Romanian Deadlift Training Guide
By Ed Clements
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The Romanian deadlift (RDL) is a fantastic exercise for increasing your leg speed and power, and is great for building and strengthening your lower back – it’s also pretty fun. The Romanian deadlift, named after the Romanian Olympic Lifter Nicu Vlad, is a variation on the standard deadlift.
I don’t recommend the RDL over the classic version, but swapping between various different ways of performing the deadlift will help to keep your training fun. One way to incorporate the RDL into your training would be to use it as a secondary exercise to the squat or deadlift.
The RDL deadlift is great for working the posterior chain and this will help you to squat heavier weights and will help your deadlift lockout. The RDL is a top exercise for sprinters, powerlifters, bodybuilders (and anyone really)! It will also improve your grip strength quickly.
Romanian Deadlift technique:
Preparation:
Set your feet shoulder width apart with your toes pointing slightly outwards.
Hold the barbell with an overhand grip. Your hands should be slightly wider apart than your legs – you don’t want to be so close that you touch your legs during the movment, but if you go too wide the exercise becomes more difficult.
The exercise:
The movement starts from the top with your torso straight.
Bend your knees slightly – ten to 20 degrees.
Your shins should stay pretty well vertical all the way through the exercise.
Keep most of your weight on your heels.
Push your hips backwards to start the movement. The Romanian deadlift is primarily a hip movement.
Push your chest out and pull your shoulder blades back – this will stop you from curving your back.
Go down as far as you can without rounding your back – generally just below your kneecaps, but this depends on flexibility, arm length etc.
Look directly forward for the whole movement – watch yourself in a mirror if you can.
Let the bar slide down your thighs and over your knees and then back up again – at no point should the bar be away from your body.
Keep your arms straight at all times during the movement – one way to make sure your arms are straight is to consciously contract your triceps.
Recommended rep range:
Generally speaking 5 to 10 is a good rep range. It’s unusual to do low rep work on the RDL.
Classic mistakes:
Over extending your back on the way up.
Rounding your back - ways to tell if you’ve rounded your back are if you’ve looked down or if the tension has left your hamstrings and instead you feel it in your lower back.
Looking down – this will round your back.
Not using your hips - this is more of a hip exercise than the standard deadlift – use them!
Knees travelling inward – keep them in line with your toes at all times.
Training Footwear:
Hard soled shoes are recommended over running shoes for dead lifting because the soles of running shoes are designed to compress – this will not help your balance or stability at all, and your performance will suffer. Training in bare feet is great (as long as you don’t drop the weights onto your feet).
* Ed Clements, creator of muscle-health-fitness.com, is an independent health and fitness writer who specialises in dietary, supplementation and weights training advice for improving body composition and hormone balance.
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Useful sites:
CRITICAL BENCH - excellent weights training site
Mahler's Aggressive Strength - High quality kettlebells, weights and fitness training site
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