What Is a Deadlift? Why the Fitness Industry Got It Wrong

Originally published August 20, 2016. Updated February 2026 with peer-reviewed research.

In this article:

• The deadlift is not what you think it is
• DEAD + LIFT — the two-word definition
• The science confirms it (4 peer-reviewed studies)
• Every deadlift variation, different pattern, same starting condition
• What the fitness industry gets wrong
• The Romanian deadlift proves it
• This is not new — deadlift history
• Everything you lift dead is a deadlift
• References

• The deadlift is not what you think it is
• DEAD + LIFT — the two-word definition
• The science confirms it (4 peer-reviewed studies)
• Every deadlift variation, different pattern, same starting condition
• What the fitness industry gets wrong
• The Romanian deadlift proves it
• This is not new — deadlift history
• Everything you lift dead is a deadlift
• References

Peer-reviewed biomechanics research has confirmed what we first wrote about in 2016: the sumo and conventional deadlift use fundamentally different movement patterns — different trunk angles, different muscle activation, and 25–40% differences in mechanical work at major joints.^1,2 Yet both are called “deadlifts.” If the word described a movement pattern, that would be impossible. It doesn’t. It describes a starting condition.

The deadlift is not what you think it is. And that’s not your fault.

Outside of the kettlebell world, most people think a deadlift is one specific exercise — the hip hinge with a barbell. That’s what trainers teach, that’s what social media repeats, and that’s what certification bodies put in their textbooks. But it’s wrong.

I know, because I used to think the same thing. I was taught the hip hinge deadlift, and for years I was under the impression it was THE deadlift — the one and only way to do it. If you did it any other way, it wasn’t a deadlift. That was until I started asking questions, analyzing, and making up my own mind about the exercise. How you think about the deadlift depends entirely on how your trainer taught it. Some people learn it with a wide stance, some with a narrow stance, some with a hip hinge, some with a squat. And every group thinks their version is THE deadlift.

They’re all wrong. And they’re all right. Because the word “deadlift” doesn’t describe how you move. It describes the state of the weight.

DEAD + LIFT

To understand the exercise, split the word into two: DEAD and LIFT.

Dead — an object not moving, with no momentum.

Lift — raising an object to a higher position.

“Deadlift refers to the lifting of dead (without momentum) weight”

That’s it. Whenever a weight is lifted dead from the ground — regardless of how your body moves to do it — it’s a deadlift. We call this the starting condition: the state of the external load at the moment the lift begins.

A deadlift has a dead starting condition. The weight is motionless on the ground. You generate force from zero.

Strength training already uses this kind of language — it’s just that people don’t always notice. In kettlebell training, a dead clean starts from the ground — the weight is dead. A hang clean involves the weight passing through a hanging position below the hips. A swing clean uses a swinging action. The words “dead,” “hang,” and “swing” describe the state or action of the weight, not how your body moves. And yet, the same confusion that plagues the deadlift has happened to the swing — ask most people to do a kettlebell swing and they’ll default to one pattern: the hip hinge. We cover that problem in detail in The Kettlebell Swing Is Not a Hip Hinge.

Once you understand this, a whole new world opens up. Suddenly you’re not boxed into one movement. You can deadlift with a hip hinge, a squat, a lunge, a single-leg stance — because the starting condition stays the same. The pattern is your choice.

The Science Confirms It

If “deadlift” described a movement pattern, every exercise called a “deadlift” would use the same biomechanics. They don’t.

Escamilla and colleagues published two landmark studies comparing the sumo and conventional deadlift. The three-dimensional biomechanical analysis found that sumo lifters maintained a significantly more vertical trunk, used a stance more than twice as wide, and performed 25–40% less mechanical work at the hip, knee, and ankle.¹ The follow-up EMG study showed significantly greater quadriceps activation in the sumo deadlift, while the conventional showed greater calf activation.² Different angles. Different forces. Different muscles. Same name.

Research: Escamilla, R.F., et al. (2000). “A three-dimensional biomechanical analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 34(4). PMID: 10912892.

Research: Escamilla, R.F., et al. (2002). “An electromyographic analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 34(4): 682-688. PMID: 11932579.

A 2025 study by Hanen and colleagues took this further with comprehensive 3D motion capture and force plates. Their conclusion was direct: conventional and sumo deadlifts impose distinct biomechanical demands. The conventional primarily targets the posterior chain through hip extension. The sumo emphasizes the anterior chain with substantially higher joint moments in the frontal and transverse planes.³

Research: Hanen, N.C., et al. (2025). “Biomechanical analysis of conventional and sumo deadlift.” Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Vol. 13. PMC12148905.

And a systematic review of all EMG literature on deadlift variants confirmed dramatically different muscle activation profiles across variations — effectively proving that these are different movement patterns grouped under one name.⁴

Research: Martín-Fuentes, I., Oliva-Lozano, J.M., & Muyor, J.M. (2020). “Electromyographic activity in deadlift exercise and its variants. A systematic review.” PLOS ONE, 15(2): e0229507.

That’s just the sumo versus the conventional. Now add the squat deadlift, the lunge deadlift, the stiff-legged deadlift, and the single-leg deadlift to the picture. You have exercises that share nothing biomechanically except one thing: the weight starts dead on the ground.

Every Deadlift, Different Pattern, Same Starting Condition

Here are just some of the ways you can lift dead weight. Each uses a different movement pattern, stance, or loading strategy:

• Hip hinge deadlift (the “conventional”) — two joints: hips and knees. The most common, and the reason most people think “deadlift” means “hip hinge.”
• Stiff-legged deadlift — one joint: hips only. The hardest variation because you’re isolating the gluteus maximus, hamstrings, and adductor magnus more than any other movement.
• Squat deadlift — ankles, knees, and hips. More upright torso, heavier loads possible, safer for high reps. Common in CrossFit and Olympic lifting progressions.
• Sumo deadlift — wide stance, different hip angles, dramatically different muscle recruitment (proven by Escamilla’s research above).
• Single-leg deadlift — single-leg hip hinge. Balance and unilateral strength.
• Reverse lunge deadlift — lunge pattern from dead weight.
• Curtsy lunge deadlift — works hip, ankle, and knee strength plus flexibility.
• Suitcase deadlift — asymmetric loading, anti-lateral flexion.
• Jefferson deadlift — straddling the bar, rotational demand.
• Staggered stance deadlift — offset stance for stability challenge.

Every single one of these uses a different movement pattern. What makes them all deadlifts is the starting condition: the weight begins at a dead stop on the ground.

For a deeper comparison of the two most common types and when to program each, read Deadlift Hip Hinge VS Squat: Why would you do one over the other?

What the Fitness Industry Gets Wrong — From the Top Down

This isn’t just a social media problem. Some of the confusion can be traced back to the organizations that certify personal trainers.

NASM has described the deadlift on their website as targeting “glutes and hamstrings” — locking it to one pattern. Their material has called the Romanian deadlift “a form of deadlift,” despite the weight never reaching a dead stop.⁵

ACE has described the “greatest muscle forces” at the “hip, lumbar spine, ankle, and knee” for a “traditional barbell deadlift” in their ProSource publication.⁶ One specific technique presented as though it defines the exercise.

ACSM published a 2020 paper in their Health & Fitness Journal that calls the deadlift “a compound, multiple-joint lower body exercise” and a “premier exercise for enhancing the posterior chain.” But here’s the interesting part — the same paper acknowledges that deadlift variations fall “under the umbrella term” despite “many key differences.”⁷ That paper comes close to seeing the problem. It recognizes the variations are fundamentally different. But it still defines the umbrella by one specific pattern.

Here’s the kicker: the NSCA’s own classification systems for exercise teach movement patterns as categories like squat, hinge, push, and pull.⁸ “Deadlift” does not appear as a movement pattern category. Their science-based classification already implicitly recognizes that the deadlift is not a pattern. The popular teaching just hasn’t caught up.

Then social media amplified the mistake. A 2021 study on fitness misinformation found that fitness content on social media scored an average quality rating of just 38.79%, and follower count was inversely correlated with educational qualification — the bigger the account, the less likely the person was formally educated.⁹ When trainers with millions of followers say “deadlift that” when they mean “hip hinge that,” the wrong definition becomes the consensus. And then AI trains on that consensus and repeats it with even more confidence.

The Romanian Deadlift Proves It

If you need one piece of evidence that “deadlift” describes a starting condition and not a movement pattern, it’s the RDL.

The Romanian deadlift uses the exact same movement pattern as the conventional hip hinge deadlift. Same muscles. Same joint actions. Same mechanics. But the weight never returns to the ground. You start from standing, lower to about knee height, and come back up. The weight stays in your hands the entire time. It’s never dead.

If “deadlift” meant “hip hinge,” the RDL would be a deadlift. But it doesn’t meet the starting condition. It’s a hang lift — same pattern, different starting condition. And that distinction has real training implications: in a true deadlift you release tension at the bottom of each rep when the weight goes dead. In an RDL you maintain tension throughout. Different stimulus. Different fatigue profile. Different adaptations. The names should reflect that.

I go deeper into this — including why I propose replacing “RDL” with “3HL” (Hip Hinge Hang Lift) — in The DEAD of the Romanian Dead Lift.

This Is Not New

The word “deadlift” has always described the state of the weight, not a technique.

Physical culture historian Conor Heffernan traces the history of pulling weight from the ground back to 18th century strongman feats. The “Health Lift” machines of the 1860s and 1870s — one of the earliest formalized versions of the exercise — used a hybrid squat-and-pull motion, not a hip hinge.¹⁰ According to Heffernan, by 1891 there were reports of a Health Lift competition in mainland Europe that exhibited “many styles of deadlift pulling.”¹¹

Many styles. Not one technique. The only constant: the weight started dead.

The confusion set in as powerlifting formalized in the mid-20th century. The conventional hip hinge became THE competition technique. Over decades, that one technique became synonymous with the word. The same drift happened to the burpee — Royal H. Burpee’s 1939 original was four counts: squat down, jump to plank, jump back, stand up. No push-up. No jump. His granddaughter has publicly confirmed this.^12,13 Today, ask anyone to do a burpee and they’ll throw in a push-up and a jump. The name stayed. The meaning changed. We covered this in detail in Difference Between a Sprawl, Burpee and CrossFit Burpee and CrossFit Has Got the Burpee All Wrong.

Everything You Lift Dead Is a Deadlift

Groceries from the floor. A child off the ground. A kettlebell. A sandbag. A tire. An Olympic barbell. If it’s sitting there motionless and you pick it up, you just deadlifted. The most common deadlift in existence is a parent picking up their kid — and nobody calls that a hip hinge.

The movement you used? That’s a separate choice. The starting condition? Dead. That’s what makes it a deadlift.

For the full naming system we use at Cavemantraining and IKU — including how this same logic applies to cleans, swings, presses, and more — see our Exercise Naming Convention. We also apply this principle to the swing in The Kettlebell Swing Is Not a Hip Hinge, and to CrossFit competition standards in Deadlifts in CrossFit: Controversial or Just Named Incorrectly?

References

1. Escamilla, R.F., et al. (2000). “A three-dimensional biomechanical analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 34(4). PMID: 10912892. PubMed
2. Escamilla, R.F., et al. (2002). “An electromyographic analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 34(4): 682-688. PMID: 11932579. PubMed
3. Hanen, N.C., et al. (2025). “Biomechanical analysis of conventional and sumo deadlift.” Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, Vol. 13. PMC12148905
4. Martín-Fuentes, I., Oliva-Lozano, J.M., & Muyor, J.M. (2020). “Electromyographic activity in deadlift exercise and its variants. A systematic review.” PLOS ONE, 15(2): e0229507. PLOS ONE
5. NASM. “How to Do a Barbell Deadlift With Proper Form” and “What Is a Romanian Deadlift (RDL)?” nasm.org
6. ACE Fitness (2015). “Technique Series: How to Deadlift.” ACE ProSource, September 2015. acefitness.org
7. Holmes, C.J. (2020). “Understanding the Deadlift and Its Variations.” ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 24(3): 17-23. DOI: 10.1249/FIT.0000000000000570.
8. NSCA. “Progressive Strategies for Teaching Fundamental Resistance Training Movement Patterns.” Personal Training Quarterly, PTQ 10.2. nsca.com
9. Marocolo, M., et al. (2021). “Is Social Media Spreading Misinformation on Exercise and Health in Brazil?” Int J Environ Res Public Health, 18(22): 11914. PMC8618405
10. Todd, J. (1993). Article on George Barker Windship and the Health Lift. Iron Game History. LA84 Foundation
11. Heffernan, C. (2017). “The (Somewhat Complete) History of the Deadlift.” Physical Culture Study. physicalculturestudy.com
12. Task & Purpose (2016). “The History of the Burpee.” taskandpurpose.com
13. Men’s Journal (2016). “The Badass History of the Burpee.” mensjournal.com