Steps
- Grasp a couple of dumbbells holding them by your side at arm's length.
- Stand with your torso straight and your legs spaced using a shoulder width or narrower stance. The knees should be slightly bent. This is your starting position.
- Keeping the knees stationary, lower the dumbbells to over the top of your feet by bending at the waist while keeping your back straight. Keep moving forward as if you were going to pick something from the floor until you feel a stretch on the hamstrings. Exhale as you perform this movement
- Start bringing your torso up straight again by extending your hips and waist until you are back at the starting position. Inhale as you perform this movement.
- Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.
Tracking it in OneRep
Add the stiff-legged dumbbell deadlift to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.
Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.
Where the instructions come from
The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.