It’s leg day and that means time to dead lift ladies

So why should females do stiff leg deadlifts and what do stiff leg deadlifts work as far as your muscles go?

Leg day is my favorite day as it helps me to burn a ton of calories due to the heavy loads and intense super sets of exercises, but it also helps to build the lower half of my body in ways that it never could have been built before. Now I’m not saying I’m anywhere NEAR where I hope to be as far as strength and body shape in my glutes yet, I’m a white girl who has to work for her read and it’s still a work in progress, but lifting heavy weights surely helps. Dead lifts are an exercise that works the entire body and engages the core (abs) as well – so I know that when I do them I am getting a full body workout but one that also helps to build my glutes and hamstrings.

The deadlift is a very functional exercise for everyday life. How many times a day to do you pick something up from off the floor? Whether it’s a baby or a bin of heavy laundry or something you just dropped – the dead lift and the square are a movement you do every single day. It’s important that we do this motion with weights and in good form to build our lower body, core and back as well. I would suggest doing these after squats, but not before them. They still engage the lower back, glutes and hamstrings but are not as complex of a movement as the squat so they should go after a squat.

The SLDL (Stiff Leg Deadlift) can sometimes because the straight leg dead lift, but Stiff Leg is correct. When doing a SLDL form is so important as doing these wrong can kill and screw up your lower back. Do not do this exercise for a one rep max, or do it with weight that is too heavy to do about 10 of these. If you do these wrong you can cause some serious damage in your back (don’t be scared, just be smart!)

When doing the SLDL do not round your back. Keep your legs about shoulder width apart and your knees slightly bent, do not have them locked straight you will need to have a slight bend in them as you drop up and down. Your back should remain straight, shoulders back, head up. Keep the bar close to your legs and shins up and down. The bar will make a straight line up and down if done properly.

At the end of the movement, as you squeeze your glutes and use your hamstrings to come back to standing position you will pull your glutes tight and push your hips out slightly. Then repeat, lowering down slowly with a straight back and the bar close to the heels and push your hips back then pull up and squeeze! I love the SLDL because it doesn’t use a ton of my quad muscles to do this, which can sometimes start to get larger when I do heavier back squats, so the stiff leg dead lifts allows me to work my glutes without so much pressure and focus on my quad muscles.

Below is a quick Vine video of me doing a few of the SLDL in my gym at home. I hope this helps you to get a better idea of how to add this exercise into your leg day routine. It is now one of my absolute favorite exercises to do to target and lengthen my hamstrings, which tend to be tight in general.

www.vine.co/missads1981

 

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