Sumo or Conventional? How Your Body Decides Your Deadlift Stance

Oct 20, 2026 · @francois

Your best deadlift stance is the one your proportions favour, and neither sumo nor conventional is the “real” deadlift.

In our last training post, Find Your Perfect Squat, we looked at how your anatomy explains why no two squats look the same. The deadlift works the same way. Gym arguments about whether sumo is “cheating” miss the point: two recent studies suggest the better question is which stance suits your body.

Same lift, different jobs

The two stances load your body differently, even at the same relative weight. A 2025 French study by Hanen and colleagues put 30 experienced male lifters through both styles at 85% of their one-rep max, using motion capture, force plates and muscle sensors.

	Conventional	Sumo
Main demand	Hip extension: peak hip-extension moment about 303 Nm vs 276 Nm off the floor	Side-to-side and rotational control at the hip and knee: peak hip-adduction moment about 101 Nm vs 30 Nm
Muscles that worked harder	Hamstrings (biceps femoris) through the whole lift; upper back after the bar passes the knees	Quads (vastus lateralis) off the floor
Best fit for	Building the posterior chain	Training hip and knee stability; lifters who struggle with a long, bent-over start

In short, conventional is the more “hinge-y” lift, and sumo spreads more of the work into the knees and the stabilisers around the hip. Neither is easier; they just ask different things. The lifters even split almost evenly on preference: 17 of the 30 favoured conventional.

Your torso casts the deciding vote

In people new to deadlifting, the one body measurement that predicted the better stance was torso length relative to height. Cholewa and colleagues (2019) taught 47 gym-goers (28 men, 19 women) who had never deadlifted both styles, then tested their one-rep max in each.

No overall winner. Average sumo and conventional maxes were statistically the same.
Longer torso, better sumo. People whose sitting height made up a bigger share of their total height lifted relatively more sumo; shorter torsos tended to favour conventional.
The usual rules of thumb didn’t hold. Arm length and thigh-to-shin ratio, the measures gym lore usually points to, predicted nothing.

The likely reason: a sumo stance lets you start with your hips closer to the bar and your chest more upright, which shortens the levers working against your lower back. A long torso pitched forward in a conventional start pays a bigger leverage penalty.

Keep the effect size in perspective. Torso ratio explained only about 15% of the difference between people, so it’s a nudge, not a verdict. Hip mobility, which the study didn’t measure, likely matters too.

What this looks like on the platform

Coaches apply the same idea in practice: fixed setup rules, with hip height adjusted to your proportions. Squat University’s video Find Your Ideal Deadlift Stance in 60 Seconds breaks it down this way.

Three setup pillars for everyone. In a conventional pull, the bar sits over mid-foot, your shoulder blades sit directly over the bar, and the bar touches your shins. These hold whether you’re 5’2“ or a 7-foot strongman.

Your proportions set your hip height. With a longer torso or shorter legs, your hips start lower and your knees bend more, so the lift leans on leg drive. With a shorter torso or longer legs, your hips start higher and your back sits more horizontal.

A flatter back can still be safe. A higher hip start does put more load on the lower back, so the video’s fix is to keep the spine still:

Brace. Press your fingers into your sides, breathe in so your waist pushes them out, then tighten your abs.
Pre-tension your hips. Powerlifting great Ed Coan describes pulling the slack out of the bar, squeezing everything from neck to lower back, and wiggling his hips in toward the bar before it leaves the floor. Without that preload, the hips shoot up first and the back does too much work.

Sumo isn’t cheating. Both styles are legal in powerlifting, and the heaviest deadlift on record was pulled conventional. Sumo shortens the bar’s path but demands more hip mobility, glute strength and adductor work.

What about arm length? The video repeats a popular rule: if your arms (shoulder to middle fingertip) are well over 38% of your height, conventional may suit you; well under, try sumo. That 38% cut-off comes from a 2010 coaching article by Hales, not from testing. When the 2019 beginners study checked it, arm length predicted nothing, though nearly all its subjects counted as long-armed. Treat it as a hint, not a rule.

Find your stance in four steps

The fastest way to find your stance is to test both, with your proportions as the tiebreaker.

Measure your torso. Sit on a flat bench with hips and knees at 90 degrees, measure from the seat to the top of your head, and divide by your standing height. A relatively high number is a hint to give sumo a fair trial.
Learn both properly. Spend a few weeks practising each style with light weights. Sumo in particular feels awkward at first, and the beginners in the 2019 study got two coached sessions before testing.
Test like for like. Work up to a solid set of 3–5 reps in each style on separate days, and compare which moved more weight with cleaner form.
Check how it feels and what you’re after. If your hips won’t open comfortably into a wide stance, conventional may suit you better for now. If you want more hamstring work, conventional delivers it; if you want quads and hip stability, sumo does.

A good coach can speed this up by watching your setup and suggesting a stance tweak, often a small change in foot width rather than a full switch.

The bottom line

Both stances are legitimate deadlifts, and your body, not gym tradition, should pick between them. Sumo is not a shortcut, and conventional is not the “true” lift; they simply train different things and suit different frames. As with the squat, the right technique is the one that fits your anatomy and your goals.

One caveat: the stronger study used only experienced men, and the anthropometry study used only beginners, so neither tells the whole story for every lifter.