If you have a “bad back” there is one exercise you not only must learn, but must develop MASTERY in. It’s also the exercise you are likely most scared to perform, and probably believe will hurt your back!
That exercise is the deadlift.
The reason the deadlift is intimidating is you often see people lifting tremendous amounts of weight, and when done incorrectly it CAN cause injury.
However the deadlift is simply a way to organize your body, most importantly your spine, and bend over and pick something up off the floor.
It’s important to understand that the muscles of your spine have two primary purposes, stability and mobility. The deepest muscles of the spine stabilize while the big superficial muscles are used for movement.
If you’ve ever strained your back and feel like you are walking like Frankenstein or had immense pain from picking up a pencil you have likely strained these small stabilizing muscles. The resulting tightness everywhere, is your body recruiting the large muscles to stabilize your spine. However you can’t task switch between mobility and stability very fast, hence the Frankenstein walk.
The reason the deadlift is such a useful exercise for those with back pain is that it places the vertebral bodies (the individual bones in your spine) in a neutral and fixed position where the small stabilizing muscles are able to best complete their job of stability. This then allows the large powerful muscles like the glutes to engage, resulting in the majority the movement coming from your hips. Your stable neutral-spine essentially moves around your hips.
Done correctly this is a safe and effective way to move objects and a position that actually protects your back, often times even IF you have an injury.
About four years ago I learned this lesson well. I suffered a lumbar disc compression that left me unable to walk or even stand. For about a week I was like a bug stuck on my back unable to move. Fortunately I had a network of world class chiropractors and soft tissue specialists that I was able to seek treatment from. During these 4-6 months of rehab I still worked with clients which required me to move with incredible precision to bend over to pick up weights, benches, and avoid pain.
The movement I used was essentially a hip hinge and a deadlift.
How to do the Hip Hinge
How To Do a Deadlift
There are a few common mistakes people make during the deadlift that create localized pressure on the discs in their lumbar spine that results in pain. Often times people leave the safe neutral spine position that allows the powerful glutes to engage and either round their back on the way down, or arch their back as they lift up during the deadlift.
When you round your back on the way down, the individual vertebrae are pulled apart which can cause the muscles around the spine to spasm and create pain in an effort protect the locally injured disc.
If you arch your back during the upward faze, the individual vertebral bones move closer together creating pressure on discs that may currently be compromised (bulged, slipped, or compressed).
Both of these situations can be avoided through mastery of the movement.
The level of specificity that you must move with during a hip hinge or deadlift if you have back pain is incredibly high, as the slightest miss-pattern can create pain. This doesn’t mean you should shy away from the movement, it just means it requires a high degree of focus and control, and may require some professional guidance.
Most clients I’ve worked with who had lumbar pain also have under active glutes muscles, or at least underutilize their glute muscles during daily movement. Without proper glute strength and more importantly glute activation during the deadlift, the muscles of the back have no choice but to pick up the slack.
To complicate matters further, many people don’t have the required mobility to even to perform a deadlift properly. If you’re one of these people you may need to work with a knowledgeable trainer, and/or soft tissue specialist to remove limitations.
To really reap the benefits of the deadlift you need to do more than use it as an exercise. You need to transfer that pattern to the real world and your daily movement patterns.
How you move throughout the day has major ramifications on how your body performs and feels. With each movement in the day you are either strengthening dysfunction by moving in poor patterns, or strengthening out of dysfunction by moving through proper movement patterns.
There is little value in building strength and proficiency in an exercise that protects your back if the only time you use that pattern is during exercise.
Now this doesn’t mean you need to walk yourself through a strict deadlift setup just to pick up a water bottle, however moving with a neutral spine and hinging from your hips will greatly reduce the stress on your back when you pick things up, and there are practical ways to apply the movement to daily life.
You can use this pattern to pick up your children, groceries, coolers, etc. In fact when I first injured my back I had to move in this pattern to pick EVERYTHING up, even something as light as a pencil! If I missed on this pattern, muscles would spasm, the pain was intense, and my back would “go-out” to the point that I again was unable to stand.
Now this pattern of motion is so ingrained that I no longer think about how I move, it’s just a natural way to bend over and pick things up.
Building a bit of strength in the deadlift and more importantly patterning this as a movement has allowed me to maintain a fairly active lifestyle even though I have what some would call “a bad back.” While I’ve occasionally suffered “flare-ups,” these are far and few between, and generally caused by a lack of stretching, or abusing my body.
This strategy of corrective exercise is the same approach that has helped clients like Jean. She had previously worked with PTs, Chiros, and OTs but no one was able to pinpoint what was wrong with her back. It took her time, but by learning how to properly hinge and do a deadlift she built a level of strength through that exercise, but more importantly she transferred that exercise into a daily movement pattern.
She went from being afraid to bend over and pick up a 5 pound dumbbell (something that could cause her back to “go-out” to confidently lifting 75 pounds off the floor! Now she’s back to doing the things like yoga, dancing, and even surfing!
Don’t let the idea of a bad back limit you from living your life to the fullest. You may need the assistance from a knowledgeable corrective exercise specialist or physical therapist, but don’t give up hope on getting back to doing the things you love if you’ve got a “bad back.”
How to use the deadlift in everyday life.