Mark Ottobre breaks down two RDL variations: the hamstring-focused version with straighter knees for explosive power, and the glute-biased version where you bend the knees after feeling hamstring tension to shift load to the glutes. The bar must stay close to your body, and you initiate by pulling your hips back while keeping your ribs stacked over your pelvis.
Today we are going to talk about the RDL. First, some gym mythology. The RDL, originally coined Romanian deadlift in 1990s when Americans saw a Romanian weightlifter do this movement. And originally, legend has it, it was with a wide grip in a snatch position and done as a pull. That's been translated to teaching people how to do the hinge and now more popularly using it as a tool to build and develop one's glutes. So let's look at that. Traditionally, the RDL We are moving through and we're in this hinge position, keeping the bar close to our body. And what you see popular on Instagram is people now bend their knees. Now I'm not going to say one is right, one is wrong. They are different. I'm going to go over both techniques and where they will be appropriate and why. So first, let's start with the traditional RDL, whether you do it with a wider grip or not. If you do do it with a wider grip, it is about the hinge position. If you're doing it with a wider grip, you want the bar to it in the snatch position. How do you find the snatch position? My hands are here and I bend my knees, you can see the bar moving. As I go wide, the snatch grip, if I bend my knees, you see the bar doesn't move. That's where the snatch position is. As I'm moving through, my lower back— you want your ribs stacked on top of your pelvis. So what that's going to look like is you're going to rotate your hips up and you're going to put your rib cage on top. That's going to stiffen up your trunk. Now our hands are wide and we're moving through. We Always want the bar. One of the key things with any deadlift is the bar needs to be as close to your body, rubbing your body as possible. Now the reason for that: if we just bend down like this and we put the weight above our arm, we'll very quickly realize that the load in this position starts to be taken up by the lower back. So imagine now I've got 200 kilos in my hands and I do this movement. Well, proportionally, 200 kilos here, if I pull it away from my body, is more like 400 kilos at my lower back. We need to keep this into our center of mass to protect our lower back. We're here, we're moving through. What you want to do is you want to think about the initiation. The initiation is you pull back on the knees. That's where you initiate. You pull back on the hips and you continue to pull. That's your traditional way to do an RDL. Now, what's more popular in, say, bikini circles, physique circles, bodybuilding circles is to bend the knee so you can place more load on the glutes. What that looks like, your hands aren't going to be as wide, although I would recommend a little wider than normal for most people. That will just stiffen up and tighten up the upper back. Then In this position, we initiate by pulling back. Again, same thing, our ribs are gonna be on top, our pelvis tucked under, that keeps the spine and trunk stiff. As we move back, you'll notice that you'll get to a point where there's a lot of tension on the hamstrings. Once you get to that point of tension, that's when you wanna start to bend the knees down. As you bend the knees, you can see your bum's out and then up the same way. So I'll just do it again. This is version 1, where this is really all hamstrings. This is what most athletes, I would say, would more consider and be appropriate for those who are really wanting to develop a hinge or more along the lines of you wanna develop the triple extension where ankles, knees, hips are all jumping. Anyone who's athletic or needs to explode, you're gonna be doing it more as a hinge. Now here again, if you're more about the physique side of things, you're gonna come all the way down, bend the knees and back up. And yes, you can do them with dumbbells. You can put them, your hands wider, closer. Again, I like a little wider than normal, not quite a snatch position. But that's where I would be with a physique-orientated RDL. Other considerations. Again, the biggest safety consideration is you do not move the bar at any stage. Shoes and footwear. If you are wearing shoes that are quite cushioned, say like a Nike or Adidas or a foamy type of shoe, 100% take them off. You want as flat a surface as possible. And you want that because as you pull back on the heels, if you've got foam underneath your heel, you're going to rock back. You don't want that. That is completely not what you want. Shoes off. My shoes today are pretty good, so they're flat. I'm able to do this with no real rocking or rolling at all. People talk about foot position and where do you want the load. You want a tripod stance. And what is a tripod stance? Is it's your big toe, little toe, heel indented into the ground. The other thing that I should add is we want to externally rotate from our hips. So it's not necessarily coming straight down, because if we want to use our glutes, we need to think about pulling the the floor apart as we do this. So you can see here, if I just go straight down, right, this is me going straight down. Yeah. This is me pulling the floor apart. And you're not gonna be able to see that on camera. If you're live in person, you might be able to see it, but I'm pulling, I'm pushing into the floor and I'm pulling apart. Again, what that does is it helps me lock in my hips. If you've enjoyed this video, make sure you subscribe to my channel, Mark Ottobre, for more.
