How to Perform the Trap Bar Deadlift?

The trap bar deadlift is the first event of the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT).

The trap bar deadlift is an excellent measure of full-body strength. Compared to conventional deadlifts, the trap bar deadlift technique is easier to master. The lift allows more freedom of movement while still properly performing it. The trap bar deadlift can also be used by people with various musculoskeletal pains with less difficulty.

As a Physical Therapist, I am 100% on-board with the trap bar deadlift (AKA the 3-repetition maximum deadlift, MDL) as the first event of the ACFT. One of the greatest benefits of the deadlift is that it will help Soldiers perform better on the standing power throw, sprint drag carry, and 2-mile run.

For too long many Soldiers have avoided strengthening and our injury rates prove it. It’s time that a true assessment of full-body strength is included in the Army’s physical fitness test.

So make sure you’re doing it right so that you increase your likelihood to break through plateaus while avoiding pain and injury!

Required Equipment

• a trap bar (also known as a hex bar)
• weights

The Trap Bar Deadlift Stance

The stance is your starting position standing inside the bar.

ATP 7-22.01 H2F Testing states the following but I’ll add some optimization tweaks after:

During the Preparatory phase

Get centered: When you step inside the trap bar ensure that you’re centered from right to left.

Stand with your heels at shoulder-width or preferably slightly wider: Step apart so that your heels are about shoulder-width apart or slightly wider. If you’re a tall person or have broad shoulders you’ll likely need to be narrower than you would like to be. If you’re short, you can likely be wider which may be beneficial.

Stepping apart is called abduction and helps maximize gluteal muscle activation. In general, the narrower your stance the lower the strength contribution from your gluteal muscles (gluteus maximus, medius, & minimus).

Align the center of the bar from front to back over the middle of your foot: Draw an imaginary horizontal line from the right side of the bar where the weights are to the left side where the weights are. That line represents the center of mass of the weight you’re about to lift. You want to maintain that center of mass of the weight over the middle of your foot.

If this were the conventional deadlift with the straight barbell and you were in the proper position you should be able to look down and see the bar directly over the middle of your foot, just about right above your shoelaces. Your shins should then be about 1-2 inches away from the bar as you stand upright. Try to recreate this position inside the trap bar.

Slightly point your toes out about 5-10 degrees. Slight external rotation further maximizes gluteal muscle activation. Interestingly, externally rotating the hips through activating the glutes results in abduction (widening) of the knees without moving the feet. This is exactly what we’re going for inside the trap bar!

Adjusting your deadlift stance to decrease pain

The purpose of making small modifications to remove the pain from performing the deadlift (this is true of every exercise, FYI) is to LISTEN TO YOUR PAIN.

If you don’t have any pain scroll down to the Setup steps OR read on to better help your fellow Soldiers in pain while working out.

The goal of these two small adjustments is to fine-tune your technique to where the pain either goes away completely or is significantly reduced.

Your pain while deadlifting is telling you something: either 1) that you’re doing something wrong during your technique or 2) that you’re working a weak or painful part of your body. Both are likely, especially in Soldiers with chronic aches and pains. Or those who are just plain grumpy and disgruntled!

It’s very important to get in the habit of making a small adjustment and then immediately repeating the exercise to see if your adjustment worked. Always follow this pattern of adjusting & reassessing. Listen to your body and your pain, they’ll tell you whether what you’re doing is right or wrong.

Adjustment #1: Your stance width

My first adjustment when someone reports ankle, knee, or hip pain during the deadlift is to adjust their heel width slightly wider. Adjust by moving each heel 1 centimeter wider.

Repeat the deadlift.

Did the pain get better or worse?

If the pain got better but was still present, step another 1 centimeter wider.

Repeat the deadlift.

Did the pain get better or worse from the last attempt?

• If the pain went away, great! You just found your perfect stance width.
• If the pain got worse then go back to the previous position or slightly narrower following the same approach of making small adjustments and reassessing how it feels after every adjustment.
• If the pain stayed the same but definitely didn’t worsen, stay with this width or the previous one and move on to the next adjustment.

This is my pattern of fine-tuning every movement pattern we do in life, whether involving 300 lbs of weight or merely body weight.

If you still have pain after adjusting your stance width continue with the rest of the stance modifications one at a time. Always adjust and reassess until you get it perfect or as good as it’s going to get.

Adjustment #2: Your foot angle

The body is known as a kinetic chain for a reason. What happens to your feet affects your hip and gluteal muscle activation.

External rotation helps maximize gluteal muscle activation. The glutes are CRITICAL to deadlifting (and squatting) correctly and without knee or hip pain.

If you’re struggling to activate your glutes or are just plain weak as many Soldiers are in their hips, it may help to slightly rotate your toes outward without moving your heels. Keep your heels in their optimal position from Adjustment #1.

Follow the same adjust & reassess process that we walked through in Adjustment #1 to find your optimal foot angle.

A simple visual of a good starting place is to have your feet pointed in the same directions that they do while standing at attention.

Once you’ve found your pain-free or least-painful stance to perform the trap bar deadlift you’re ready to lift. If you still have pain performing the deadlift there are more technique adjustments and modifications that can help. It’s often the movement of the bar that places abnormal strains on people’s bodies.

Continually listen to your body and your pain and ALWAYS use the adjust & reassess method of perfecting your technique.

Setup for the Trap Bar Deadlift

I always coach three main setup points in the starting (standing) position for the trap bar deadlift.

These are done before you even touch the bar. Once you’re ready to go down and grab the bar there are two more setups. Then you’re ready to lift!

Once you’re in the proper stance that you found above these setups will ensure that you perform the deadlift right. The setups help you keep your muscles activated and joints moving throughout the correct ranges of motion throughout every repetition.

Don’t assume that you have good form because you can lift a lot. Trust me, I’ve seen some 400 lbs+ deadlifts with awful form. Your ability to pick up weight doesn’t impress me but picking up a heavy load with good form will!

Experienced lifters should catch on to these technique setups quicker and will likely be able to implement them to their lifting soon.

However, it’s very important that beginners take it slow and focus on feeling out every setup step and movement. I recommend that beginners exaggerate these steps to develop a higher level of body awareness until they learn to move without disengaging (turning off, losing) your muscle contractions.

Once the setup steps and movement patterns begin to feel more normal and you can automatically get in the deadlift position without having to walk through the steps you’ve graduated on from a novice deadlifter!

These are also the verbal cues that I give when teaching the deadlift, so feel free to use them as needed as you help others get the technique down.

Setup point #1

Activate your back muscles by squeezing your shoulder blades together and down. Arch your lower back as if lifting up the top of your buttocks.

Activating the back muscles in this way ensures that the entire column of spinal muscles is turned on and ready to pick something up without bending (flexing) forward.

You should end up in some level of hyperextension but we don’t want to deadlift hyperextended, so the next step is activating the abs.

Setup point #2

While keeping the tension in your back muscles, activate your abs as if you’re preparing for me to sucker-punch you in your stomach.

Setup point #2 should pull you from hyperextension into a neutral position. Like when you make a fist you’re using both your wrist flexors and extensors at the same time, you don’t want your back muscles or your abdominal muscles to turn off during the deadlift. This takes practice.

A neutral spinal position is the position we want to maintain during a deadlift, squat, Romanian deadlift, kettlebell swings, etc. Basically, a neutral spinal position is always the right answer!

Setup point #3

While maintaining the neutral spine position and muscle activation, lockout your glutes by squeezing your butt cheeks together and digging your feet (also known as rooting) into the ground, but not so much that they actually move further out.

As you lock out your glutes three subtle things should happen:

• your knees should slightly rotate out so that they are each pointing in the same direction that your big toe is pointing
• you may not even be able to realize this unless you focus hard on watching, but your knees will also slightly abduct (spread apart) as your lockout your glutes
• your arches should slightly raise, you may feel your weight slightly shift more toward the outsides of your feet

One of the verbal cues I give someone who struggles to lockout their glutes is “Imagine you’re pinching a penny between your buttcheeks. Squeeze the penny and if you don’t drop it (i.e. lose the tension in your glutes) during the lift then I’ll let you keep it.”

It’s not the most motivating cue and I’m definitely not double-checking anyone, but it seems to work. But if people do struggle a good tactile cue is to gently push inward on the outsides of their knees. That’s a great way to tell if they’re keeping their hips activated.

Grabbing the Bar

Once you’re set up according to the previous 3 steps you must go down and grab the bar without losing your muscle activation.

This is very challenging for people with limited ankle, hip, and spinal mobility or tight hamstrings and calf muscles. Lifting through a full range of motion with proper form is the best way to improve your mobility. Perform static stretching (3 x 30-45 sec holds) after you’re done working out to lengthen your muscles.

Setup #4

Bend forward to grab the bar by hinging your hips backward and down as your knees simultaneously flex and slightly move forward. Don’t lose your neutral spine position or let your glutes unlock.

Grab the trap bar in the middle of the handle area.

***Ensure that you line up your middle finger with the bar holding the weights. This ensures that the bar won’t tilt when you pick it up. To make sure I have the correct hand position I extend my middle finger as if flipping off the bar to ensure it’s centered.

Setup #5

Engage your lats and mid-back muscles, squeezing your shoulder blades together to take the tension out of the bar.

When you do this it may feel like you’re pulling yourself down to the bar. Again, ensure that you don’t lose your neutral spine or glute activation.

Final thoughts on the setup

I laid out these setup steps in great detail to ensure that someone can read this, visualize it, and do it or coach someone else to do it. I plan to add some videos as I become more sophisticated with this technology stuff. 😉

The setup seems complex, but when I deadlift I do everything you just read in about 2 seconds.

Start out slow, practice until you become proficient and it’s second nature, and then never stop doing these things.

This is the end of the setup! Now it’s time to lift.

Performing the Trap Bar Deadlift

In the instant that you engage your lats and mid-back muscles you transition from setup to a weight lifter.

If you’ve followed the stance and setup points above you’re in a great position to lift well. But if you skipped past or ignored them you’re at increased risk of injury or a lack of gains due to suboptimal muscle length-tension relationships. Make sure you’re in the correct setup position before lifting.

The deadlift is rather complicated to set up but easy to perform.

These are the instructions for performing the maximum deadlift correctly to count for the ACFT.

Don’t confuse these instructions with performing the deadlift. These are simple checks to ensure your rep counts, they are NOT how to correctly deadlift. That’s what this entire post is about!

If you do everything in this post your reps will count and you’ll be better off.

With that said, let’s pick up some weight!

Technique movement #1

Pick up (i.e. deadlift) the bar so that it moves in a straight vertical line until you’re standing up straight.

That’s it.

If you pick up the bar so that it moves in a straight line all of your joints will have moved correctly and all of your muscles will have remained engaged.

The challenge is that many people don’t perform the lift correctly. These are the troubleshooting tips that I watch for as they lift and the instructions/cues I give them to help them fix their movement pattern.

Technique movement #2

Lower the bar straight down to the ground by simultaneously hinging your hips back as your knees flex and slightly move forward while maintaining the neutral spine position with your glutes still locked out.

Don’t drop the weights or bounce them. Control the weights all the way down.

Lowering the bar with proper form is actually really challenging.

Lowering the bar is the eccentric (negative) phase of the lift. The eccentric phase generates more muscle activation and force while increasing the tension on your tendons.

Maximize your strength by controlling the weight down to the ground EVERY rep!

I’m serious – putting the weight down well is more strenuous than picking it up.

Another benefit of lifting properly through the full range of motion is that this is the most effective method of improving hip mobility and flexibility. This is critical for people with tight hamstrings!

Once the weight is down and you let go, that’s it! The trumpet sounds, the angels sing, the war in Afghanistan ends and the Taliban is at peace.

Unfortunately, finding someone who deadlifts with near-perfect form isn’t all that common. So get good at identifying poor technique and learning how to fix it.

Training the Trap Bar Deadlift

Deadlifting with proper setup and technique is critical for building strength and preventing injury.

Many people deadlift with bad form and often get away with it… for a while. They may see gains for a short time and not have any pain but eventually, they’ll stop improving. This is usually when they start pushing harder and then the pain shows ups.

The problem with deadlifting with poor form is that eventually, your quads will be disproportionately stronger than your glutes and back. You’ll slowly begin to realize that you’re not making gains anymore and you may begin to develop pain.

But correcting your setup and technique as I’ve walked you through here ensures that as you train, you effectively strengthen EVERY MUSCLE the deadlift works. You’ll never hit a plateau because of a muscular imbalance, your improvements will only slow down as you begin to reach the limit of your genetic potential.

And again, as a PT I don’t want to treat you for your back pain. If you come to see me for back pain I’m going to recommend stabbing you with needles and walking to the gym to deadlift. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

To learn more about the simple coaching tips & technique tricks that I use to help people improve their deadlift in around 2-5 minutes, click here to read

Sets and Reps for Deadlifting

For beginner deadlifters

If you’re a beginner learning how to deadlift I recommend starting out with a weight that you can easily lift off the floor.

Focus on your setup and form by practicing everything I’ve walked through above. Stick to light deadlifts and focus on being more aggressive on other exercises like hip thrusts, RDLs to build the strength you need to deadlift well.

Beginners should stick to 3-4 sets x 8-12 reps.

The goal during this stage is to make the deadlift technique second-nature.

When you begin to feel that it’s too easy, go up in weight to where it’s still easy to complete 4 x 12 reps.

Slowly add more weight over the coming weeks until you reach the point at which it becomes difficult to lift the weight at least 8 reps with perfect form. Continue emphasizing perfect form at this stage!

For intermediate deadlifters

If you’ve been lifting for a while but haven’t paid much attention to your form or have only been lifting for a few months I consider you intermediate level.

Intermediate lifters should stick to 4-5 sets x 8-12 reps.

Lift a weight that’s challenging to lift with good form for at least 8-10 reps.

When you can lift that weight 12 times, go up in weight as long as you can maintain good form for at least 8 reps. Continue this progression for as long as you desire to, it’s honestly fine to stay here forever if you want to.

This has you working out in the hypertrophy (muscle growth, size) range and is important for building usable strength and some muscle mass.

This is honestly where I’m most comfortable lifting and I don’t like lifting as heavy as possible all the time. So this helps me lift with better form and sometimes I’ll ramp up to a 3 x 5 and try to make some strength gains and then I’ll go back to this and repeat another ramp back up. This is how periodization works.

For advanced deadlifters

I define an advanced deadlifter as someone who’s likely deadlifting over 350 lbs on a conventional deadlift and who has been doing it for years.

Advanced lifters *can* train at closer to their 3 or 5-rep max weights, but they don’t have to as I indicated above. Sets of 3-5 reps are very intense. I recommend only progressing to this slowly after years of training when you have a solidly strong back, hips, and shoulders.

Advanced lifters can do a 3 x 5 or 5 x 3 but should also be periodically cycling their training away from only lifting so heavy all the time.

This is likely going to be over your 85% 1RM effort. Lifting this heavy for too many reps, too often, and/or for too long leads to overuse pain or potentially an acute muscle tear.

The longer you’ve been lifting the smarter you must train to continue to make gains.

You cannot continue doing what you’ve always done. Changing up your lifting routine by implementing some sort of periodization program can help greatly. You must alternate through periods of strengthening and hypertrophy. You must also emphasize all the supporting muscles to ensure that they are also strong enough to lift a heavier load.

It takes more work to be strong, that’s why it’s so impressive!

Finally, sometimes less is more. Most people struggle with the thought of “only” deadlifting once or twice per week for a 3 x 5 or 5 x 3 at their 3-rep max (3RM). They think they’ll lose strength.

But in reality, that higher intensity effort and more recovery time and more chances to work the other muscles just might be what your new personal best 1RM needs to show up!

Summary of the Trap Bar Deadlift

The trap bar deadlift is the only measure of pure strength in the ACFT. The hand release pushups and leg tucks require strength but are muscle endurance exercises. The standing power throw is exactly what it says it is, a power exercise, the combination of strength plus speed. The sprint-drag-carry is a measure of anaerobic endurance but requires significant full-body strength, as developed by the trap bar deadlift.

The greatest benefit of the inclusion of the trap bar deadlift in the ACFT is that training it benefits the other events.

So train it right and train it often enough to see those benefits. Perfect it and it will take you far!

Cheers,