Romanian Deadlift
Also works: Calves · Glutes · Lower Back
The Romanian deadlift is a hinge with the knees held at a fixed soft bend, lowering the bar by pushing the hips back until the hamstrings stop you — usually somewhere between the knee and mid-shin. Unlike a conventional deadlift it never touches the floor and never resets, so every rep is a continuous loaded stretch.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Take the bar out of a rack at hip height rather than deadlifting it off the floor — the first rep should not be the hardest part of the set.
- Grip just outside your thighs with a double overhand grip; use straps for your heavy sets, since grip should never be what ends an RDL.
- Stand with feet hip-width, bar touching your thighs, shoulders pulled back and lats engaged so the bar cannot drift forward.
- Soften the knees to roughly 15-20 degrees and lock that angle for the whole set.
- Take a big breath into the belly and brace before the first rep, then start the hips moving backward.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — One breath at the top, held through the descent and the drive up, exhaled standing. Three seconds down, no pause at the bottom beyond feeling the stretch, then a firm push back to standing.
Before you load it
- Set the bar down between sets rather than trying to hold it; a fatigued grip at the top of an RDL drops the bar onto your feet.
- A pinching or sharp sensation at the sit bones rather than a broad hamstring stretch usually means you have gone past your range — shorten the descent rather than pushing through it.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Start with an empty 20 kg bar and learn where your hamstrings actually stop you before adding anything. Most people work at roughly 50-60% of their conventional deadlift for sets of eight, which surprises them the first time. Add 2.5-5 kg only when every rep reaches the same depth with a flat back and a controlled three-second descent — if depth shrinks as the set goes on, you are already at the ceiling.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Your depth is set by your hamstrings, not by the plates. Have someone watch the moment your back starts to round and stop the rep a few centimetres above it. If you want more range, stand on a 5 cm platform once the back stays flat.
Set the knee angle in the mirror before rep one and hold it. Cue shins vertical and hips back; if the knees still creep, the weight is too heavy for the pattern you own.
Pull the bar back into your legs with your lats the whole way down — imagine trying to bend the bar around your thighs. Bar drift multiplies the lever on your lower back.
Use straps for anything above about six reps at a working weight. Grip is a separate quality; train it deliberately elsewhere rather than letting it cap your hamstring work.
Finish with the glutes squeezed and ribs down, standing tall — no lean back. The rep is over when you are upright, not when you are arched.
Why bother
Muscle grows best when it is loaded at long lengths, and the bottom of an RDL is the hamstring at close to its longest under a heavy bar. That is why it builds hamstrings that a leg curl cannot: the curl loads knee flexion at short range, the RDL loads hip extension at full stretch.
The fixed knee angle is the whole technique. In a conventional deadlift the knees keep bending and the quads join in; here the knees stay at the same soft 15-20 degrees from the first centimetre to the bottom, so the only thing that moves is your hips travelling backwards. Straighten the knees fully and it becomes a stiff-leg deadlift, which loads the lower back harder and the hamstrings no better.
Where it fits
Second movement on a lower-body day, after squats, or as the main pull on a day you are not deadlifting from the floor. Three to four sets of 6-10, once or twice a week. Do not put heavy RDLs the day before or after heavy conventional deadlifts — they draw on the same tissue and the soreness stacks.
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Asked and answered
How low should the bar go?
Only as low as you can go while keeping a flat back and a fixed knee angle. For most people the bar stops between the kneecap and mid-shin. The floor is irrelevant here — reaching it by rounding trades the hamstring stretch you wanted for lumbar flexion under load.
What is the difference between a Romanian and a stiff-leg deadlift?
Knee angle and start position. An RDL keeps a soft 15-20 degree bend and starts from the top, lowering to hamstring range. A stiff-leg deadlift keeps the legs near straight and typically starts from the floor. The stiff-leg loads the lower back harder for no extra hamstring benefit, which is why the RDL is the more useful of the two for most lifters.
Should I use straps?
Yes, on your working sets. The point of the exercise is loading the hamstrings at length, and stopping a set because your fingers opened trains neither. Do your first sets double overhand for grip work, then strap up for the heavy ones.
Why do I feel it in my lower back rather than my hamstrings?
Almost always one of three things: the bar drifting away from your legs, the knees locking straight, or going deeper than your hamstrings allow so the spine rounds to finish the range. Fix them in that order. Drop the weight by a third while you sort it out — feeling it in the right place at 60 kg beats feeling it in the wrong place at 100.
Can I do it with dumbbells?
Yes, and it is a good option when a bar is unavailable or you want to work one leg at a time. The trade-off is that dumbbells hang beside your legs rather than in front, which shortens the lever slightly and makes the load a bit easier at the same weight. Expect to need more total weight for the same effect.