The Romanian Deadlift is a kind of exercise for developing joint and hip health, muscular endurance, and muscle growth. Many weightlifters, athletes, and weightlifters use this movement for developing overall mass and mass in their posterior chain. Romanian Deadlift (RDL) is an accessory lift having submaximal loads. However, it finds many flexible applications for a lot of goals directed at strength.
Here are some tips and info on the RDL exercise or Romanian Deadlift.
RDL Deadlift- Steps to Perform
- First, load a barbell and make sure your feet are shoulder-width apart with your toes forward. Your barbell should be over the shoelaces when you see it.
- Now bend and grab the barbell with a grip a little wider than shoulder-width distance. Make sure you keep your shoulders over it, and your back must be straight. You can brace it as you stand up.
- As you set your back, you need to push your hips back and brace your body core as you maintain a straight back. Your knees need to be over your ankles.
- As the hamstrings are in contraction, your back is straight, and the bar is slightly below your knee. You can stand up as you keep the bar near your body.
- Then, you need to contract all your big muscle groups, including glutes, core, and upper back, at the climax. For this, you can flex from your back down to the glutes.
- Repeat the process.
These are the basic steps you need to follow to perform the RDL exercise. For variations in the exercise, you can read further.
Muscles It Works
The Romanian Deadlift exercise helps to target different muscles just like a usual deadlift. However, it specifically targets the glutes and the hamstrings. This is because your knee angle remains inflected throughout the whole movement. The essential key is to make sure you feel your hamstring muscles stay loaded when you lower the lift. This is to make sure that you have the right muscular development and mechanics.
1. Glute Muscles
The Romanian deadlift exercise helps to target the glute muscles with hip extension. The glute muscles take part in deadlifting, squatting, and different human movements, like sprinting or jumping. These are some muscles that come as a target for the Romanian Deadlift. It comes as a key to contracting the glute muscles for amplifying muscle strength, development, and engagement.
2. Lower Back Muscles
The lower back muscles are also a specific target for the Romanian deadlift exercise. Usually, lifters may take their soreness in the back as a sign of an improper technique of the exercise. However, it might be because of an increase in muscle damage to the muscles in the lower back. Note, the lower back muscles are not the only muscles that you need to feel during your exercise.
3. Upper and Middle Back Muscles
The Romanian Deadlift helps in developing overall strength in the back as the lifter needs to maintain a flat back. They also need to maintain a constant right torso as they do the whole movement. When the lifter lowers this weight, the lower back needs to work harder to resist any rounding of shoulders and flexion in the spine. It is quite beneficial for preventing injury in the lower back. This increases overall strength in the back and improves control of the posture for distinct movements like sumo deadlifts, squats, and cleans.
4. Trapezoid Muscles
These muscles prevent the shoulders and the torso from rounding in the forward position in the Deadlift. The traps aid the individual to get a proper position of back throughout the Deadlift. The RDL exercise helps to increase the overall stability and the strength of the trapezius muscles in the body.
5. Forearms
This exercise targets the forearms as the trainer gets to grasp a loaded weight for a long time. Performing this exercise will improve the overall muscle endurance and grip strength for power-based movements. These include pull-ups, cleans, and snatches, for example.
The Physical Skill It Improves
An improvement in pulling strength is an advantage of performing this exercise. A lot of athletes will perform this specific lifting exercise instead of the ordinary deadlifts. They do this to improve hamstring and glute strength. They also want to make sure they don’t load on their lower back because of glute isolation and hamstring.
A lot of Olympic players can make use of the Romanian deadlifts in their routine exercise for increasing hamstring strength and back strength. They can get better techniques in maximal lifts and near-maximal lifts as they increase muscle hypertrophy and positional strength.
Romanian Deadlift or the RDL exercise is also helpful in improving the overall athletic performance. This is because it targets the whole body posterior chain. This is critical for improving running performance, power application, and an improvement in leg strength.
Incorrect Ways to Perform
Some people may not keep their torso and arms upright and straight. This will increase the strain in your neck muscles. So, it is important to make sure they stay upright, and you drop your shoulder blades down. This will help to stabilize your back and prevent you from straining your neck.
Some people don’t keep their back flat while performing the Deadlift. This can cause back injuries in the first few rounds of the exercise. As you do it correctly, you need to feel some tension that develops in your back and hamstring muscles. This may happen specifically around your shoulder blades.
Keep your overall weight in your heels and push yourself through your toes. Also, make sure you reach through an extension of your glute muscles. Flex your glute muscles, and keep your ribcage downward so you can stabilize your lumbar spine.
These are some things you need to keep in mind as you perform RDL exercises. Many people may commit mistakes like taking incorrect forms or taking too much load at once. Things like these will not only hamper progress but also cause strains and injuries in the long run.
Modifications of RDL Exercise
There are some types of modifications that can target specific requirements of lifters and individuals doing the exercise. Following are some modifications of the RDL exercise.
1) Dumbbell Variation of RDL Exercise
You can use dumbbells in RDL exercise when you want to increase stability in your hips and back. It is also convenient for people who don’t have a barbell available. The versatility of the exercise is a convenient option for weight lifters then. However, this variation in the Romanian deadlift is not helpful for lifting heavy loads. So, if you are looking for moderate lifting, you can use this deadlift to increase endurance and hypertrophy.
2) Kettlebell Variation of RDL Exercise
You can find kettlebells in different centers and fitness facilities as they have diverse applications. You can find them in power application, functional fitness, and finally, movement training. Using kettlebells in RDL exercise will isolate the unilateral limitations. This will also increase your need for stabilizing your back. Also, the RDL exercise using kettlebells may be a good movement for many kettlebell programs for training.
3) Unilateral Variation of RDL Exercise
The unilateral RDL exercise or the single-leg Deadlift is an exercise that helps in improving the unilateral development of the muscle. It also helps in increasing coordination, balance, and overall strength. As you perform the Deadlift with your feet, you may miss any movement, which can cause an imbalance of the muscles or asymmetries in movements. So, you can see each leg in an independent range and use one leg at one time. This way, you can enhance the overall movement and then target your imbalance of the muscle, which leads to overuse. It may also lead to injuries.
4) Snatch Grip Variation of RDL Exercise
Snatch grip RDL exercise is also a variation of the barbaric RDL exercise. You can increase the overall grip width of the barbell depending on the grip positioning. This results in a dynamic increase in the overall trap engagement and upper back engagement as well. Many people use this technique in the Olympics as well. Also, it helps in increasing overall hip strength and back strength relating to the snatch lift. It also improves the strength in your lower back and the overall control that you need for your heavy back squatting. This is how you can increase your overall stability. If you are looking to add more challenges to your RDL exercise, this variation is helpful.
Last word on the Romanian deadlift
These are some facts and tips that you need to know about the Romanian Deadlift exercise. The RDL exercise is popular among professional athletes and Olympic lifters. However, you can also use this exercise to increase your overall back, hip, and leg strength. Also, it helps in improving overall stability to your core, which helps you to increase your endurance and flexibility. If you are a runner or someone who has a demand for lifting weights, you can apply this exercise.
