As of this moment, we are rounding the corner into February. And, if you’re one of the many Americans who set some New Year’s Resolutions in the fitness arena, this is the tipping point. I mean, nothing clears out a gym like the arrival of February. Now, if you started the year with the general “get in shape” goal, you probably did a fair amount of Googling, you watched some fitness gurus on YouTube, or you picked the brain of that gym-maniac at the office…all in a search for that perfect program that’s going to get you the results you want. All that’s left now is to keep up the discipline to make 2020 the year that it sticks.
Now, I’m not going to spend this article trying to convince you that my program is the best for you (we can talk about that another time). I will simply assume that in your vast amounts of research, you discovered that strength is the foundation of any good fitness program. And if you came to that conclusion, I hope you also discovered that there is no better apparatus on the planet for developing real strength than the old-fashioned barbell. And, if you’re using a barbell to build your total-body strength in 2020, I will go out on one final limb and hope that you at least considered incorporating deadlifts.
When I first started training with a barbell, the Deadlift quickly became my FAVORITE lift!
Okay, don’t click away just yet…because I know for many of you out there, the dreaded D-word has been so maligned that you would never do something so foolhardy as step up to a heavy bar, bend down, and pick it up. “I’m gonna slip a disk!” “Aren’t you supposed to lift with your legs?” “My friend’s, uncle’s bowling buddy tried to deadlift once, and now he can’t walk!” I’ve heard it all before. But, when you actually dig into the stats on barbell-related injuries, it’s INSANE how rare they are. Properly executed deadlifts are not only safe for your back, they’re really, really good for it. Here’s why…
Some Quick Anatomy
If you’ve ever helped somebody move, you’ve surely heard the old adage, “lift with your legs.” It’s good advice…but it’s incomplete advice. Yes, when you’re picking up a heavy object like a cardboard box full of your friend’s extensive pre-teen supernatural fiction book collection (which should cause you to re-evaluate that relationship in the first place, by the way), you instinctively squat down, keep the weight as close to your center of balance as possible, and stand up by relying heavily on your legs for the vertical movement. If you’ve done that every time you’ve lifted heavy objects in regular life and then you watch someone execute a proper deadlift, it’s reasonable to assume they are “lifting with their back” and doing something highly dangerous. But, what we don’t often realize during our squatting-box-lifts is just how much work our back is doing by trying to stay tight and stabilize our spine while lifting our friend’s embarrassing books. The back gets involved in every heavy lift…it’s just a matter of making sure it stays strong and tight throughout the lift.
If you really dig into the mechanics of the deadlift, you’ll realize that the bent-over position at the bottom of the lift is necessary simply based on the presence of your shins and knees in the way of the bar path. Additionally, the first half of the lift is nearly all legs (so you do still get to lift with your legs…yay!). As the bar drags up your shins and clears your knees, your back is staying rigid to support the lift, but your legs are powering the vertical movement. Then, as you stand up straight and lock-out the lift, your hamstrings, butt, and lower back all work together to move the bar those last few inches. And because the bar is dangling off your arms by way of your hands, even your traps (upper-back) get involved simply by holding such a heavy load at the top.
Book Credit: Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training by Mark Rippetoe
What does all this mean? It basically means that performing properly executed deadlifts does not damage your back…they strengthen it like no other lift can, which actually lessens your chance of sustaining a back injury. The type of spinal injuries we worry about when we’re looking at a barbell are most often caused by incorporating rotation while lifting a heavy load (NOT part of a proper deadlift…and would actually be really weird to try). The amount of pressure your entire core has to exert simply to stay rigid while pulling a heavy deadlift can’t be replicated by the ab machine or the upright row station at the gym. The more strength you can build in the muscles that surround your spine, the more you protect it from injury. If I was taking bets on who might suffer a back injury between a guy doing a bunch of machine work while never skipping ab day and a guy pulling deadlifts at least twice his body-weight…I’d bet on bro-tato-chip and his back extension machine every day of the week.
Be Smart…Take it Slow
So, we’ve established that form is critical in the deadlift (actually, that’s true of any major barbell lift). And nothing causes our form to breakdown and thus make us more susceptible to injury than pulling a weight our body has not been adequately prepared for. If you walk into the gym, start warming up your deadlift, see the monster in the corner pulling 500 lbs. off the floor, and let that drive you to slap another set of 45’s on even though it’s 50 pounds more than you’ve ever pulled in your life…you’re asking for trouble. (Now, if you maintain your form, odds are the bar will just stay glued to the ground and the only thing you’ll hurt is your pride…but I digress.)
I said at the top this wouldn’t be an article on programming your workouts, but training the deadlift safely needs to be done incrementally over time. That means if you’re just starting out, go super-light…like, embarrassingly light. No one’s actually paying attention to what you’re doing in the gym…and if they are, they’re a weirdo and who cares what they think?! After executing those light deadlifts with perfect form, come back a couple days later and add 10 pounds to it. It’ll probably still feel like you have plenty of gas left in the tank, and that’s a good thing. Do your embarrassingly light + 10 pounds deadlifts that day, and come back again a couple days later and add 10 more pounds. You won’t get a ton of workouts where you can make the 10 pound jumps, so once it starts to really feel heavy (and your form is still good), start adding 5 pounds each workout. Once you get to a certain weight (usually around your own body weight), you’ll actually need to reduce how often you pull heavy deadlifts to once or twice a week. But now I’m getting into programming minutiae and I said I wouldn’t do that…my apologies.
I’ve trained with several newbies over the years, and I’ve only ever seen them get into trouble or hurt themselves when they couldn’t resist the urge to bro-out and try to pull too much weight too soon. When you slowly and incrementally build up the weight on the bar, all the muscles in your back and core have the time to slowly adapt along with it. This prepares your body for that super-heavy deadlift you plan to pull someday (and it will happen), but you can’t just show up and do that right out of the gate…that’s a recipe for disaster.
This is Eddie Hall pulling his world record 500KG (1,102 lbs.) deadlift. Maybe don’t try that on your first round.
Photo Credit: Strength Asylum
My Personal Spinal History
Now, I should have mentioned at the top of this that I do not hold any advanced degrees in biomechanics or spinal medicine. I am however a total geek, and once I discover an obsession, I research it to death. (Case in point: I own and have read cover-to-cover multiple barbell/lifting text books…I know, I have a problem. But, if you share the same problem, the best one of all time - in my humble opinion - is Starting Strength)
Anyway, while I’m not a doctor, I have spent plenty of time with an actual doctor looking at my spine. I’m a big fan of the chiropractor, and I have a terrific one! He’s fun, he certainly knows his stuff, and he’s also a Crossfit junkie so he gets the whole barbell thing and the toll heavy training can take on the body. I have a slightly crooked spine, and my hips also sit crooked (it looks weird on an X-ray, I’ll tell you that much). Because of that, I sometimes get some inflammation/pinching in my lower back. Typically, if that starts happening, I can head in for an adjustment, do some increased stretching, pop some ibuprofen, and I’ll be right as rain within 24 hours. Last year, though, as I was approaching a goal PR in the deadlift I had been chasing for a long time, it was getting worse. I started to worry about all those objections to deadlifting that I mentioned earlier, and I thought, “Great. I’ve slipped a disk. They’re gonna want to operate on my back. And my lifting career is done.” So, with my sciatic pain steadily increasing and X-rays not showing anything abnormal (aside from my already crooked spine and hips), they ordered an MRI of my lower back.
A few days went by. I continued to lift but kept the weights lighter to try and avoid losing a ton of progress, and eventually my chiropractor called with the results. And as I held my breath waiting to hear terrible news, he said, “your MRI looks perfect…honestly, it’s one of the cleanest MRIs I’ve ever seen.” You hear that? ZERO signs of discs bulging or slipping or herniating or whatever other terrible word gets associated with spinal discs. The issue was just muscle inflammation around that joint…I got a couple adjustments, was really consistent with stretching and warming up, and the pain was gone in a couple weeks. (And, in case you were wondering, I did hit and then surpass that deadlift PR I was chasing, and there was no pain in my back when I did it)
Listen, I know one guy’s medical case-study is not the way a peer-reviewed research paper gets written…that’s not what this is. In fact, you can go digging for yourself to find stats on barbell injuries, but they’re remarkably low. (In case you were interested, the most dangerous barbell lift according to the stats is the bench press) But, the point I want to make from my personal situation is that this MRI was taken after a solid FOUR YEARS of intense barbell training. For four years I squatted and deadlifted heavy multiple times per week, every week. I built up the strength slowly, I watched my form like a hawk, and the end result was zero physical damage to my spine.
A lifting belt is not cheating…it’s cheap insurance and gives your whole core (including your back) something to contract harder against, thus stabilizing your spine even further.
So, are deadlifts bad for your back? No! Not at all! There is the potential to hurt your back doing deadlifts, but that is well within your control in almost every case. Take your time to do the research and/or find a good trainer or coach (and, no offense, but the 19 year old kid at the globo-gym with a fancy little certificate is probably not well-versed in coaching the deadlift properly). Film yourself on your phone and compare your form to pictures and videos you find from reputable sources on strength training. Do whatever it takes to ensure you’re properly executing this magnificent lift. If you do it right and take it slow, the deadlift is actually one of the single best things you can do to protect your back from injury both inside and outside the gym.
All that being said, I hope your 2020 fitness goals are off to a great start! Whatever you’re doing and whatever your plan is, keep at it…you got this! (And if your plan didn’t involve deadlifts before, I sure hope it does now.)