight rather than stopping to reset. This eccentric component helps increase strength and muscle size

Paused Deadlift

The paused deadlift accessory lift makes use of a pause or isometric contraction closer to the floor. When Bobbie looks back at the lifts that she failed, she noticed that she generally failed close to the floor. What tended to happen when she had a failed lift was that her shoulders moved further forward, and her hips moved further backwards. This results in a position where the body is not in an ideal position to lift the weights. By adding in a pause, Bobbie trains the neuromuscular system to ingrain the correct form into the lift. The isometric contraction will also help increase the strength in this particular position so that she is able to maintain the contraction while she focuses on bringing the hips through to complete the deadlift

The pause or isometric component is performed as soon as you break off from the floor as this tends to be the point where loss of form occurs. Hold the pause position for 2 seconds before completing the deadlift. Return the bar to the floor and start again.

Glute Hamstring Developer

The deadlift requires large muscle recruitment from the glutes and hamstrings. By using the GHD bench you will be able to focus on increasing the strength and muscle size of the glutes and hamstrings. The Mirafit GHD Machine has a large eccentric element. Eccentric training involves the muscles lengthening under tension and commonly occurs in the lowering of weights during an exercise. By slowly lowering weights the time under tension increases and this is a powerful stimulant for hypertrophy. The strain of eccentric exercises also creates more force in the muscle and results in greater strength gains. The increased size and strength of glutes and hamstrings will directly improve your deadlift performance.

For the set-up of the GHD machine, Bobby recommends that beginners start with the foot brace set at a lower height and positioned closer to the bench. Your core should be tightened so when you lean forward so you don’t collapse at the thighs and end up using your back to pull you back up as opposed to using your glutes and hamstrings.

Pull Ups

At first pull ups might seem a strange choice as an accessory exercise for deadlifts but remember that the deadlift trains the posterior chain including the back muscles, particularly around the spine. Pull ups focus on the latissimus dorsi which plays an important role in your deadlift form by keeping the bar closer to your body and allowing the bar to move more vertically during the deadlift

Use an overhand grip to hold onto the Pull Up Bar or power cage. The wider your hands are the harder it becomes as there is less bicep involvement. If your body weight is not challenging you enough then you can add additional weights using a weightlifting belt.

Hip Thrusts

Hip thrusts are possibly one of the best exercises after the deadlift to help develop the glutes and hamstring. Bobbie specifically uses this to assist her in the lockout of the deadlift by being able to drive the hips forward, but this is also a great exercise to strengthen the glutes and hamstrings.

Use a Hip Thrust Bench and roll the barbell so that your hips are under the bar. You will find the bar to be more comfortable if you have a Hip Thrust Pad protecting you. Bobbie recommends keeping your heels inline with your hips and closer to your bum to place more emphasis on your glutes. For a different training effect, you can move your feet a bit further away from your bum to target the hamstrings more.

How to Improve Your Deadlift

Don’t neglect adding in accessory exercises to help improve your deadlift. You might feel that you need to be doing the deadlift exercise to improve your deadlift but by adding in the accessory exercises you can strengthen all the parts to make a stronger whole. Some of the accessory exercises also help improve your lifting form, making you more efficient in your lift. You do not need to add all the exercises in one training session. If you know where you are weak, start selecting the exercises that will help improve those areas or otherwise add in one or two accessory exercises per training block. If world record holder Bobbie Butters uses these exercises to improve her deadlift, then that is good enough motivation for you to add them to your routine to raise the bar in your deadlift.

Written by guest author Brendan McBirnie.

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Tags: Equipment > Bars and Weight Plates ; Exercise Type > Strength ; Misc > Mirafit Ambassadors