You pull 200 kg in training — bar moves well, no red lights. Then you watch the video back and realize the bar drifted six inches away from your shins off the floor, your hips were already rising before your knees straightened, and you rounded into the lower back so hard your erectors were screaming by rep three. It felt fine. It looked like a different lift.

That gap — between what a deadlift feels like and what it actually looks like — is where most form problems live. A proper deadlift form check doesn't rely on feel. It works through specific positions at specific moments. That's what this checklist covers.

Setup: The Four Things That Decide Everything

Most deadlift faults are baked in before the bar leaves the floor. Get the setup right and the rest of the lift has a chance. Get it wrong and you're compensating from rep one.

• Bar over mid-foot. Not touching the shins — over the mid-foot, roughly 1 inch from your shins. From a side-on camera, the bar should bisect a vertical line running through the middle of your foot. If it's further out than that, your first pull will drag the bar back toward you and add horizontal distance to every rep.
• Hip height — not too high, not too low. There's no single correct hip angle because it depends on your segment lengths. The cue that works biomechanically: when you hinge down to grip the bar, your shoulder blades should be directly over the bar — not behind it, not in front of it. If your hips are too low, you're squatting the weight up. Too high and you're bent-over rowing it.
• Lat engagement before the pull. The lats keep the bar close. Cue: "protect your armpits" or "bend the bar around your legs." Either way, the lats need to be under tension before the pull initiates — not after the bar starts moving. A loose upper back at the start means the bar swings out within the first 10 cm off the floor.
• Brace — full, not partial. Big breath into the belly, 360 degrees of tension around the trunk. Intra-abdominal pressure should be maximal before the pull. Partial braces don't hold under heavy loads — the spine flexes and the lumbar rounds at the exact moment load is highest, right off the floor.

The Pull: Bar Path and Hip-Knee Sequencing

A vertical bar path is the goal. The bar should travel in a straight line from floor to lockout — no forward drift, no looping. Filmed from the side at heavy loads, you can track this precisely. Any horizontal movement is wasted energy and increased shear load on the spine.

Off the floor, the knees and hips should extend simultaneously. This is where a lot of lifters fail the deadlift form check — the hips shoot up first, converting the deadlift into a stiff-leg variation from mid-shin upward. When the hips rise early, the torso tips forward and the lumbar spine has to absorb the full load without any mechanical advantage. It's not always dangerous in the short term. Over hundreds of reps, it creates a pattern that eventually fails under true maximal load.

Check the side-on video at two frames: bar just below the knee and bar at mid-thigh. Between those frames, the torso angle should stay roughly constant while both the hips and knees continue extending. If the hips rise and the torso pitches forward between those two frames, the hip-knee sequencing is off. (Not sure how to set up for a side-on deadlift shot? See how to film your lifts effectively.)

"Bar drifted 8 cm forward between liftoff and mid-shin. Hips rose approximately 4 cm before knees began extending. Likely cause: insufficient lat engagement at setup. Cue: active lats before the pull, keep the bar in contact with the legs."

That kind of rep-specific breakdown is the difference between a real deadlift form check and generic coaching advice.

Lockout: Where Reps Are Lost and Injuries Happen

The lockout is the most overlooked phase of the deadlift — and the most commonly faulted on a form check. Three things need to happen simultaneously: hips fully extend, glutes contract hard, and the shoulder blades pull back slightly. The order matters. Hyperextending the lumbar instead of extending at the hip is the most common error here — it shows up as the lower back arching aggressively while the hips stay slightly forward of neutral.

From a side camera at lockout, the ear, shoulder, hip, and ankle should be close to vertical alignment. The chest should be up — not craned back. A chin-forward, chest-up finish indicates the upper back rounded mid-pull and the lifter is compensating at lockout to look more upright.

Check for hip shift at lockout from a front or rear camera. A consistent shift to one side — even 2–3 cm — points to unilateral weakness, typically a glute on the weaker side not contributing equally. It often goes unnoticed for months because it feels like just "finishing the lift." On video it's obvious.

The Four Faults a Good Deadlift Form Check Catches

Run through this after every heavy session. You're looking for four things across the whole rep:

• Bar drift off the floor. Horizontal distance traveled in the first 15 cm. Should be near zero. Anything over 3–4 cm is a lat engagement problem.
• Hip rise before knee extension. Visible from the side between liftoff and mid-shin. Indicates either too-low hip starting position or insufficient quad drive.
• Lumbar flexion under load. Visible as a rounding of the lower back, usually between floor and knee. This is the fault most lifters underestimate — mild rounding at sub-maximal loads turns into significant rounding at max loads. The spine doesn't give you a warning before it gives way.
• Incomplete or hyperextended lockout. Either the hips don't fully extend — leaving the lifter slightly pitched forward at the top — or they overextend by arching the lumbar instead of pushing the hips through. Both are faults. Both show up clearly on side-on video at the top of the rep.

None of these are reliably self-diagnosable. Proprioception during a heavy pull is too noisy — the body is under maximal tension, the movement is fast, and the feedback loop runs behind real time. What you feel at lockout is what your nervous system registered 200–300 milliseconds after it happened.

Video review is not optional if you're training heavy. It's the only way to run a real deadlift form check. And the more systematic you make it — same angles, same checklist, every session — the faster you'll identify what's actually limiting your pull.