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How (and Why!) To Do a Jefferson Deadlift

It’s no secret that I am the world’s biggest advocate of the Jefferson Deadlift (or Jefferson Lift, or Straddle Deadlift, or Jefferson Squat). In 2012 I set the IAWA world record for the Jefferson at 605lbs. I have personally taught hundreds of people how to do this lift, and written several articles on the topic. I want you to at least try it, because it’s a fantastic lift.

Bob Hirsh and his enormous Jefferson of 702 @ 176lbs.

My obsession with the Jefferson started a few years ago when Adam T. Glass suggested that I might have good natural leverage for it. We looked up the lift in the record books, and realized I could probably break the world record, which I later did in a training lift in 2011 and officially in a contest in 2012.

When I first met Jen Sinkler, she couldn’t conventional or sumo deadlift without pain. The Jefferson was one of the main lifts I prescribed for her to test out, and sure enough she was out of pain and back to traditional deadlifting for a PR in just a few months. Since then I have used this lift to help get countless people out of back pain. Plus, the total-body strength you develop with this lift is awesome.

Why?

Let’s get the reasoning for doing this awkward looking lift out of the way first. Here’s the short version: because you’re weak. Maybe that’s not entirely fair, but I’d be willing to bet it’s true that you are weak outside the ranges of motion that you’re accustomed to. For most people, these are very saggital-plane dominant squats and deadlifts. There’s no rotation, there’s no anti-rotation, and there’s no strength in asymmetry. Before you tell me how those are good things, let me warn you that I have a roster of people who can speak to how Jefferson lifts played a starring role in taking them out of back pain. Further, I’ve personally seen people tweak something conventional deadlifting, and I have never (knock on wood) witnessed anyone hurt anything doing a Jefferson.

The Basics

More Advanced Tweaks

One of the neat things about the Jefferson lift is that it’s already so weird and awkward, it’s impossible for anyone to pin down what “perfect form” is for it. As such, people default to finding what actually is the strongest leverage for their own body.

However, it’s worth discussing what features of alignment make for the strongest pull. In my experience, the more like a trap bar deadlift (with a rotation) you can make it, the stronger you’re going to be. Alignments that favor one leg significantly don’t work as well.

In this comparison photo, you can see in the second photo Abbie’s hips are starting much higher, her back is flatter towards the ground, and the angle between her back and legs is much greater. She is also leaned forward heavily over one leg. For her in particular, to correct this, I asked her to take a position with more external rotation of the feet as in a plié. Being a dancer, this is a position that is strong and comfortable for her.

This resulted in an immediately stronger pull that felt much better for her.

Here is a checklist to use to find better alignment:

Are your heels staying planted throughout the lift? If not, adjust so that they are.
Are your hip starting in a high position, that you could lower by adjusting your feet? (Hips high is relative, the question is, can I get lower?)
Are you fighting rotation on the way up? Could you start in such a way that the bar is already rotated to where it’s going to end?
Is the bar hitting the inside of a leg? Adjust your position, sometimes it helps to rotate a little more along the hip axis, so that the bar travels smoothly up in between your legs.
Are you mixing your grip on one of your hands? This typically helps, and most people are more comfortable in a mixed grip with the front hand turned palm facing out (supinated.)

Curious about how to integrate the Jefferson deadlift into your training to make your pulling strength downright impressive? This and dozens of other variations in my deadlift book, Off The Floor, will catapult your strength into another dimension. In addition you’ll learn to use biofeedback, giving you an unprecedented blueprint for success in your training. This is the exact template I used to skyrocket my deadlift from a measly 245 pounds to not one but three different 600+ pound deadlifts in 3 variations, including a world record.

by david 12 Comments

3 Tips for Lifting While Sorting Through SI Joint Pain

If you suffer from SI joint pain, chances are you’ve been locked into the same ranges of motion for too long. Shift your mindset in training to find a resolution.

Lifters with ambitious goals are more susceptible to SI Joint injury because of the unique loading that heavy deadlifting, squatting, and swinging place on the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex. And, if perfect form were enough to avoid problems, some of the best fitness professionals in the world wouldn’t be suffering the same fate.

I have been exceptionally lucky (possibly even exceptionally smart), but in the years since I’ve adopted a eustress training model, I’ve avoided injuries — save for one. That first and only was a sacroiliac (SI) joint injury from doing something unforgivably stupid in the gym. I did multiple sets of multiple reps of deadlifts at a percentage of 1RM higher than I normally would. On the second rep of the third set of 545, a small firecracker went off in my lower back. By the next day, I couldn’t bend over to put my shoes on.

SI joint pain does not usually begin the way it did for me, with an acute injury. The sensation often begins slowly, with pain radiating down one leg or on one side of the lower back. And, strangely, much of the time those who experience SI joint pain are fairly experienced lifters who use good form (think: a flat or lordodic lower back, good extension throughout the spine and strong hips. Yet pain is present during deadlifts or squats; some people are even in what my friend Frankie Faires calls omni-contextual pain (meaning pain no matter what they’re doing).

The typical advice is to do mobility and corrective work, or to try to resolve strength asymmetries, but I’ve discovered a faster way. Eight weeks after my injury, I pulled a Jefferson Lift of 605 to break an IAWA world record that had stood for over a decade. Just a couple months after that, I cracked the 600 barrier for the first time more conventionally with a 603lb sumo deadlift in competition at a bodyweight of 193.

How, you may ask? The shift in mindset required for resolving this type of pain is understanding what you are doing, what you’re not doing (this is important), working within your limits, moving what’s not moving, and adding more variety of movement to your repertoire of strength. Because this injury is so common, I’ve had a chance to test out these three methods (I’ve provided below) on a number of my clients. And, these three tips helped them to get out of pain and become stronger than they ever were before.

1. Lighten Your Load & Respect Your Limits

First things first: Chill out a little. Crank up the volume on submaximal lifts, and work within your limits. That means if you feel any pain in any movement, it’s beyond your current limitations.

Depending on how recently and seriously you’ve gotten hurt, you may not even be able to pick a pencil off the ground. Whatever you can do, that is where you will start. If you have to place a kettlebell on a box so that it’s only a few inches to the lockout of a deadlift, so be it. If recurring SI joint pain is a problem but isn’t a recent acute injury, you might be able to skip some of the easier steps and start with the bigger lifts, getting you closer to your end goal, which is getting back to the lifts you want to do.

2. Move What’s Not Moving

I’ve seen the most SI joint issues with people who do almost all of their lifting in the same planes, and include the least variety of movement. Moving exclusively in the saggital plane, the squat, deadlift, and swing keep the spine locked in a vertical column, often in slight extension, which is considered the safest position. While this is a good thing for a max-effort lift, we have to retain all the functions of a healthy spine to be able to move without pain. The spine is intended to flex, extend, rotate, and laterally flex. This is non-negiotable. The important piece is respecting your limits. Adding variety and changing the way you lift and move will help you regain ranges of motion you’ve lost. Worth noting: Single-leg variations are nice, but if you examine the motions they are virtually identical to bilateral variations of the same movement, and in fact involve even more rigidity in the same plane. Thus, they may exacerbate SI joint pain. If you’re currently in pain, asymmetrical lifting will give your joints more room to move, while other movements with rotation, anti-rotation and other ranges of motion will help make you stronger in every direction. Get going with these exercises.

Bodyweight Side Bend:

If it seems too simple, it might be because you never do it. A side bend will introduce lateral flexion of the spine, a movement very rarely.

Stand with your hands by your side, and point your fingers down to the floor. Reach down as far as you easily can, then stand back up alternating sides.

Lying on the floor and doing the same side bends is another good variation, that will force you to use lateral flexion, rather than any front to back flexion or extension of the spine.

Standing Alternating Toe Touch:

Straight out of the 1987 Crystal Light National Aerobic Championships, the standing alternating toe touch is a simple exercise with high payoff. The rotation and forward flexion required in this exercise is lost for many people.

Standing with your feet about shoulder-width apart, bend over, and — rounding your back — reach past the outside of your left ankle with your right hand. Reach as far as you easily can, and then stand back up. Alternate sides, reaching as far as you easily can each rep.

Round Your Back:

I know this will ruffle feathers in some circles, but if the spine wasn’t meant to move it would be a bone. Unloaded rounding of your back in both flexion and extension will train ranges of flexion and extension you don’t normally use. The danger in flexion (or extension) occurs at extreme end range of motion with high loads. In his research, Stu McGill found that strongmen are able to “lock” their spines in a rounded position, but not so rounded that it’s in the danger zone. In other words, their back muscles protect their spine by keeping it within its limits. You might not be a strongman, but your function is the same — your limits are just different. Since you won’t be approaching true end range of motion, and won’t be using anything more than bodyweight, this movement is as safe as any exercise can be. Flexing and extending the spine also provides a pumping action for nutrient-rich cerebrospinal fluid that has no other pump like the heart. Try these two exercises to round in both directions:

Tuck Roll for Flexion:

Tuck yourself into a tight ball and roll forward and backward on your back. If you “clunk” as you roll across one section of your spine, you’ll know that your spine isn’t rounding into an arch. This provides a quick and easy way to assess your progress in restoring spinal flexion.

Wall Walk Bridge for Extension:

The easiest starting point for extension is bridging by walking your hands down a wall you’re facing away from. Don’t go any farther than you’re stable in and comfortable with. Experiment with and explore other bridging progressions once you’ve mastered this.

3. Get Strong in Awkward Positions

Jefferson Lift:

One of my favorite asymmetrical deadlifts is the Jefferson Lift, or Straddle Deadlift. This lift involves stepping over the bar, introducing an offset foot position and rotation through the spine. Lifting in this disadvantaged leverage position will not only help train unused spine angles, but it will also transfer to your traditional deadlift variations.

Set-up is highly individual depending on body leverages and limb lengths. Stand behind the barbell, and step over the bar with your right foot (you’ll switch sides the next set). Your left hand will supinate (palm facing forward), so that your grip is mixed, making the bar easier and more comfortable to hang on to. Your right hand will remain palm facing backwards. Bring your hands down to meet the bar, then adjust your feet, widening your stance if you need to (just make sure no one is in the bathroom stall next to you) until you feel like you have a strong leverage position on the bar. Your knees will track over your toes, but the foot direction is up to you and your leverages. Your upper torso will be rotated to the right. When you feel like you’ve found the strongest leverage, stand up with the bar. Yes, it remains between your legs. No, you will not smash your bits (unless you have incredibly short arms).

Russian Hockey Deadlift:

Introducing rotation from a symmetrical foot position loads up your tissue almost completely on one side, and involves extension and rotation to lift the weight. For those who are strong enough, going heavy provides extra excitement in this lift.

Start out with a dumbbell or kettlebell that’s only about one-sixth of your max deadlift, place it to one side of your body next to the outside of your foot. Hinging at the hips, bend over to the side and grab hold of the weight. In one motion, stand up to the top of the deadlift with the weight in the center of your body as if you were deadlifting normally. Set the weight down on the opposite side. Reset yourself, and pick the weight up again, moving it from one side to the other repeatedly. Properly performed, this only involves a slight rotation in the spine, and very little if any forward flexion or ‘rounding.’

Weighted Side Bend:

Now that you’ve regained a lost movement with the bodyweight side bend listed before, it’s time to add some resistance to your lateral flexion.

Starting with a dumbbell or kettlebell that’s about one-eighth of your max deadlift, reach as far down as you easily can, stand up straight, and alternate sides.

Make More Progress

If you suffer from SI joint pain, chances are you’ve been locked into the same ranges of motion for too long. In a recent article, Tony Gentilcore noted a trend in his clients that too much extension seems to be just as bad as not enough. Getting stronger in awkward leverages in more ranges of motion will pay off no matter what. If your goal is to move as much weight as humanly possible, we’ve found that getting stronger outside of the “ideal position” will carry over to your traditional lifts.

Additionally, I won’t claim to have a cure for all types of Lower back/ SI pain, but by examining the most common movement patterns associated to people being in SI joint pain, in my experience we can often find a solution.

Using the exercises provided above, we’ve been albe to improve and even “fix” many SI joint pain case , which is why we keep them in our programs to add variety to the training and resiliency to our client’s bodies.

Finally, it’s a good idea to always reassess what you’re doing in your training and think about what you might be missing, before it’s too late.

References:

McGill SM, McDermott A, Fenwick CM. Comparison of different strongman events: trunk muscle activation and lumbar spine motion, load, and stiffness. J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Jul;23(4):1148-61.

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Why old school?

One question I hear a lot, some might even call it a criticism depending on the context, is why I lean so heavily on old school movements instead of what is popular and mainstream. It’s a good question and to understand the answer you have to go back and question some of the assumptions along the way.

The first assumption to examine is one that is very logical – that the most safe and effective exercises would be the ones that would stand the test of time and would be the ones we’d focus now. Another way of looking at it would be that the unsafe, ineffective, inefficient, or superfluous movements would get dropped along the way. The reality is that exercises get dropped, but not for any reason that has to do with how good they are for you to do at all. A classic example of this that most people are blissfully unaware of is that the original Olympic lifts are not the snatch and clean and jerk as they are performed today. In fact, those two lifts have only been contested since 1972. The original Olympic lifts are the one-hand snatch, the one-hand clean and jerk, and the two-hands clean and jerk.

These one-hand power lifts are absolutely fantastic for building total body coordination, power, balance, and strength. To get into specifically why is beyond the scope of this article, but I’d also argue that they’re in many ways safer than their bilateral counterparts. And you don’t have to use as much absolute load to get the same training effect. You know why they were dropped from competition? Because contests took too long with competitors having to do both hands. Once they were dropped from contests, they naturally fell out popularity with everyone else. Plus, there’s an argument to be made that in the 60’s when bodybuilding really started to become popular these exercises that required tremendous strength but not necessarily muscular size fell out of favor.

In the same way a whole host of movements and exercises that are great for the individual have fallen out popular usage for reasons wholly unrelated to how good they are on an individual level.

The next assumption is that there is a best or perfect way to do exercises and this has been codified and disseminated and you can compare what you’re doing to the textbook and know if it’s correct or not. The result is that if you do a conventional deadlift it’s very likely that every asshole in the gym has an opinion on whether or not you’re doing it correctly and is likely to share it.

On the other hand, if you do a Jefferson deadlift they will assume you are doing a deadlift so far from correctly that they won’t bother to try to correct you.

But one of the things that I hope people take away from what I teach is that there really is no empirically correct way to do any movement. Every individual is different and your movement reflects that. Sure there can be generalities and common things that are usually true, but not always. With old school movements there is often more of a context for variability because no one really has an idea of what ideal should look like. Everyone I’ve ever seen bent press does it a little differently and none of them are wrong. This also ties into movements that have been bastardized over the years to make them easier to judge in competition, and those rules bleed into the form recommendations whether they’re good or not.

Listen, there are plenty of movements that have been forgotten for good reason. I’m not planning to bring back chest expanders any time soon. But if an “old school” movement is safe, effective, and it imposes stresses in the right places to achieve the training effect I’m looking for you can bet I’m going to use it and teach it.