No, you don't need to deadlift to build muscle, get strong, or develop an impressive physique — every muscle the deadlift targets can be trained effectively with other movements.
However, if you skip it entirely, you'll give up a unique combination of benefits that's genuinely difficult to replicate with any other single exercise.
Keep reading to understand exactly what you're trading off either way, so you can make the right choice for your goals.
The Surprising Expert Consensus on Deadlifting
The fitness world rarely agrees on anything, but here's where the science community lands: deadlifts are excellent, not essential.
That nuanced position comes from coaches and researchers across the entire spectrum, though with one critical caveat—your goals determine everything.
Dr. Mike Israetel puts it bluntly: there's not a single mandatory exercise for hypertrophy.
His reasoning goes deeper than that, though.
Conventional deadlifts deliver a poor stimulus-to-fatigue ratio for muscle growth, meaning they don't target any single muscle optimally relative to the systemic exhaustion they create.
Sean Nalewanyj backs this up for anyone chasing an aesthetic physique—the conventional deadlift simply isn't something you must perform.
The real-world evidence is compelling.
Akash Vaghela, a former competitive powerlifter and bodybuilder, hasn't touched a conventional deadlift in over four years.
His glutes, hamstrings, and back? Still growing, and he reports they're developing at a faster rate than when he was deadlifting regularly.
But flip the coin and you'll find equally credible voices saying something different.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association calls the deadlift a priority for all strength training programs, noting that few substitutes exist when it comes to positive adaptations and strength progression.
Greg Nuckols argues you'd be hard-pressed to find a better exercise for adding mass from your traps down to your hamstrings.
So what's the actual consensus? Experts draw a sharp line between two things: the hip hinge movement pattern—which nearly everyone agrees you need—and the specific barbell deadlift from the floor, which remains optional.
Your goals make the final call. If you're building muscle for aesthetics, you can skip conventional pulls without losing sleep. If you're training for raw strength or athletic performance, the calculation changes entirely.
Why Deadlifts Have Such a Powerful Reputation
The deadlift's status as the “king of exercises” isn't just gym mythology.
It engages more total muscle mass simultaneously than virtually any other single movement you can perform. That's the foundation of everything else.
The muscle recruitment breaks down into two tiers:
Primary movers doing the actual work:
- Gluteus maximus
- Hamstrings
- Erector spinae
- Quadriceps
Stabilizers holding everything together:
- Trapezius, rhomboids, and latissimus dorsi
- Core musculature
- Forearm muscles
A systematic review confirmed that the erector spinae and quadriceps show the highest activation during conventional deadlifts.
More interesting: hamstring activation exceeds what you get from hip thrusts, and the deadlift proves superior to squats specifically for training hip extensors.
The physiological benefits extend well beyond muscle activation.
Deadlifts create mechanical stress that stimulates osteoblasts—the cells responsible for building bone. Research shows resistance training programs that include deadlifts increase bone mineral density by 2.7-7.7% at the lateral spine and femoral neck.
The LIFTMOR study demonstrated something even more specific: high-intensity programs incorporating deadlifts improve bone density precisely at the sites most vulnerable to osteoporotic fractures.
The hormonal response separates deadlifts from machine-based alternatives.
Multi-joint, free-weight movements like this trigger greater testosterone and growth hormone elevation compared to machines targeting similar muscle groups. That systemic response matters for adaptation.
Here's where things get counterintuitive: research on chronic low back pain shows deadlifts can actually build strength, decrease pain, and improve function.
The exercise becomes therapeutic rather than harmful for many people dealing with back issues.
And for athletes, deadlifts rank among the most effective exercises for improving maximal jump performance, making them valuable across virtually every sport that requires explosive power.
The Hidden Problems with Deadlifts for Muscle Growth
While the deadlift's total-body strength benefits are hard to dispute, its reputation as a hypertrophy powerhouse faces increasing scrutiny from evidence-based coaches.
Three specific biomechanical limitations undercut its muscle-building efficiency.
1. Isometric contraction dominates the movement
Most muscles involved—your back, lats, and traps—contract isometrically during deadlifts.
They hold position rather than moving through a full range of motion.
Dynamic contractions through a complete range prove more effective for stimulating growth, which means these muscle groups don't get the optimal stimulus despite working hard.
2. The hamstring paradox
Your hips and knees extend simultaneously during the deadlift, which creates an odd consequence: hamstring length barely changes throughout the entire movement.
Romanian deadlifts solve this by keeping your knees relatively fixed, putting the hamstrings through a far greater stretch. For hamstring development specifically, RDLs are demonstrably superior.
3. Dead-stop start eliminates the stretch-shortening cycle
Each rep begins from a complete stop on the floor.
That eliminates the eccentric-to-concentric transition—the stretch reflex that research shows enhances both force production and muscle growth.
You're leaving a proven growth mechanism on the table with every rep.
The practical consequence is what Israetel calls a poor stimulus-to-fatigue ratio.
Heavy deadlifts generate substantial systemic fatigue that drains energy for your subsequent exercises, increases recovery time, and creates scheduling conflicts with the rest of your training.
You're paying a high metabolic cost relative to the muscle-building stimulus you're actually receiving.
Most lifters make this worse by skipping the eccentric phase entirely—dropping the weight rather than lowering it under control. That cuts out half the potential growth stimulus.
Jordan Peters, a world-renowned bodybuilding trainer, has drawn a clear conclusion from this analysis: his athletes should abandon conventional deadlifts entirely in favor of RDLs and stop wasting recovery capabilities on conventional pulls.
Strong Alternatives Exist (But None Are Perfect Substitutes)
The good news for deadlift skeptics: a thoughtful combination of exercises can cover the vast majority of what deadlifts provide.
Multiple coaches outline the same framework, built around three exercise categories working together.
The replacement framework:
- Hip hinge movement (Romanian deadlifts) — targets glutes, hamstrings, and spinal erectors
- Vertical pull (chin-ups or pull-ups) — handles lats and lower traps
- Horizontal row (barbell or dumbbell rows) — covers mid-traps, rear delts, and back thickness
The Romanian deadlift stands out as the single best replacement, universally recommended across sources.
RDLs deliver superior hamstring stimulus compared to conventional deadlifts, generate far less systemic fatigue, and maintain the hip hinge pattern that coaches agree is non-negotiable.
If you're going to pick one exercise to replace conventional pulls, this is it.
The trap bar deadlift occupies interesting middle ground.
Research shows it produces higher force, power, and velocity than the conventional barbell version while reducing spinal load by roughly 10-15%.
Most experts consider it a deadlift variation rather than a true alternative, which means it solves many complaints people have about conventional pulls while retaining most of the benefits.
Other effective alternatives target specific aspects: hip thrusts for glute isolation, kettlebell swings for explosive posterior chain power, good mornings for postural strength, back extensions for lower back endurance, and farmer's carries for grip development.
The real-world evidence backs this up. Robert Oberst, a World's Strongest Man competitor who has pulled 400 kilograms, told Joe Rogan that NFL and Division I college programs don't deadlift—they use hang cleans and power cleans instead.
Elite bodybuilders competing at the Classic Physique Mr. Olympia level build their posterior chains primarily with RDLs, machine rows, and targeted isolation work rather than conventional deadlifts.
Vaghela's verdict cuts to the core: if you're incorporating all these alternative exercises with high effort for multiple sets, adding conventional deadlifts won't lead to any further muscle growth.
What You're Actually Sacrificing By Skipping Deadlifts
If the evidence says you don't need to deadlift, intellectual honesty demands an accounting of what you forfeit. The answer: more than most deadlift skeptics acknowledge.
Dead-stop mechanics create irreplaceable neural demands
The deadlift's most distinctive feature is its dead-stop concentric requirement.
No other common exercise requires you to generate maximal force from a truly static position—no elastic energy stored in muscles and tendons, no bounce, no stretch reflex.
This forces your nervous system to recruit the maximum number of motor units from zero velocity, building raw starting strength and motor unit recruitment capacity in ways that exercises with a stretch-shortening cycle simply can't replicate.
Research shows strength training produces measurable adaptations in motor unit recruitment and rate coding at the spinal cord level within just four weeks.
The deadlift's unique demands likely amplify this effect.
Grip strength matters more than you think
Few exercises load your grip under the full systemic stress of a heavy compound pull.
While farmer's carries and specific grip training exist, they don't create the same integrated demand.
This matters beyond aesthetics: grip strength ranks as one of the strongest predictors of all-cause mortality.
The numbers are stark. Each 5-kilogram decrease in grip strength associates with a 16% higher risk of death.
People with low grip strength face a 67% higher risk of early death overall.
Deadlifts build this critical biomarker as a training byproduct, not as an additional exercise you need to schedule.
Bone density gets a dual-site stimulus
The bone density benefit is particularly difficult to replicate because deadlifts load both your hip and lumbar spine under heavy compression simultaneously—precisely the two sites most prone to osteoporotic fractures.
Squats load the spine. Hip thrusts load the hip. But no single alternative loads both areas under comparable forces, which gives deadlifts a meaningful advantage for aging populations concerned about skeletal health.
Functional integration ties everything together
The deadlift trains your entire body to work as a single unit—bracing your core, stabilizing your shoulders, gripping the bar, extending your hips and knees—all under maximal load.
One coaching team noted that a good deadlifter will have the postural strength to perform barbell rows properly, but those benefits don't flow in the other direction nearly as well.
The carryover to real life is direct.
Picking up heavy objects from the ground is exactly what the deadlift simulates, and no combination of machine exercises replicates that integrated demand.
Time efficiency has real-world consequences
For someone with limited training time, no exercise trains as many muscle groups per minute as the deadlift.
Replacing it requires two to three separate exercises, which translates to more total sets, more transitions between movements, and more time in the gym to achieve comparable coverage.
The Smart Approach: When to Deadlift and When to Skip
The honest synthesis of current evidence is this: you can build an impressive, strong, muscular physique without ever performing a conventional barbell deadlift.
Every muscle the deadlift trains can be targeted with other exercises, and for pure hypertrophy, those alternatives may actually be more efficient.
If injury, mobility limitations, or personal preference steer you away from conventional pulls, you can substitute with confidence.
But “not necessary” is not the same as “nothing lost.”
Combining Romanian deadlifts, rows, and targeted isolation work covers an estimated 90-95% of the deadlift's benefits.
That remaining 5-10%, however, includes some of the exercise's most distinctive contributions to long-term health and functional capacity—dead-stop mechanics, integrated grip loading, dual-site bone density stimulus, and unmatched time efficiency.
The emerging expert consensus offers a practical framework: the hip hinge pattern is essential; the conventional barbell deadlift is one excellent way to train it.
Whether you choose conventional pulls, trap bar deadlifts, RDLs, or kettlebell work depends on your goals, anatomy, injury history, and preferences.
Goal-specific recommendations:
For beginners building a foundation — Israetel recommends compound barbell basics including deadlifts for the first two to three years. You're learning fundamental movement patterns and building general strength, which makes the deadlift's broad stimulus valuable.
For advanced lifters in hypertrophy phases — Swapping conventional deadlifts for RDLs is a well-supported decision. You've already built the foundation, and now you're optimizing for muscle growth with better stimulus-to-fatigue ratios.
For competitive powerlifters and strongman athletes — The question is moot. The deadlift is a competition lift, so you train it regardless of whether it's theoretically optimal for hypertrophy.
The wisest approach may be the simplest: learn to deadlift well, use it when it serves your goals, substitute when it doesn't, and understand exactly what you're trading in either direction.
Conclusion
The deadlift isn't mandatory, but it's unique—and that distinction matters.
You can reach your physique and strength goals without it, but you'll need to accept specific trade-offs in neural adaptation, functional capacity, and training efficiency.
Make your choice based on your goals and constraints, not on blind adherence to tradition or knee-jerk rejection of it.
