Every deadlifter eventually lands in this argument: should reps be touch-and-go — plates brushing the floor before the next pull — or dead stop, with the bar fully settled and re-gripped every rep? Gym opinion runs hot in both directions. One camp says touch-and-go is cheating; the other says dead stops are needlessly brutal.
The honest answer is that both are legitimate — and the thing worth policing isn't which style you chose, but whether your touch-and-go is actually touch-and-go, or its scruffy impostor: the drop-and-bounce.
The real dividing line
True touch-and-go has two non-negotiables: the plates kiss the floor — a controlled, quiet touch, not a rebound — and the back holds one shape throughout the set. The lifter owns the descent, touches, and pulls again from a position that never dissolved. Train this way and you get more time under tension, a flowing set, and a serious test of your ability to keep the lats and brace on for minutes at a time.
Drop-and-bounce is a different animal wearing the same name: the bar is dropped rather than lowered, the plates rebound off the floor, and the next rep launches before the lifter is set — no brace rebuilt, no lats re-engaged, position drifting further from home every rep. The bounce donates free momentum for the first couple of inches and quietly charges it to your positioning. Each bounce borrows from the next rep. By rep five, you're pulling from wherever the rebound left you.
So the question isn't touch-and-go versus dead stop. It's: can you touch without bouncing? If yes, both styles are tools in your kit. If the plates rebound and your fifth rep looks nothing like your first — the choice has been made for you, and it's dead stops until the pattern earns touch-and-go back.
When each one earns its keep
Dead stops are the default for learning and for fixing. Every rep starts from a dead bar with a full setup — brace rebuilt, lats squeezed on, hips at height — so every rep is the first rep, and every rep rehearses your setup. They're also the honest examiners: no bounce means no borrowed momentum, so whatever's weak off the floor gets found and trained.
Touch-and-go earns its place once the pattern is stable — when you can hold one back shape and a quiet touch for a whole set. It builds work capacity and teaches you to stay organized under fatigue.
The drill — Dead-Stop Reset Reps
Whichever style you favor, keep this in the rotation: 3 sets of 3 where every rep starts from a completely dead bar. Set the plates down fully, rebuild the brace, squeeze the bar back into your body, then pull. It's the calibration exercise that keeps your touch-and-go honest — after a few weeks of resets, you can feel immediately when a touch turns into a bounce.
The between-reps moment is also the easiest thing in the world to check on video: film a set side-on with the plates in frame and watch — do they settle or rebound? Does each rep start from a rebuilt position? That's part of what CoachVision's AI coach reads from a phone clip, alongside your back shape across the set, and it will tell you plainly which style it actually saw — not which one you meant. Film your next set of five and find out.