Recently, after nearly a decade away from heavy barbell training, I (re)tested my deadlift. Due to a series of severe disc herniations and all the lower back pain, radiculopathy, and drop-foot that often accommodates these, I steered clear of heavy barbell training. During my time away from heavy lifting, I used barbells sparingly, rarely using loads over 135lb. I replaced my former love with kettlebell training and eventually found myself on a path to Sinister, which I successfully completed in 2024.

Going into this impromptu deadline test, I didn’t know what to expect. The last time I tested in 2014, I pulled a less-than-pretty 405lb and was experiencing nearly constant lower back pain at the time. I may not have known what I was going to pull, but what I knew for certain was that I did not want to injure my back again. I thought anything over 330lb would be pretty good. Well, I ended up pulling 425lb clean, without any sticking points and, most importantly, without any lower back pain during or after. How could this be? The heaviest weight I had consistently used for nearly a decade was only a 48kg kettlebell.

There are three main reasons why I think training for Sinister improved my deadlift; all of them have to do with the massive amount of heavy swings I had to perform.

First, this high volume of swings improved the strength of my hip extensors (hamstrings, glutes, etc.), increasing the strength of my hinge, which directly translated into the deadlift.

Second, performing so many swings improved my hinge technique, particularly my leg drive. Swinging heavy kettlebells teaches you the importance of a strong leg drive directly into the ground. This is less obvious in the deadlift but no less important. It is very easy to just pull on the barbell, but if you can focus on a strong leg drive directly into the floor, you will recruit more leg strength into the movement.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, swinging heavy kettlebells, mostly single arm, improved my spinal stiffness. It improved my spinal stiffness in two ways. First, it taught me how to brace properly. Proper bracing involves maximally leveraging intra-abdominal pressure, which stiffens and protects the spine. With my back and all of its injuries, had I not learned how to brace in such a way, I would have never made it through Sinister, and I would have never pulled 425lb, certainly not pain-free. Second, performing so many single-arm swings increased the strength of my oblique slings. This resulted in even greater torso stiffness (torsional stiffness). The stiffer the spine, the more efficiently the strength from your legs gets into the barbells.

Swinging heavy kettlebells for the past several years has benefitted me tremendously. One example is improving my deadlift. It may have only been 425lb, but it was the first time that I performed a heavy deadlift pain-free in nearly 20 years, and this may not have been possible without training for Sinister.