Its very distinct. Through the mist of chalk being slapped on the hands you sense a feeling in the air that shits about to go down. Take a closer look and you will see 20kg plates stacked enough to outweigh a small car, with a thick, muscular back as wide as a barn door stood over them. After the pre lift routine of growls and beating the chest like king kong, goliath finally bends down ready to tear the weight off the floor. You know as well as he does that its do or die. Theres only one kind of exercises with this attitude… The Deadlift.
There’s no second guessing this lift. No depth to correct. No half rep worries. You either pick it up, or you don’t. You either walk away from that weight knowing you dominated it, or gravity simply made you its bitch. The fact of the matter is the deadlift is THE go to exercise for the development of the back. Period. Big backs do not lie and they cant be hidden. If the person your looking at has thick traps protruding all the way up the neck, if they have the kind of back that looks like it would struggle fitting through both conservatory doors, if they have torn callouses and scars up their shins you best know that this person can shift a lot of weight.
Just like the article I wrote about the press, the deadlift is very much another primal, caveman exercise that will never die out. Not only did the deadlift give the Neanderthal that thick, powerful back to warn off any potential competitors for food or women, but the lift also gave him the explosive drive needed to avoid any potential predators. You see the deadlift is all about the concentric phase of the lift, no one cares about the eccentric phase because you have to pick the weight up first! Therefor it is a lift massively credited by s+c coaches for sprinting due to its need for a high rate force development (RFD). All this means is you have to summon your muscle groups, and in the deadlift it uses pretty much all of them, to fire up in the right order very quickly in order to lift that heavy weight off the ground. Even on a one rep max it may appear as though you are taking your time, in reality you are moving that weight as fast as you physically can. Don’t believe me? Try lifting your max slow. The requirement for the high RFD, coupled with the fact that this exercise primarily hits all the major muscles of the posterior chain, makes this very exercise one to be reckoned with.