A deadlift with a wide, toes-out stance and your hands gripping inside your knees. Compared with a conventional pull you start with a more upright torso and move the bar a shorter distance, and the quads do more of the work. One modelling study of national-level lifters estimated about 10% less lower-back moment and 8% less shear than conventional, so it still loads your back heavily. It rewards hip mobility and a precise setup.
Set your stance
Stand wide: find the width where your shins look vertical from the front and the side once you push your knees out. Then try a little narrower and a little wider to see what feels strongest. Width is set by your hips, not by a rule.
shins stacked straight up and down, knees over your feet.
Turn your toes out so your knees can track over your first or second toe. Wider stances need more turnout. National-level sumo pullers averaged about 40 degrees. Turn the whole leg out from the hip, not just the foot.
Step in until your shins touch the bar and your heels sit under it. In sumo the bar starts against your shins, not a hand-width away.
Grip & get tight
Breathe and brace before you reach down. Exhale fully, take a moderate breath, and brace as if about to be punched in the stomach. Keep your back long and neutral; don't crank a hard arch into your lower back.
Push your knees out and drop straight down to the bar. Sit down, not back. Pushing your hips back first is a conventional habit that ruins a sumo setup.
hips close to the bar, chest up, torso fairly upright.
Grip with your arms hanging straight down from your shoulders, inside your legs. Too narrow and you lose control of the bar; too wide and you lengthen the pull. Widen slightly only if your hands land on the smooth part of the bar. Double-overhand, mixed or hook grip are all legal in meets.
Set your lats and pull the slack out of the bar without lifting it. Don't pull yet. Then recheck that your knees are still out and your chest is up.
wedged between the floor and the bar, loaded like a spring.
Push the floor away
Drive by trying to rip the floor apart between your feet, and keep that tension as the bar breaks off the floor. Don't let your hips shoot up and back first; that turns the pull into a stiff-legged lift and takes your quads out of it.
a leg drive, not a back pull.
Keep your shins near vertical and your knees out until the bar passes your knees. Keep the bar dragging close up your legs; if it drifts forward, your hips rise and your back rounds.
Lock out
Finish standing tall with your knees locked and shoulders back, hips through. Don't rest the bar on your thighs or let it dip on the way up (both are no-lifts in a meet), and don't lean back past straight.
Lower the bar under control with both hands still on it. Don't drop or slam it.
Feel it
A short, leg-driven pull with your torso staying fairly upright and your back staying the same shape from floor to lockout. The bar should feel glued to your shins until it passes your knees. If your hips pop up and the effort moves into your lower back, the weight is too heavy for today. Lower it until your hips stay put. Back rounding tends to grow as the load climbs, so stop a set when your position starts to slip.
Fix-its
- Knees cave in Sumo puts more sideways load through your knees than conventional. Keep pushing your knees out over your toes the whole way up. If they still cave, your stance is probably too wide for your hips, so bring your feet in.
- Hips shoot up first Usually why sumo pulls stall at mid-shin. Drop the weight until your hips stay in position off the floor, and add paused deadlifts in the bottom half.
- Hips pushed back at the start A conventional habit. Sit down between your feet with your shins against the bar instead of folding back to it.
- Bar drifts forward off the floor Start with your shins on the bar, set your lats before you reach down, and pull the slack out before you drive.
- Stalls at lockout or hips ache Check you're not tipping onto your toes and that your stance isn't too wide for your hips. If your hips ache from lots of sumo, mix in some conventional pulls.
Drill
- Stance test with an empty or light bar: try a few widths and toe angles, and keep the one where your shins stay vertical with your knees over your toes.
- Setup practice with a light bar: shins on the bar, brace, sit down, grip, lats, slack out. Stop before you lift. Sumo misses usually start in the setup.
- Paused deadlifts with the pause in the bottom half, at a weight where your hips stay down.
- Rack or block pulls from just below the knee to train the lockout.
- Film from the front to check your knees track over your toes, and from the side to check your hips and shoulders rise together.
Sources
- Escamilla et al. — A three-dimensional biomechanical analysis of sumo and conventional style deadlifts, Med Sci Sports Exerc (2000)
- Escamilla et al. — Biomechanical analysis of the deadlift during the 1999 Special Olympics World Games, Med Sci Sports Exerc (2001)
- Cholewicki, McGill & Norman — Lumbar spine loads during the lifting of extremely heavy weights, Med Sci Sports Exerc (1991)
- Hanen et al. — Biomechanical analysis of conventional and sumo deadlift, Front Bioeng Biotechnol (2025)
- Shoji et al. — Load-dependent increase in lumbar kyphosis is associated with posterior pelvic tilt during deadlift, Front Sports Act Living (2025)
- USA Powerlifting — Rulebook v2026.2, sections 4.5–4.6 (2026)
- Mike Robertson, Robertson Training Systems — Setting up for a Big Deadlift (2014)
- Greg Nuckols, Stronger by Science — How to Deadlift: The Definitive Guide
Last checked 2026-10-26.