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 fix that matters most.
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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.
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.
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.
How much your torso angle travels between the bottom and standing tall. Big is right in a deadlift - this number IS the hinge.
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.
How your torso angle changes between the floor and the knee. Holding or rising is the back doing its one job: keeping one shape.
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.
How far your hips wash sideways during the pull, seen from the front. A clean pull keeps them centered between your feet.
Whether the bar rises level, read from your two wrists at the knee. A tilt means one side is winning the pull.
How long you take putting the bar back down. The lowering is half the rep - a controlled hinge down, not a drop.
Floor to lockout time. Fast is fine, a long grind is fine - this only flags a pull so short it must be a heave.
How evenly your pulls repeat rep to rep. Every rep from the same setup reads (and builds) the same lift.
A category the clip can't show clearly comes back blank rather than guessed — and if too much of the movement is unreadable, we hold the overall score back instead of averaging what is left.
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.
Drills the coach prescribes
Hold a dowel along your spine touching head, upper back and tailbone. Push the hips back until the hamstrings load, then stand - if the dowel loses a contact point, the spine changed shape. This is the whole deadlift, rehearsed with zero load.
Stand a foot from a wall, facing away. Push your hips back until they tap it - knees soft, shins vertical - then stand tall. Step an inch further away each set. The wall teaches hips-back instead of knees-forward.
From the top, push the hips back and slide the bar down the thighs to just below the knee, spine holding one shape, then drive the hips through. The RDL is hinge patterning with exactly the muscles the deadlift wants loaded.
A kettlebell between your feet: hinge down, grip, stand tall, control the way back down. Every rule of the barbell lift at a friendlier scale - the perfect place to groove the pattern before the bar.
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 to three reps per clip works best
- ✓ 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
Fix your deadlift
- Bar Drifting Away From Your Legs? Your Lats Let Go
- Deadlift Feels Like All Lower Back? Your Hinge Went Missing
- The Deadlift Bar Path — Why the Strongest Pull Is a Straight Line
- Bouncing Your Deadlift Reps — Each Bounce Borrows From the Next One
- How Much Forward Lean Is Okay in a Deadlift? More Than You Think
- Hips Shooting Up First? Your Setup Was Probably Too Low
- The Lowering Is Half the Rep — Stop Dropping Your Deadlifts
- The Deadlift Setup — a 30-Second Checklist Before You Pull
Your baseline is one clip away
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