5 Deadlift Form Mistakes That Cause Back Pain

Stop destroying your lower back and start pulling pain-free.

Your deadlift should build your back, not wreck it. But if you're training alone—at home or in a commercial gym without a coach—you're probably making at least one of these form mistakes. The tricky part? You can't see your own back while you lift.

These five errors are the most common causes of deadlift-related back pain. Learn to identify them, understand why they're dangerous, and fix them before they turn into chronic issues.

1. Lower Back Rounding During the Pull

This is the big one. When your lower back rounds under load, you're shifting stress from your powerful hip and leg muscles directly onto your spinal discs and ligaments. This isn't a maybe-it's-bad situation—it's a guaranteed path to injury if you keep doing it.

The problem is that rounding often feels fine in the moment. Your body compensates, the weight goes up, and you think you're good. But each rounded rep adds cumulative stress. Eventually, something gives.

Why does this happen? Usually weak core bracing, trying to lift too heavy too soon, or simply not knowing what a neutral spine feels like under load. If you're training alone, you have no external feedback telling you "hey, your back is rounding."

The fix starts with lighter weight and a mirror or camera. Learn what a flat back actually looks like on your body. Brace your core hard before every pull—think about making your midsection rigid, not just sucking in your gut. If your back rounds, the weight is too heavy. Period.

2. Starting with Hips Too High

When you set up with your hips too high, you turn the deadlift into a stiff-leg pull. Your hamstrings and glutes can't contribute properly, so your lower back picks up the slack.

You'll recognize this mistake if the bar feels super heavy off the floor, your back rounds immediately as you start the pull, or you feel the lift entirely in your lower back instead of your legs.

The fix is adjusting your setup. Your hips should be roughly between your shoulders and knees—not way up near shoulder height. Think about "pushing the floor away" rather than "pulling the bar up." This mental cue engages your legs from the start.

A good test: in your starting position, your shoulders should be directly over or slightly in front of the bar, and you should feel tension in your hamstrings. If you're hunched over the bar with your hips at shoulder height, you're set up wrong.

3. Letting the Bar Drift Away From Your Body

The farther the bar gets from your center of mass, the harder your back has to work to control it. This is pure physics—a longer lever arm means more force required. When the bar drifts forward during your pull, your lower back takes a beating.

This usually happens because of weak lat engagement. Your lats are supposed to keep the bar tight to your body throughout the lift. If they're not firing, the bar drifts, and your back suffers.

Before you pull, think about "bending the bar around your legs" or "putting your shoulder blades in your back pockets." These cues activate your lats. The bar should literally scrape up your shins and thighs. If it doesn't, you're letting it drift.

Film yourself from the side. Watch where the bar goes during your pull. If it swings out in front of you at any point, you've got work to do on lat engagement.

4. Jerking the Bar Off the Floor

You see this all the time—someone grabs the bar, yanks up hard, and their lower back immediately buckles under the sudden load. This jerky start puts enormous stress on your spine because your muscles don't have time to brace properly.

The deadlift should start with tension, not momentum. Before you pull, take the slack out of the bar. Your arms should be straight, your lats engaged, your core braced, and you should feel connected to the weight before it ever leaves the floor.

Think of it like tightening a rope before you pull something. You wouldn't jerk a slack rope—you'd remove the slack first. Same principle applies to the deadlift.

A smooth start also gives you feedback. If the bar feels impossibly heavy before it leaves the floor, you know your positioning is off. If you jerk it, you bypass this important information and increase injury risk.

5. Hyperextending at the Top

You've seen this—the lifter completes the pull and then cranks their lower back into an aggressive arch, throwing their hips forward and leaning way back. Some people think this shows they've "finished" the lift properly. What it actually shows is that they're jamming their lumbar spine into extension under load.

The deadlift finishes when your hips and knees are locked and you're standing tall. That's it. Your spine should be neutral—not rounded, not hyperextended. Just straight.

Hyperextending loads your facet joints (the small joints in your spine) in a way they're not designed to handle repeatedly. Do this enough times with heavy weight, and you're asking for facet joint pain or worse.

The fix is simple: stand up straight at the top and stop. Squeeze your glutes to lock out your hips, but don't push your hips forward past neutral. Your chest should be up, but you shouldn't be leaning back.

How to Actually Fix These Mistakes

Here's the hard truth: if you're training alone, you can't see most of these errors while they're happening. By the time you feel pain, you've probably been making the mistake for weeks or months.

This is exactly why AI form analysis exists. Gymscore uses computer vision to analyze your deadlift after you record it, identifying these issues automatically. You get objective feedback on your back angle, bar path, and hip position—the stuff you simply can't see yourself. Unlike a one-time form check, Gymscore helps you monitor every set of every session, catching problems early rather than after they've caused damage.

Whether you use an app, film yourself, or occasionally get a coach's eyes on your lift, the point is the same: you need external feedback. Your internal sense of what's happening isn't reliable enough when it comes to spinal position under heavy load.

Don't wait until you're injured to take form seriously. Fix these mistakes now, lift heavier later, and keep your back healthy for decades of training.

Related Reading

If you're training without a coach, you'll also want to check out Why One Form Check Isn't Enough—it explains why ongoing analysis matters more than occasional spot-checks. And if deadlifts aren't your only concern, read up on how to verify your squat depth and the bench press form errors that cause shoulder pain.