Filmed myself and my lumbar spine visibly rounds in the last few inches before the bar leaves the floor, at every weight including the empty bar. It doesn't hurt and never has. Conventional stance, bar over midfoot, I'm about 183cm with long femurs. I've been told to "brace harder" which hasn't changed anything. What actually fixes this?
If it rounds with an empty bar, it's not a strength or bracing problem — it's that you can't reach the bar in a neutral position, so your spine makes up the difference. Bracing harder cannot solve a range of motion issue.
What usually works, in order:
The fact that it's never hurt is good news but not permission to leave it. A little upper back rounding is common and largely fine; lumbar rounding under load is the one worth engineering out. If block pulls and stance changes don't get you there in a couple of months, a session with a coach or physio who watches you lift is money well spent.
Pulled from a 5cm block yesterday and my back stayed flat for the first time on film. Slightly annoyed nobody suggested this in eight months.
Deficit pulls get all the attention and blocks get none, but for most people with this problem blocks are the useful tool.
Trap bar for a few months is a legitimate answer, not a cop-out. The handles start higher and the load line is closer to your centre of mass, so you can build the pattern and the posterior chain while you sort the flexibility out. Come back to conventional when you can hold the position.
Long femurs, 183cm, conventional — you might just be built for sumo. It's not cheating, it's picking the lever arrangement that suits your skeleton. Try it for eight weeks properly before deciding.
Worth trying, though I'd note sumo demands more hip mobility, not less, so it isn't automatically the easier position for someone with tight hips.
@easy_pace_ellis · 6mo ago · 3 replies
Check your setup sequence too. A lot of people bend down, grip the bar, and then try to set their back — by then the hips have already risen and the lumbar is loaded. Try: hinge to the bar with a flat back, grip without changing your back position, pull the slack out of the bar until you hear it click, then push the floor away. Setting the back before there's tension is the whole game.
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@quiet_stacker · 6mo ago
"Pull the slack out" is the cue that made deadlifts click for me. The bar should be under tension before anything moves.
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@hanon_hater · 6mo ago
I definitely grip first and fix the back second. Reordering this made the empty bar version noticeably better.
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