Don't Deadlift

Deadlifting is dangerous… Don’t ever do it… You will hurt your back…

You have most likely heard that at some point in your life. Whether it was from your doctor, a fitness magazine, or some type of fitness professional, they seemed to know what they were talking about and had the credentials to back it up. So you listened and stopped deadlifting… Well you stopped deadlifting in the gym but I guarantee you still pick stuff up off of the floor everyday.

All a deadlift is, is taking an object from the floor back to a standing position. Could you imagine what your life would look like if you couldn’t perform a task that is so essential to everyday life? Key’s fall on the floor, guess you can’t pick those up. The case of water on the bottom shelf at the store, nope can't buy that. Your child falls down and gets hurt, sorry kid they told me if I deadlift I’m going to hurt my back so you will have to pick yourself up.

When looked at in that way it may seem as ridiculous to the rest of the population as it does to me. Deadlifting is mandatory to living an unassisted life. So it is important to include deadlifts in some way to your training program. Trust me those with the fancy credentials telling you different are wrong and here is why. Like the saying goes, “If you don’t use it you lose it”. This holds true for your ability to pick things up off of the floor. So the more capacity and proficiency you can build in a controlled setting, the greater the capacity and proficiency you will have throughout life in those uncontrolled “real life” scenarios. I mean do you really want to have to leave your hurt child on the floor because you have lost the capacity to pick them up?

While we are talking about the truth, yes, people do get hurt while deadlifting but people also get hurt while driving, running, walking, and even while getting off the couch. One could even argue that you will put yourself at greater risk doing nothing than even the statistically most dangerous activities (I’ll save that for a different post). Here is the truth about 99% of those that have or will get hurt while deadlifting, they either let their ego get in the way of their better judgement and were trying to lift too much, too soon. Or they have been making their way through life moving terribly for years in all physical things that they do and they just happened to be deadlifting, most likely with a back that looked like that of a frightened cat when things finally gave out. Deadlifting relatively heavy loads in a compromised position is a recipe for disaster.

Here is the science; the spine is not designed to move through flexion or extension under a direct load. When this happens the load adds extra pressure to the discs that are being wedged between the vertebrae. The added pressure to the disk in the compromised position is what causes the disk to “bulge” or become herniated. Imagine squeezing one side of a jelly doughnut between your hands, as you add pressure with the hands eventually the structure of the doughnut will become compromised and the jelly will start oozing out. Your hands are the vertebrae, and the doughnut is the disk that sits between them. This is the mechanism of the most common back injuries, especially those while deadlifting. If you keep your spine in it’s neutral alignment while lifting, you will NOT hurt your back because the discs will be taking the loading in a position in which they are designed to. You could even try to lift thousands of pounds off the ground and if you keep your back properly aligned you will not hurt your back even if the object never moved and the load was far beyond your capacity.

So in short deadlifting is NOT dangerous. Picking stuff up off of the ground is an essential part of everyday life. Because of this it is important to include deadlifts in your training in order to develop and maintain capacity in a movement that is mandatory to living an unassisted life. Your ego and/or lack of awareness of your terrible movement is what is actually dangerous. So next time you hear someone say that deadlifting is dangerous, throw their keys or phone on the ground and ask them how they will pick it up since deadlifting is dangerous and shouldn’t be done.