Trap Bar Deadlift

🎯 Quadriceps🏋️ OtherBeginnerCompoundGlutes (2°)Hamstrings (2°)

How to do the trap bar deadlift

  1. For this exercise load a trap bar, also known as a hex bar, to an appropriate weight resting on the ground. Stand in the center of the apparatus and grasp both handles.
  2. Lower your hips, look forward with your head and keep your chest up.
  3. Begin the movement by driving through the heels and extend your hips and knees. Avoid rounding your back at all times.
  4. At the completion of the movement, lower the weight back to the ground under control.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

Every exercise for:QuadricepsGlutesHamstrings

How this movement works

The load travels toward you and several joints bend to bring it there. The arms finish work the back starts, so grip and elbow flexors sit in the path of every repetition: when people stall on a compound pull, it is more often the hands giving out than the primary muscle running out of force.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:

Difficulty

Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.

Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 70 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.