The deadlift difference: is this the exercise you need for an active and pain-free future?

Life is easier with a strong, flexible body – and this weightlifting move will help with everything from rearranging the furniture to picking up your groceries. You might even learn to love the barbell

One of the lovely things about getting older is realising there’s always something more you should be doing to look after your body. Did I say lovely? Obviously I meant tedious. But how you feel about it doesn’t change the facts. If you take the slightest interest in your health, and want to stay strong, mobile and pain-free in your 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond, you’ll have to pay attention to the exercises that many of us avoid in our 20s, 30s and 40s. Or, in my case, until you’re 61¾.

Like deadlifts, which help with one of life’s most basic tasks – bending over and picking stuff up. Training these also involves bending over and picking stuff up – usually a barbell, but sometimes a kettlebell or pair of dumbbells. “Here’s a few things deadlifts help with,” says Laura Kummerle, a Georgia-based physiotherapist and personal trainer (PT). “Lifting your grocery bags off the ground on to the counter, lifting your laundry basket off the ground, lifting your kid/grandkid (especially out of their crib when you can’t squat), lifting a piece of furniture or a heavy rock for landscaping … They work the hip hinge, which is a fundamental movement pattern for strength training, but more importantly for daily life.”