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No, this is simply wrong information. Or rather, this is information provided to people who are otherwise terribly out of shape. Look up Jefferson Curls, or j
by blunte 9y ago
No, this is simply wrong information. Or rather, this is information provided to people who are otherwise terribly out of shape.
Look up Jefferson Curls, or j-curls. These are essentially the exact motion that this article is suggesting is the wrong way to do things.
Now without question, you can do stronger lifts and put less direct stress on your spine by doing squats to pickup things rather than bends. But full fitness and flexibility absolutely include bends like the ones this article is telling you to avoid.
Wherever your weakest muscles and structure are is where you'll first suffer injury when you try to do something beyond your capability. So if you learn to squat to pick things up, that's fine; but if you neglect to maintain your flexibility, especially including spinal, you will get a back injury one way or another. Rather than bending over to pick something up, it will be turning over in bed, or coughing while carrying something.
What bothers me about specialist advice is that it is usually focused on one thing, one specialty. But whether you're talking about human anatomy and systems or economics or mental health (or many other very complex systems), you cannot just focus on a narrow set of changes or fixes.
- nkassis 9y agoI'm confused by your comment, From my reading you seem to say the article suggest squatting but from my reading the article is not advocating for squatting at all. It's advocating for hip hinge where your back remains straight and your hips rotate using your hamstring to pull. Unlike the j-curl you mention the back remains straight. Similar to deadlift technique.
- blunte 9y agoYou're right - I went from hip hinge to squat because that's the natural progression of how you would adapt your movement in order to pick up something heavy. The posterior chain is the strongest set of muscles in the body, so the heaviest lifts will involve a squat (which is both a hip hinge and a leg bend, butt drop). I'm not referring to the standing negative squat as in weight lifting, I'm more referring to the dead life move done by people with longer legs and shorter torsos/arms. You probably know that there are many variations of dead life. What I was referring to, which I took the article to basically be advocating, was a type of bend (lift) that isolated the spine as much as possible. And I was arguing that use of the spine in a bending, flexing way is not inherently bad - it's just that typical modern (sedentary) life allows the core to weaken and reduces flexibility. Instead of telling people to isolate to avoid injury, we should be telling people to move more (starting lightly) to increase flexibility - then add weight to increase strength everywhere.