GET YOUR KNEES OUT OF THE WAY WHEN DOING DEADLIFTS

In this post, I will go over some tips from Starting Strength coach Pete Troupos, to help you stop pulling around your knees and maintain a straighter bar path in the deadlift. Some people might not really realize are doing this mistake. So, we're going to point out a few things: what may cause it, how to tell if you're doing it, and then, some tips on how to correct that.

First of all, let's take a look at the standard pulling position to begin with. When a lifter gets down in position, you can notice the two angles that we're most concerned about in the standard pulling position from the side. So, if you get your back set, the two angles you're going to look at are:

• The knee angle.
• The hip angle.

In a standard pull, we expect the knee angle to open first. So, the knees come back and out of the way, then the hips will open. They're not going to open simultaneously.

But sometimes people will open the hip angle first and up pulling around the knees. The problem that that's going to create is twofold:

1. It might put you off balance back on your heels. You're going to get back on your heels when you do that.
2. You've now increased the moment arm between the hip and the bar, asking your back to do much more work.

How do you know that you're doing that? You'll feel yourself get off balance through the pull. Or you might be a seasoned veteran and find that your back is always sore after deadlifts. The latter tends to be the case. If someone's pulling around their knees, it's going to make their lower back more sore than it should. But we want a nice, clean, efficient bar path. So, we want to get the knees out of the way.

Another issue might be just looking too far out and allowing the chest to lead up out of the bottom because the chest will follow the direction of the eyes' gaze. So, we're going to discuss a few different fixes:

• You, as a coach, might have your lifter bring their eyes' gaze closer to them to pull, so that they're less likely to open their chest right away and tell them just simply bring the knees back to get break the bar off the ground. You can see the knees go back. It gives a nice straight bar path and then the hips open up afterwards. So, it's always the quads breaking the bar off the ground by extending the knee first, and then the hip opens up after that. So, that's one fix that you might try.
• Another fix you might try is bringing your attention to the pressure at your feet when you're setting up. It's feeling that pressure at your feet and slowly starting to increase that pressure as if you're pushing into the ground, so that the knees naturally extend and break the bar off the ground. So your lifter's going to think about the pressure at their feet and just slowly turning that up, and eventually the bar will just start breaking off the ground and they'll finish the pull.

Another cause might be just a misunderstanding of how the bar is meant to be break broken off the ground. Sometimes people when it's heavy will especially rock back to their heels and start to pull keeping the knees forward. That will cause also an opportunity for the bar to go around the knees. So staying midfoot and driving through the midfoot off the floor regardless of how heavy the bar is, it's one of those things that might actually fix this as well.

If you're a coach, one tip that you might do is have your lifter set up. Everything is going to be normal except you're not going to have them grab the bar. You're just going to have them set up with open hands on the bar. Then, you're going to apply pressure to their upper back and lower back. The lifter set their back flat. Now, they push both your hands with the same amount of pressure, and you should feel pressure on both hands simultaneously. But if they're doing it wrong, lifting the chest first and pulling around the knees, this will definitely feel like it's coming up faster with more pressure. You can start to drill your lifter if you're a coach to get those both pushing at the same rate because the back angle doesn't really change for the first inch or two off the ground as the knees extend and break the bar off the ground.

Another thing you might try is practicing warm-ups with some halting deadlifts. So, you're just going to have yourself, if you have this issue, or your lifter simply break the bar off the ground or practice breaking the bar off the ground just to below the kneecap properly until they drill that feeling of what it's like to use the quads to break the bar off the ground. So, they're just going to set up, squeeze up, just get the bar to below your knees and back down. You're just going to have them continuously drill over and over again, breaking it off the ground properly. Just make that as the beginning part of the warm-up and then go into some full pulls once they've got it.

So tips are:

• Maybe try a change in eye position if you're having this issue.
• Practice some halting deadlifts and breaking the bar off the ground properly while the weight is still light.
• Another one might be just focusing on mid-foot balance and driving through midfoot, and feeling the pressure at your feet so you're breaking it off the ground properly.

All of those should help to resolve an issue related to pulling a bar around the knees, which is just inefficient and pisses your back off.

* 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). Get Your !@mX% Knees Out of the Way [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Yd6mwxDsoPU