Improve Your Fight Gone Bad Score – Sumo Deadlift High Pull Tips (SDHP)

Now that the Wall balls are done you will be moving onto the Sumo Deadlift High Pull (SDHP).  This is a tough exercise and one that coach Josh seems to master with ease. I went to him to demand some tips and tricks to improve your SDHP efficiency.

Josh’s Top SDHP Tips:

1. Spend some time mobilising your thoracic spine to help maintain a good position. “Position equals power” and we want to be able to maintain an upright position in this movement to be explosive and efficient.

2. THINK ABOUT YOUR SHOULDERS – A LOT! Far too often we see athletes with their shoulders forward and internally rotated when performing SDHP’s.

When you setup for a SDHP you need to establish tightness and stiffness in your shoulders by attempting to snap the bar.  By externally rotating your hands (twisting towards your pinky finger) you will place the shoulder in a strong position. This will give you serious amounts of power.

If you cannot stabilise the shoulder with a close grip on the bar you should make your grip slightly wider.  Your grip should however still be inside your shoulder width.

3. IT’S A SUMO DEADLIFT PEOPLE… this means your feet need to be in a sumo stance and you need to try and keep your feet pointing forwards.  A nice wide stance will bring you closer to the ground and closer to the bar.  This means you have less distance to travel between the floor and the top of your chest.

If you externally rotate your feet (turn them outwards) you will start to lose torque/power in the hips.

The hips are our primary motor and a powerful hip extension accelerates the bar from the floor to the top of the pull.  If you are wasting energy, due to your feet being turned out, you will inefficiently use your arms to lift the bar – not recommended.  Try to keep your feet pointing straight or limit the rotation to 5-10degrees.

4. Squeeze your butt!  At the top of the movement you want to be squeezing your glutes (butt muscles) as hard as possible. Imagine there is a £50 bill between your butt cheeks and you don’t want to drop it. We want to be nice and tall, straight up and down. We do not want to see anybody in an overextended position (back arched) at the top of the movement.  A good cue to think about is driving your heels into the floor as hard as you can during the movement.

5. Lower the bar back to the floor in two phases.  A SDHP is a hip hinging exercise and should not be a spine breaking exercise.  It’s not uncommon to see an athlete lift the bar with good mechanics and then round through their spine when returning the bar to the floor.  Slow the movement down; phase one should see and athlete lower the bar to their hips.  The athlete should then use a hip hinging (hip flexion) to lower the bar to the floor as phase two. If done successfully you will load the big powerful hip extending muscles (glutes & hamstrings) and hence the next lift will be a lot easier than the alternative of breaking you back.

Fight Gone Bad Tips continue:  Once you finish the 60secounds of SDHP you are going to be moving onto box jumps…