Is Sumo Deadlift Cheating? - (TRUE Science-Based Response to Jeff)

Sumo is for chicks. It's that simple.

i am amazed that ive been right all these years LOL .. been arguing with people about it .. i allways knew that deadlift in strongman is lift .. and lock out .. and if you dont have to travel as far with the weight there is bound to be less stress on the body wich should make it easier to lockout .. i hope i understood it right haha

The goal is to lift the most weight possible..willingly choosing the less efficient method to accomplish the same task seems silly.

You earned yourself a subscriber. I love Jeff but his video on this topic had some missing content that you covered. Well done!

Yannis you conveniently leave out what Jeff mentioned at the 6 min mark in his video. He offsets the 15% range of motion with a 15% increase in weight which will the equal to same joules. Not cool bro, you are skewing what Jeff is saying.

100kg 2 reps. if 1 rep is .5 meters, the total work done is 981J

200kg 1rep is also 981J

hence, if you can do 100kg for 10 reps, you can do 1000kg for 1 rep hence sumo is cheating 🥰🥰

Are there scientific studies of athletes 1rm both styles?

Comparing conventional vs sumo is like comparing conventional pull ups versus butterfly pull ups or conventional bench press versus arch bench press 🤷🏻‍♂️….

I measured the approximate angle of the arms to the spine and got 47° for sumo and 65° for conventional. Taking the sine of both of these results in 20% less torque on the hips with sumo, treating the spine as a lever and the hips as a fulcrum.

if sumo is easier that makes conventional harder by default

Not everyone use the wider stance possible to do sumo, i have a sweet spot for sumo which is almost a semi sumo stance, if i go wider i literally lift less maybe cause flexibility and hips structure... on the other hand if i lift conventional my spinal erectors cramps like hell cause my leverage is aweful for conventnional...
You oversimplified the argument imo.

But when you're doing sumo, you can lift more weight, so wouldn't that equalise the amount of energy you put in?

If sumo deadlift is easier, that just makes it a better deadlift.

The entire point of a deadlift is to squeeze as much leverage out of your body as possible to lift a weight off the ground. Neither conventional or sumo deadlifts take a single muscle through a full range of motion. So if sumo does that better, sumo is just superior.

Conventional hurts my lower back, so I'm gonna keep using sumo

Completely agree with you, great vid

Sumo is a dead PULL not a deadlift. End of story. It is not the same concept as a close and wide grip bench press. A deadlift you are lifting the bar and I sumo you are pulling. Completely different. So yeah you are wrong bud.

Boom!

Sumo reduce rom, reduce very much if you put your leg in bigger distance

According to "basic physics" work done onto the barbell is different than work done by your body. You can model the human body as a kinematic chain consisting of several rotating joints. The work done by a rotating joint is equal to joint torque multiplied by joint's angular displacement. You calculate the work done by each joint during the entire motion. This is the work done by your body during the entire motion. I think you can also look at the calories burned in one rep as well.

So yes, it is true that Work = Force * Distance, that does give the work done onto the barbell, but that is not equal to the work done by your body which is either sum of (joint torque * joint angle) or calories burned. If sumo deadlift is easier, then given the same weight as conventional deadlift, the same person's body would end up doing less work.

Due to different individuals' biomechanics, they would most certainly have different joint torques / joint angles even if given same weight for the barbell. So overall, I think the argument "less force*distance in sumo" isn't relevant in determining whether sumo is easier or not.

I'm a short guy (just 175 cm) and I still do conventional. Sumo, for some reason, kills my hips and groin. I feel like it's tearing my hip joint apart. I had back pain with sumo deadlifts. Never felt any discomfort with conventional deadlift

You need to do a live debate with him brother

This analysis misses out on a key aspect of lifting heavy weights: you don’t miss a rep because of the total exertion throughout the rep (total work, pointed out here), you miss a rep at the weakest point (between the point of maximal contraction and minimum velocity) when the muscle gives out. It doesn’t matter how much less energy you’re putting into lifting the weight if your muscles aren’t strong enough to produce the necessary contractions. That’s where more complex calculations like Nippard’s or Greg Nuckols’ come in.

That said, I consider the two as separate exercises outside of competition settings where both are legal.

The maximal stance width imposed by the plate distance is such a good point ! Also, I would say technically the arbitrary starting point of approx 8 inches off the ground scales better for shorter athletes too. Sumo is such an unsatisfying feeling to me too. I've repped out 500lbs sumo easily, pulled about 600lbs conventional. There is something so unsatisfying about a sumo deadlift that even if I can lift more weight with it I am just so repulsed to do so lol. Infact, most of my training now revolves around deficit conventional deadlifts !

Force applied through the movement is not uniform

Sumo is not cheating, its straight up bullshit..

The work example is a bit dishonest no ? Jeff says in his video that the ROM is compensated for by the weight moved if you use the same weight for both of course the conventional has more work done but the fact that some people can move more weight on the sumo means that there is compensation...

I think you need to rewatch the video because Jeff said that the reason Sumo is equal to conventional is because he lifts and generally people will lift more weight which will equal the force output. I do agree they shouldn’t be in the same competition as they are different lifts. I my self prefer conventional but if you are lifting more with sumo then it’s not easier.

Excellent video

Idgaf what people say i can conventional as much as sumo

The work equation simply doesn't "work" in this circumstance because your leverages are different. So even though less work is done against gravitational forces that doesn't mean its actually easier to reach the locked out position and this is all because of the different leverages. Example imagine lifting a 100kg fridge up by a height of 1m with a just a rope. Now imagine you use a pulley or a lever to lift it 1.5m. Depending on the set up less force can actually be required despite to lift the fridge. This is just one reason why work done isn't a sound argument for it being easier.

Think about narrow vs wide grip pull ups. A wide grip pull up is generally harder than a narrower grip because of the mechanics of the movement.

It's basically the same comparison of someone who does a descent normal arching to someone who can arch so extremely that they only get 2 inches ROM from chest to lockout.

Bingo.

we’ll guess what hoes, it looks cooler and has more technical prowess so fudge off

I’m anti super sumo, but the work argument is pretty garbage. There’s a reason why doing a 1rm and doing 2 reps @ 50% are leagues apart in difficulty, yet they require the same amount of work.

You are correct as far as you go but it's not the whole picture. "Cheating" is a concept that only applies to competition not "training" so there are some additional factors to consider. In training (sets of reps) the energy/work (in Joules) is relevant as are the, associated, depletion of glycogen and buildup of lactic acid - so sumo would allow for more reps before failure. Obviously if you want to do a certain amount of work in training you would need more sumo reps than conventional reps. HOWEVER, the force required to pull 100kg is always going to be 98.1 kN (on Earth) regardless of the range of motion. For a 1RM (competition) lift aerobic capacity, glycogen availability, & lactic acid buildup are all irrelevant - simply "can you apply the requisite force?" In a competition there is a long rest interval between efforts. But the big difference is that in sumo you use your quads a lot more and they are very strong (i.e. able to exert a high force). Also, in addition to the stance width, a shorter limbed lifter has mechanical advantage in the sumo style. In other words one is closer to using "leg press" muscles in sumo (I can currently leg-press about 3x my deadlift) which is advantageous. The bottom line is - in training, cheating is not an issue - in competition, the question is "is it within the rules?" - I don't think that sumo is in the same category as "lifting suits" etc., it is just a case of different athletes using techniques that suit their physiques. Understand your body and use the technique(s) that meet your training and/or completion objectives.

Physics alone shouldn't be considered, you have to take into account biomechanics as well,
lifting 100kg by 20cm conventional is easier than lifting 80kg by 20cm with one leg only, even though the amount of joules is smaller, we need to take into consideration the work done by the involved muscles. (Which is the tricky part)
lifting

Excellent video, I would love to see Jeff respond to this.

thx man, im 188 cm tall and 140kg heavy, and i always wonder why the heck i cant get that 70 angle wide stance on sumo deadlift like other shorter lifter without risking my feet hitting the dropping plates every rep, your 2nd point explained everything.

You are misrepresenting work done with peak power out put, over the rep do you need to do more work in conventional, of course you do. Does that mean that it allows you to have a higher peak output and therefore lift more weight? You’re comparing apples to oranges. It’s like arguing that one sprinting style is cheating and one isn’t cause one athlete is less tired at the end of the race, if the athlete that was more tired at the end of the race tried the other technique and cut a tenth of a second of his time is he now cheating because he used less energy?

Less distance; less work. That's all we need to know. Excellent break down. I've seen another video where the two types are broken down, and it's calculated where the sumo position can outperform a conventional position by a good margin.

Yes I agree with the fact that you need less total work to perform sumo deadlift, but you don't take into account that more effort is required to the quads with sumo than with conventional, which means that if someone has weaker quads and a stronger lower back, sumo will still be harder than conventional, that's why it depends that much on the lifter.
The math would be : let Wqs be the work performed by the quads to lift a certain weight in sumo deadlift, Wls the work performed by the lower back in sumo, Wqc by quads to lift the same weight in conventional and Wlc by lower back in conventional. We do have : Wqc + Wlc > Wqs + Wls. But we also have Wqs > Wqc (which necessarily implies Wlc > Wls of course). We can have a lifter that can lift Wlc and Wqc (making them able to pull conventional) but unable to lift Wqs (making them unable to pull sumo)

Im totally convinced with your points. You really help correct my understanding about this topic. No one is perfect, and I'm kinda suprised to see Jeff proven wrong, but thats what make science improve. Love both you and Jeff

For the first point one of the points jeff made was that with sumo even though you are using less distance, you can lift more weight so work would be the same. So assuming the distance lost in sumo is made up in weight, the amount of work done would be the same, right?

People will call you a hater because you're right

You cant prove wrong physics, but people will still try.

Yup sumo is cheating so foh

🍗🦖

idk. I always bashed on sumo because it looked stupid to me. But i actually can't do sumo as easily as conventional. I understand it's probably because I don't train sumo at all, but it feels terrible and I really don't like how it feels when I use it. (it almost feels unsafe).
lot of people argued for sumo deadlift because it replicates how we should be lifting something off the floor. I've literally never seen anyone including me using sumo deadlift style to lift anything heavy off a floor.

All in all, I think sumo deadlift is more like wide arm pull up. Wide arm pull up is harder short grip pull up just because it uses less muscles despite less distance moved. It's like bicep curling 45 lb is easier than wrist curling 45 lb despite wrist curling also has less ROM.

I read a great article that, yes greater distance travelled produces more work, but also the greater the distance the pelvis is from the plane of the bar is also going to make it harder to lift the weight. Torque and levers. That made it click for me.

Just subscribed becaus of this video 👍🏽