Work with us to eliminate the ugliest Romanian deadlift mistakes!

The Romanian Deadlift (RMT) is one of the most effective ways to pack some meat on your hamstrings and build real strength.

The only problem? A lot of people practice it wrong. Here's a list of the biggest mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. Reaching forward

Many people start RMT by reaching forward instead of pushing their hips back. However, the further you have the weights away from your body, the more strain you put on your spine. And that's not good.

Remedy:

• Push your hips back and reach down.

For the deadlift, I'm sure someone has told you to keep the axis close to your body, which is great advice. This increases your strength potential and drastically reduces your risk of injury.

The RMT is an exercise that is dominated by the hips traveling in a forward to backward direction. By starting to push them backwards, you'll naturally reach down, engaging your glutes and hamstrings more effectively while keeping your spine in a healthy and stable position.

2. Stretched legs

This can put a bad strain on the knees. It also greatly reduces the support of the hamstrings, which stabilise the knee. Bad.

Remedy:

• Keep the knees slightly bent.
• Try to bend your knees slightly while pushing your hips back.

The RMT is not a deadlift with the legs extended. This can strengthen the lower back and minimize hamstring assistance, so it has its place in training, but in RMT, flexed legs are not desirable. This is because they can cause lower back rounding and excessive forward reaching.

3. Legs too bent

This is also possible. In fact, it makes the RMT a classic deadlift or squat. It's not necessarily a mistake, it's just that you'll be emphasizing the quadriceps instead of the hamstrings and glutes.

Remedy:

• Try to pull your hips toward the ceiling. In a deadlift, the hips move forward and backward, while in a squat, they move up and down. Keep this in mind during the RMT as well.

These recommendations from Dr. Joel Seedman and Tony Gentilcore are very helpful.:

• Imagine that you have a string tied to your hips that pulls them back and up toward the ceiling.
• Imagine another string tied to your chest, pulling it down to the floor.
• Imagine trying to close a car door with your ass.

4. Upper back and shoulder roll

Your spine has a natural curvature, so a slight rounding of the upper back is not as bad as people claim. It's different with the lower back. Once they curve, your mid-body and buttocks no longer provide support to your spine and your pelvis tilts back excessively.

The shoulders and upper back can also excessively internally rotate (round). This is usually caused by the fact that the person is reaching forward, not down.

It is necessary to maintain upper back involvement and tension throughout the body throughout the execution of any deadlift. Period. Once you relax, you lose the integrity of your spine.

Remedy:

• Squeeze your armpits together (and use a rubber band).
• Imagine you have an orange in both armpits that you want to squeeze. This will keep tension in your upper back and minimize slouching. Tony Gentilcore trains it like this.
• If the rubber loses tension, it means your lats have lost tension. Try to keep them engaged at all times

Bonus: Improve your weight distribution

This isn't actually a mistake. It's just a recommendation for better hamstring and glute involvement.

Complex RMT exercises engage multiple muscles at once. You can modify them to exercise some of those muscles more. We're going to talk about more glute and hamstring involvement. Focus on how your weight is distributed in your feet.

Pushing the weight mainly on your heels will engage your glutes a little bit more, and upwards you'll use them more to extend your hips forward.

By pushing the weight to the front/midfoot you will feel more hamstring involvement. Also, try to pull the feet backwards when extending the hips without actually moving them.

Source: ww.t-nation.com - The 4 Ugliest Romanian Deadlift Mistakes
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