OMG! This is so timely because someone asked on Twitter, what is one thing you wish you could've learned 10 years ago? My answer was taking care of posture. This is so epidemic, IMO. This is the closest I have come to feeling chronic pain that I had no control over.
I tried never ending solutions including Physical Therapy but nothing helped.
But I finally got control over it by doing TWO things:
1. Reading 8 steps to a pain free back by Susan Adams and putting lessons in action right away.
2. Performing THORACIC MOBILITY WORK
In my weight training class, we always avoided the deadlift due to the high risk of injury. Now I'm in middle age and starting to feel back pain, I picked it up, and performing this exercise completely fixes my back pain.
The key thing that he calls out in this and other videos is that most people do not have sufficient hamstring flexibility to safely deadlift off the ground (lack of flexibility will force your back out of a neutral position "rounding of the lower back"). There is certainly no shame in starting your deadlift from an elevated position by stacking plates underneath the barbell or pulling off rack pins while you work long-term on improving flexibility.
I highly recommend watching any of his videos before attempting any exercise, even ones that you think you know how to do well, e.g., bench press :)
Jeff is a strength and conditioning trainer (formerly with the Mets before becoming what looks like a full-time YouTuber). Ignore the click-bait titles and the fact that he doesn't wear a shirt - that's all part of the YouTube game. His content is consistently excellent.
My experience exactly, although I can't narrow it down to the deadlift. I had occasional but regular low back pain starting in my early-to-mid twenties. There wasn't a consistent relationship with my level of activity or inactivity, the type of exercise I did, or with my weight, all of which fluctuated quite a lot over the years. Back pain was just something I got regularly, like colds or headaches. I've had virtually no back pain (other than muscle soreness and a couple of sports injuries) since I started lifting heavy weights, which is not the usual progression for somebody from their twenties to their forties.
It's incredibly counterintuitive. Everyone's assumption, if they don't lift weights themselves, is that my case is some kind of weird exception or coincidence, and I can't really blame them. I have no idea how to explain that there's a good chance that they are misusing their back, and that they would be more comfortable sitting, standing, walking around, and lying down if they strengthened the muscles in their back. First of all, why in the world would we need to learn how to use our own bodies as adults; don't we figure this out as toddlers? And second of all, if we spend hours every day sitting down, hours every night lying down, and maybe hours every day walking around and jogging, why in the world would our backs not be strong enough to do those things safely and comfortably? Isn't doing something for hours at a time exactly the right signal to prepare your body for doing that thing?
But it seems to be a very common experience for people who try lifting weights: they find that they are much more comfortable sitting at their desk at work and lying down in their bed at home if they lift heavy things on their feet at the gym. I wish I knew how to convince people to try it.
If this sounds "cool/lucky" for most people. It is in reality a nightmare if you are office worker.
Everything is in your environment generally lower, shorter or inappropriate for you... This trigger improper posture and inevitable backpain.... Chronic backpain in my case.
After passing through everything, including painkiller, osteopathy, chiropractic, surgery (back bone injection) without any better results I tried (pure amator) weight lifting and this was a miracle for me.
My situation get much better, in just a matter of few months.
My 2 cents on that is weight lifting force you to fix your posture and imbalance when you practice it. Muscles have Memory, and this, even if it is counterintuitive, help a lot.
I did once throw out my back while deadlifting. It was completely preventable, but it turns out that the consequences were minimal. I've become a lot less worried about my back since then.
It was the day after a hard 20 mile run, and I stupidly tried to deadlift my 1 rep max in that fatigued state. Something popped and I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. It hurt really badly for about 3 days, and made it difficult to put on socks and pants. And then it healed right up. No pain ever since, and I went right back to deadlifting.
As an aside, there is almost zero reason to PR on any exercise unless it's for a competition. The risk of injury at a PR load is simply too high for recreation. Your 3RM is a good indicator where PR lies, and carries far less risk of injury.
I'm saying this as someone who loves the dead lift and picking up heavy things.
Good advice here. 3RM in my opinion is even pushing it and not something you want to do often. 5RM is probably more ideal to do on a semi-regular basis.
Form is critical too, so with every single lift that you do, make sure you're using the correct form first, otherwise you're potentially wasting your time and putting yourself at risk of injury.
Agreed. Even a 3RM is something that I would no more than 2x/year. As I've gotten older I don't even do that. My workout weight goes up over time which means I'm getting stronger. But I'm not a complete young idiot anymore, and know avoiding injury is job one.
It was probably a back strain/sprain. Before going through that, I expected that a deadlifting injury would be debilitating and would take months to heal from. The reality was... different. That's my point.
Deadlifts are so safe that... there are hundreds of deadlift safety tutorials on Youtube, where poor form and a bad instructor can cause irreversible damage very abruptly.
Notice how this doesn't apply to jumping jacks or the plank.
That you always have to couch the benefits of deadlifts in the "when done properly" disclaimer should be a hint as to what they're talking about. Hell, even lifting with one's legs instead of one's back comes so unnaturally to some that my refrigerator's box came with "lift with legs" instructions stamped onto it complete with a series of pictograms.
Chances are you were lifting the toddler or sandbag with ho hum form. You aren't going to hurt yourself lifting 50 pounds like that. You try ho hum form with 400lbs on a barbell and your body is not going to be very happy with you.
Does ho hum mean bad? Couldn't really find it, just that it means routine/dull.
But if good form, then I find it unlikely that you hurt yourself with 400lbs if you progressed to that.
In this case I mean OK form, not proper form since you are just thinking about moving a sandbag on the truck bed and not the angle of your back and where your weight is positioned over the knees. Weightlifters get bad injuries even if they know good form in and out, it only takes a small movement to fall out of form and seriously hurt yourself while lifting heavy weight and can happen under supervision, which you should have already in the form of a spotter for heavy lifts.
It's a common misconception about dead lifts. So common, that some 'experts' even say to avoid the dead lift. The problem, as you point out, is that lifting things from the ground is a common every day occurrence. Learning how to lift things properly and add some strength around that movement in fact lowers risk of injury.
I've had back pain for about 2 years, up until recently. I did weekly physiotherapy for an extended amount of time until my doctor recommended neurodynamic exercises. It's basically focusing on stretching your nerves. I did that daily for 6 weeks and my pain was mostly gone. When I feel it's coming back, I do the exercise maybe once a week and I'm good. On top of that I can now focus on improving core strength. It's a huge motivator knowing how bad it feels, but that you have it under control (which was a huuuge relief).
Edit: my back pain was caused by bad posture, which was caused by pain from an untreated slightly ruptured intervertebral disc.
I have back pain problems right now that go away only when I stop exercising and stretching. I found this out when I broke my ankle and couldn't do anything. Back pain gone!
I love how everyone immediately goes to "you were doing it wrong". Gee thanks. It could also be you perform at a very high level and your body is aging, you have an underlying condition that had never had a chance to fully heal, or many other nuanced reasons.
So, in other words... he's doing it wrong. Perhaps "wrong" is "pushing too hard given age or some underlying condition", but the fact is that exercise and stretching should never make you worse off... assuming you're doing it correctly.
Sounds like you need to stretch correctly after exercising. I had the exact same experience, and it wasn’t until I began focusing my stretching on my hamstrings that I saw immediate and significant relief. It’s the holy grail to a back pain free life for me now.
My PT didn't mention much about posture like the book did. The book covers a lot of detail on how to sit, sleep, stretch, lift, breath and other basic human activities. Sleep was a huge win because I would wake up with pain most of the time but the moment I learned how to sleep properly and put those lessons in action, I woke up without any pain. I was sore the first day (a good sign, IMO). It is sad that I am old enough but my body has forgotten to perform these basic activities.
My PT did not mention anything about thoracic mobility exercises either. Book also covered chin tucks and shoulder rolls but it didn't stop there. These are some of the common exercises you find on internet and are recommended by mostly all of PTs. But when you are done with your sessions, there is no one to tell you at home about not exaggerating your neck while doing chin tucks. But the book did with amazing visuals.
PT (4.5 yelp reviews) did lot of trial and error solutions focusing on strengthening and mobility exercises. Great, if something worked, otherwise continue trying different solutions.
I also had to meet $1500 deductible for my insurance to cover these PT sessions but I could only afford 2 sessions a week. This point was not an obstacle but I wanted results from PT after 3-4 sessions to justify the cost which didn't happen to be the case for me.
I tried never ending solutions including Physical Therapy but nothing helped.
But I finally got control over it by doing TWO things: 1. Reading 8 steps to a pain free back by Susan Adams and putting lessons in action right away. 2. Performing THORACIC MOBILITY WORK
I can't speak for you but this CHANGED MY LIFE! I am back at it again with no pain. If you would like to read my experience dealing with the pain check out this thread https://twitter.com/mihirchronicles/status/12174493172015964....