You already know the answer you want. You typed this question hoping someone with evidence would tell you what your instincts have been whispering — that the lift gym culture treats as a character test might just be a preference.
Here is that evidence.
Are Deadlifts Necessary for Muscle Growth
No single exercise fully develops a multi-headed muscle — complete growth depends on covering different regions through a combination of movements. When compound and isolation exercises were compared for total growth across seven studies, the difference was indistinguishable from zero. Deadlifts cover specific posterior chain regions well, but hip thrusts, RDLs, and leg curls cover the same ground.
— Rosa et al. 2023 · Strength & Conditioning Journal · n=193 (7 studies)
The deadlift's reputation rests on a reasonable idea: it recruits a lot of muscle at once. Glutes, hamstrings, erectors, traps, grip — one movement lights up the entire posterior chain. When an exercise does that much, skipping it feels like leaving money on the table.
But recruiting a muscle and developing it are two different outcomes.
When trained lifters spent weeks performing only one quad exercise, the growth maps were completely different depending on which exercise they chose. Leg extensions grew the front of the quad nearly twice as much as leg press did. The outer quad reversed the pattern — three times more growth with leg press than with extensions. Same muscle group, same effort — different regions growing at different rates because each exercise loads the muscle differently.
The implication reaches far past the quad. No single exercise — not even the best one available — fully develops a multi-headed muscle. What produces complete development is combining exercises that together cover every region. The specific exercise is a preference. The coverage is what determines the outcome. (The same principle applies to squats — and to every other lift that gym culture calls essential.)
And then a larger finding collapses the argument entirely.
Compound exercises have been compared directly against isolation exercises for total muscle growth — seven studies, ten head-to-head comparisons. The gap landed collapsed to nothing. Compound and isolation exercises produced identical total growth across every comparison.
Zero
The difference in total muscle growth between compound and isolation exercises — across seven studies and ten direct comparisons
No ambiguity in that result. If the entire distinction between compound and isolation — the hierarchy that puts deadlifts above leg curls, squats above extensions — does not predict how much total muscle you build, then a specific compound exercise cannot be mandatory by any definition.
So what actually determines growth?
Regional coverage across your program. Deadlifts target specific posterior chain regions — and they do it well. But hip thrusts cover glute regions deadlifts underserve. Romanian deadlifts hit the hamstrings through a different stretch position. Leg curls isolate knee flexion. Back extensions load the erectors without the same spinal compression. Every one of these exercises can cover what deadlifts cover — and several reach regions deadlifts miss.
Asking whether you need deadlifts misses the point. What matters is whether your program covers every region of the muscles you are training. When it does — with or without a single barbell pull from the floor — the growth follows.
One honest caveat: the evidence on regional hypertrophy is still growing. Most studies measure total muscle size, and the handful that map region-by-region growth use small samples. What exists is consistent — but the full map is not yet drawn.
That unfinished map is exactly why no exercise gets to call itself mandatory. The full case for how exercise selection shapes where muscle actually grows goes deeper into what the research has found — and where the gaps still are.