There’s a lot of bad information out that saying deadlifts are bad for you. They’re not. Starting Strength coach Rusty from the Wichita Falls Athletic Club has an 82 year old client who does deadlifts. If his 82 year old can get in here and deadlift, you can. Deadlifts aren’t bad for you. Not deadlifting is bad for you. Deadlifting with bad technique is bad for you. Everybody that says the juice isn’t worth the squeeze with deadlifts, they just don’t know how to coach a deadlift. That’s bad information.

Another thing to get across is if you’ve been paying attention to the last few posts about weight training, they were about coaching people that are a little bit more banged up. Coach Rusty´s 82 year old client has a fake knee and she’s got a lot of issues that lifting heavy is fixing and making her quality of life better. Coach Carmen Phillips has a lot of clients that are banged up. They still get in there and lift. Both coaches adjust the model so these people can lift. That’s kind of the theme that’s been going on these last few posts: You have the model in the blue book that we want everybody to look like, but everybody can’t look like that. So, we adjust things to get them as close to the blue book as possible. Coach Rusty´s 82 year old client still pulls off the floor because she can. And Rusty doesn’t baby her. He still makes her pull off the floor. In her programming, he has her rack pulling and pulling off the floor. She cannot squat because her knee will not allow it, and that’s fine. Coach Rusty still has her getting strong by pressing, pulling and benching. He has her doing lat pulls. He has her pushing prowler. He doesn’t baby her because she can do it and it’s keeping her healthy.

The theme on these last few posts is you can still lift. If you’re a coach, you can have people who are banged up still lift. Barbell lifting is the best way to get somebody strong and keep their quality of life. So, I hope that’s what everybody kind of picks up on this. We want people to lift the big barbell lifts because that’s going to get them the strongest. You adjust the lifts, you adjust technique, and you make concessions when you have to, but get them close to the model.

Coach Rusty´s 82 year old client puts in the work. She gets in there. She doesn’t fight back on Rusty. If anything, he has to pull a range on her a little bit. She was deadlifting 145 lb off the ground. Then she had a problem with her prostthesis in her knee. She had to have a surgery and now Rusty’s building back up, but she’s determined to get back there again. And again, if Coach Rusty clients that are in their 80s can deadlift and do these lifts, there’s no excuse for anybody else.

* If you’re not familiar with the 5 steps to follow in the Starting Strength methodology for performing a deadlift, click here. You’ll find the information in the section for this lift in that article.

Bibliographic references:

• Starting Strength. (2026). Deadlifting with Penny [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/afdqN_PGd9I?si=KLuI7hv-lygdVq1D