Your deadlift, checked before your back pays for it.

Hinge, back angle, bar path, lockout, read from one side-on phone clip, with the one thing to work on first.

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What the coach measures

One clip, one angle. Here's what each angle can read. Film the other angle another day for the rest.

Camera side-on

Hip height at the break

Where your hips sit between your knees and shoulders at the moment the bar breaks the floor. The deadlift wants them in the middle band - not a squat, not a stiff-leg.

Knee bend at setup

How much your knees bend at the bottom. A deadlift bends them less than a squat but more than a stiff-leg - the hinge lives in the middle.

Hinge range

How much your torso angle travels between the bottom and standing tall. Big is right in a deadlift - this number IS the hinge.

Back angle at the break

How far your torso leans at the moment the bar leaves the floor. Deep lean is correct here - this checks you're in the hinge's working range.

Back hold off the floor

How your torso angle changes between the floor and the knee. Holding or rising is the back doing its one job: keeping one shape.

Bar path drift

How far the bar (read from your wrists) wanders off its vertical line during the pull. Straight up is strong; forward drift is the lats letting go.

Camera facing you

Hip drift (symmetry)

How far your hips wash sideways during the pull, seen from the front. A clean pull keeps them centered between your feet.

Bar tilt (symmetry)

Whether the bar rises level, read from your two wrists at the knee. A tilt means one side is winning the pull.

Lowering control

How long you take putting the bar back down. The lowering is half the rep - a controlled hinge down, not a drop.

Pull time

Floor to lockout time. Fast is fine, and a grind of a few seconds is fine: this flags a pull so short it must be a heave, and one that runs past about 4 s.

Rep evenness

How evenly your pulls repeat rep to rep. Every rep from the same setup reads (and builds) the same lift.

Your rep, measured across

Hip hingeBack angleBar pathLockoutTempo

A category the clip can't show clearly comes back blank rather than guessed.

The report, start to finish

Explore it: this is the layout you get. The numbers below are a worked example, not a recording of someone's clip.

EXAMPLE CARD: HAND-WRITTEN NUMBERS, NOT A MEASURED CLIP

Practice you can choose

Unloaded hinge rehearsal

Use a light dowel to feel the hip hinge you already know, without added weights and within a comfortable range.

How to film it

✓ Phone at hip height, 8-12 feet away and steady, portrait - you should stand about a third of the frame tall, head to feet. Below about a sixth the clip is usually rejected, and a hand-held phone drops the early-pull sync read
✓ Whole body in frame, head to feet, with the plates visible for the entire rep
✓ Square the phone to whichever side you picked - a 3/4 angle from behind gets read as a front-on clip, and the hinge, back-angle and lockout numbers go with it
✓ One rep per clip works. Film 3 to 5 reps in one clip so we can check your consistency. Stand all the way up at the top of every rep
✓ Side-on shows the hinge, back angle and lockout best; front-on shows symmetry and grip width - turn the phone landscape for front-on so both plates stay in frame
✓ Wear clothing with some contrast to the background - joints track better

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