maratoolRomanian Dead Lift
How to do the romanian dead lift
- Place a barbell in front of your feet on the ground.
- Grasp the barbell with a grip a bit wider than shoulder width apart.
- Bend your knees slightly, keeping your hips and back straight.
- Lift the bar straight up concentrating on using your hips as you stand.
- Stand with the bar resting against your thighs.
- Lower the bar to the floor with a slight bend in your knees flexing your hips back for stability.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the hamstrings, which extend the hip and bend the knee, frequently at both joints in the same repetition.
Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the calves control the ankle and hold the heel position; the quadriceps straighten the knee and take load on the descent; the glutes finish hip extension.
Every exercise for:HamstringsCalvesQuadricepsGlutes
How this movement works
Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.
Every exercise using:Barbell
These train the hamstrings too, using equipment this one does not:
- Seated Leg Curlmachine
- Stiff-Legged Dumbbell Deadliftdumbbell
- 90/90 Hamstringbody only
- Alternating Hang Cleankettlebell
- Ball Leg Curlexercise ball
Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.