Do deadlifts increase testosterone levels?

Do deadlifts increase testosterone levels?

While deadlifts are definitely one of the biggest and most important workouts that you can do, that’s not all that they are. Deadlift benefits are also able to influence your hormonal health and your overall well-being. Because of the fact that most people are simply aware of deadlifts being a good way to boost muscle, we’ve written this article. Don’t get me wrong - deadlifts are fantastic for building muscle and such. But that’s not all they’re good for. In this article, we’re going to discuss the way that the benefits of deadlifts can influence your testosterone levels, improve your body, and influence your overall health. Table of Contents

What are deadlifts?

If you’re not actually sure what a deadlift is, you’ll probably want to get your bearings before you start learning about what they are before you start figuring out how they can help you. The term deadlift refers to the lifting of dead weight - that is, weight that doesn’t have any momentum. This weight often feels heavier than weight which has some momentum attached to it (unless, of course, that momentum is directed away from you). Thus deadlifts are weight training exercises that are usually done with loaded barbells. These are lifted off the ground, to the height of the hips, and then returned to the ground. In this sense, it’s a form of powerlifting exercise - next to squats and bench presses. There are several different forms of deadlifts, which we’ll go into detail about later in the article. As for now, you’ll probably want to know a bit about the benefits of deadlifts.

Benefits of deadlifts

In addition to being a great part of your workout, deadlifts can actually help enhance a number of facets of your overall health. Here are how deadlifts change your body if you follow a routine that includes them on a regular basis.

1. Enhances Fat Burning

There is some evidence that deadlifts can help enhance the rate at which a person burns fat. The study followed overweight people who were put into one of three groups - people on a diet, people on a diet doing aerobics, and people on a diet doing aerobics and lifting weights. The group who was lifting weights in addition to doing cardio and dieting lost significantly more fat than those who were just dieting or doing aerobics.

2. Enhances Posture

Deadlifts are a great way to improve your core strength. This can have a positive influence on your posture - better core strength is associated with more stability and better balance.

3. Works Many Muscles

One of the best things about deadlifts is that they work out a huge number of muscles. It has been revealed that deadlifts actually engage all of the major muscle groups, which means that they’re a fantastic exercise for building overall strength.

4. Boosts Your Glutes

Your glutes are the biggest muscle group in your body, and they aren’t always easy to target. Fortunately, deadlifts are fantastic for hitting the glutes. This means that they’re great for boosting glute-related benefits: endurance, power, and pain prevention.

5. Boosts Overall Lift

Deadlifts are one of the best exercises for helping to improve your ability to lift things in real-life. Most exercises don’t actually reflect movements that we make very often, whereas deadlifts can be very useful for helping us improve our ability to pick stuff up.

6. High Safety Profile

Deadlifts are one of the safest exercises that you can do. You’re not running the risk of getting crushed, and it’s not going to pull you over backwards. The worst that you’ll do is drop it, and in most cases, you won’t even risk it landing on your feet.

7. Boosts Grip Strength

Deadlifts are one of the best exercises that you can use to boost your grip. This transfers easily over to all other exercises, and can be an important facet in other areas of our lives. Grip is involved in our ability to grab and carry just about anything heavy, so boosting grip can be very important.

8. Boosts Hormone

Deadlifts can boost your hormones - and fortunately for bodybuilders, they focus on the hormones that are associated with muscle growth and strength. Deadlift testosterone benefits are quite impressive, as heavy workouts tend to increase the amount of testosterone that your body produces on its own. Deadlifts can also improve the amount of human growth hormone produced by the body, which can be essential for helping to maximize the benefits of our workouts.

9. Enhances Cardio

Deadlifts are a very high-intensity activity, and while they aren’t often done for long enough to be considered a cardiovascular routine on their own, they can certainly enhance your workouts by getting your heart rate pumping really hard. Infusing a few deadlifts in a high-intensity workout routine can be great for helping to improve your overall calorie burn and can keep you healthy.

10. Prevents Injury

Since deadlifts work out such a wide range of muscles, they help enhance strength all throughout the body. This means that you’ll be less likely to injure yourself when you’re working out.

What are the types of deadlifts?

Man performing deadlift black and white There are a lot of different types of deadlifts out there, and how deadlifts change your body can depend on which type you’re actually doing. Here are some of the most common forms of deadlifts.
  • Sumo Deadlifts. These deadlifts are similar to sumo squats, and involve you planting your feet at a wider distance with your hands positioned on the inner sides of your feet. These deadlifts decrease your overall range of motion and focus more on your quads, hams, and glutes.
  • Chains and Bands Deadlifts. This particularly badass form of deadlift involves adding bands and chains to the top of your deadlift, which increases tension and adds extra weight. This places tons of extra strain on your core.
  • Snatch Grip Deadlifts. These are actually a form of Olympic training, involving a much wider grip than you would if you were to be performing other similar Olympic exercises like the snatch. This exercise is a great way to add strength to your hamstrings.
  • Deficit Deadlifts. These are a great training exercise to actually improve the range of motion that you have available while performing other forms of deadlift. These follow the normal deadlift form, the main difference being that you stand on an elevated platform while you’re doing the lift.This puts more strain on your legs and allows you to pull up from a much greater height, boosting your range of motion and strength.
  • Romanian Deadlifts. These are also sometimes referred to as stiff legged deadlifts. These are a leg-focused exercise and thus many people like doing these on leg days. Make sure that you keep your legs slightly bent while you’re doing these.

How deadlifts increase testosterone levels

One of the ways of how deadlifts change your body is by influencing your testosterone levels. Deadlifts increase testosterone as a result of the way that your body responds to certain types of exercise. Lifting weight is generally agreed to be the best type of exercise for helping to boost T levels. One of the reasons for this is because resistance and strength training - including deadlifts - can have a positive influence on the amount of testosterone produced by the body. To fully maximize the efficacy of this type of improvement, you may want to include deadlifts as a part of high-intensity interval training. HIIT is a very important type of workout that involves extremely intense workouts done over short periods of time with breaks of a minute or two in between exercises. Many workout trainers recommend lifting weights for at least half an hour, two to three times a week. This improves the amount of testosterone available to your body and also provides enough time for your muscles to heal. During the days off-days, you can do cardio exercise to keep yourself fit.
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Conclusion

If you’re going to be working out, deadlifts are an essential form of exercise that will keep you feeling fit. Deadlifts increase testosterone, which means that they can help improve the other aspects of your workouts as well. Hopefully this article has helped you understand how deadlifts change your body. By mixing up different types of deadlifts, you can experience a huge number of benefits in your workout and in your overall health.
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