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My last two coaches were giving me lat and upperback work for rounding during deads. New coach was like " breath more, more air, more air. I want to see you explode." From 2nd week with him, deads started hitting hammies and no more sore back from deads and squats.
That’s a good coach. My coach did the same with my squats. I thought I was bracing properly but my posture was off, and I was surprised how much of a difference it made.
@@robmarsh918 My brace was shit for a while, but a random guy in the gym once changed my life by simply saying "if you're bracing hard enough, your posture will probably fix itself" and he was so right, nowadays if I take a breath in I can already feel my lats tensing
You might not see this but just want to let you know your videos on bracing have solved all of my back problems, allowed me to recover from a horrible back injury and have gotten my lifts to skyrocket (all while maintaining good form). Despite having long femurs and always sucking at squats, they’re now my favourite lift. Going back to deadlifts has been hard because I find it difficult to brace while hinging but slowly i’m getting the hang of it. Thanks for everything!
This is life changing, I was so worried that I'd never find a way to squat without lower back pain afterwards. Now I'm excited to go back to square one. Thank you very much from Indonesia!
Wow I nearly cried when I watched this! You have given me hope that I can be free of this back pain and not have to give up on the gym. God bless you Alex 🙏
This is great timing for a comprehensive video about core stability and building resiliency. I am one week out from a microdiscectomy to address a disc herniation that has caused me issues for the last three years. This will be perfect for me to reference during my recovery phase and beyond.
Exactly what I've been looking for. I've been getting back issues when I deadlift. So I've been researching bracing, doing planks, etc to try and fix it. I did RDL's the other day and my back felt fine but today it feels a tad off. I'd love to hit a point where my back is the least of my concerns.
I'm 42 but have been a fairly unknowledgeable and sporadic lifter/trainer for most of my life. Didn't play foozball in highschool so I never did the "big 3". Just began the Starting Strength protocol a couple months ago, only I've also added 3 or 4 sets of pull-ups or neutral grip pull-ups at the end of my workouts, as well as 2 sets of hanging leg-lifts. Was feeling very tight in the lower back after deadlifts and this felt like the thing to do. Glad to know I was on the right track.
Thank you for this video & a number of your other videos. I have only recently found your channel & I love the way you share knowledge. Makes so much sense to me. And as someone working to help my back after a recent setback I am very pleased to have found your channel 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
What are your opinions on controlled spinal flexion training? Like imagine a bent over row where one would intentionally round their back at the bottom of the row and arch their back at the top, is that a good way to beef up the erector muscles? Additionally, would stronger and larger erector muscles lead to a better brace? I feel like this could be an interesting video idea.
Stiff legged deads (touch and go ofg of floor) with a slight round will smash your erectors tom martin used to do these alot (360kg @93kg conventional dead)
@@usmanmohammad7417 You can go as low as triples I'd focus on them as a deadlift variation (harder movement) over an accessory if raw deadlift strength is your priority. So getting stronger in the 5-8 range is good. You'll most likely find you can progress on these quite quickly as it's really a lift that makes things alot harder on the muscles used in the deadlift.
You are achieving awesome status. I read Starting Strength, the bracing you particularly pay attention to is important. They write about how to do it , this is better at explaining, this is best 🤙. I believe you can get that last 16 k subs with content like this. For me the dumbbell curl to overhead press really gets my erectors working. The Arnold I think its called, I dead lift and squat and bench , the core braced during curls and overhead press is amazing. I just got a wheel, they are brutal and I love it.
I've been watching your content for a few months now. And you consistently post disturbingly relevant content to my exact situation. You listening through my phone or something? Haha. Always great content and information, thank you so much. You're hard work is appreciated!
killing it man, you started really drilling into this channel round about when i was trying to reengage with mine and great to see you are up to nearly 90k subs!
About the the rounded back deadlift, i always thought the "acceptable" roundedness was from thoracic flexion and not from posterior pelvic tilt. The lats are still engaged but the midsection is rigid in a neutral posture. And the opposite in squat when you have thorasic extension but not lumber extension (APT)
No you’re right, the t spine is a region that allows mobility while the lumbar is a region that needs stability. A bit of t spine bending (due to your unique leverages and anatomy to help you lift as much as you can comfortably) is perfectly fine, but like you said in your comment, it’s all about locking in your core and making sure that lumbar isn’t bending to keep your spine in a good position. 2nd part of comment is a tad confusing though. In a squat you shouldn’t really be actively extending or flexing your spine, it should be kept in a neutral position the entire way through to maintain bar path
This is useful. I have a 600 pound deadlift but my low back is always hurting on deadlifts. It's definitely a technical issue. Im really wanting to improve my holds for strongman but my brace is trash. Road to 700 pound deadlift.
The algorithm is now just ridiculous. I literally felt some back pain last night after heavy lifts. I didn't even look up back pain hit it, just knew 🤭
This is the exact information I needed. Thank you. Super simple explanation and mega mega relevant to where I'm at in my lifting journey. Super glad I found this video!!
The way I think about it the longer body parts always have issues (more accurately a need for extra work). I think that may be true for the core as well. It's no surprise to me that you, with a long torso, had mid section issues. Your knees and hips are advantaged by the short legs, giving them tons of horsepower relative to other constituents of the lift. My monkey arms correlate to the need to baby my elbows. I've never had to worry about my core, even though it's probably not that strong relatively.
Maybe you are right. I also have short torso/trunk and long limbs. And my knees and elbows often bother me but never did my back or core/abs. My erectors are never sore even from PR deadlifts or high rep deadlift sets.
I will definitely start doing this, also personally I've found great help correcting pelvic tilt by simply being mindful of posture as often as I can remember it, when sitting or walking etc. It's annoying at first but gets easier, also sometimes a day simply hanging a little from a pull up bar.
Those muscles are tied into other muscles and so on. If you have any injury or imbalance elsewhere I think it can effect your core. One of my quads is looser, one tighter, which effects my glutes, and therefore my lower back. Have been trying to fix that with stretching and strengthening the weak side. I never wanted big glutes, but now I have been stretching them out and twerking. I think a bit of impingement in my left shoulder which I think is coming from the rhomboid is also effect the lower back. Like your spine should go straight from your butt crack to your head, and mine is a bit curved, from these issues. Only got back into lifting 7 months ago and just been conditioning really. I am 52. Trying to fix this shit up with just lifting and stretching, but maybe I need a few chiropractor sessions. My right elbow feels like I smashed up the bone and it clicks, it's getting stronger and has no pain, but it's a worry too. I think putting your head to your knees whilst touching your toes, which I can nearly do again, then rolling over and arching your back the opposite way is good. My posture is getting better, I think doing a vacuum pose every now and then does help with posture
Some of this is great, some of it is a little bit out of date. E.g. the idea of "Suffering from an anterior pelvic tilt". I can't remember the exact stat but it's something like ~80% of all people have APT as their default posture when standing. This is not a condition you suffer from, this is a perfectly normal feature of human anatomy that does not need to be fixed. As is PPT for the minority. Humans have a lot of variety in their morphology, and it's not right or wrong it's just how you're built.
I fully believe there are different ways someone can be normal. I'm not concerned with making a statement that encompasses everyone (like ALL pelvic tilts are problematic). I'm more interested in getting to the root of problems with people who actually experience pain or movement dysfunction. Some have an excessive apt that causes problems; I got one from 15 years of thinking I had to arch into a squat. The result was that I couldn't very well hinge or brace at the bottom of a deadlift. Led to poor performance and repeated injuries that didn't turn around until I fixed it.
Shout out to Donnie Thompson's Bowtie. I kind of thought it was bullshit before I tried it, but I wear it for warm ups and it really carries into my working sets.
You knew I was going to show up to be "that guy" Alex, but what about on bench? If I'm benching with pretty typical powerlifting setup, where the goal is essentially to dent that tin can, it feels like it's very hard to actually maintain a good brace.
Yeah, the game changes a bit when you are lying down, wedged into a firm surface as opposed to standing on your own two feet. You have to balance the benefit of the arch (reduced rom, stability from leg drive) with whatever loss of tightness you feel. I'm inclined to think arching is more relevant here than your brace. Have you tried wearing a belt while you bench?
This is stuff that bears repeating. I've helped a few of my friends out in the gym and I always start them off with 90/90 breathing even if it's just to give them proprioceptive awareness of what to feel, do and engage during a lift.
This is my problem. I'm frequently in pain. Back when I was in high school, 2 decades ago, they drilled into us how dangerous round back is, they wouldn't even teach us how to do proper deadlifts. They kept saying DLs are too dangerous. All we did was squats. I learned deadlifting on my own from bodybuilding magazines. I have no idea where my natural stable position is, and I never knew how important this is. So my lower back was strong, and my quads were strong due to squats. But my abdominals and hamstrings are much weaker. I developed hyperlordosis. I have constant pain. I stopped lifting about 10 years ago. Recently, like few weeks ago, I just stopped bothering with trying to find a proper posture at work. At work I lift boxes with round back. I know. Stupid. But I'm tired of getting up in pain and stiff back.
Here I am pissed I can't maintain a neutral spine while deadlifting hundreds of lbs, when I can't take 3 deep breaths into my ribcage while keeping my core braced in a 90/90
That's actually what katas, (forms, hyung, poomes) in martial arts are for. It's similar to a bird dog, your supposed to stay neutral the whole time, and move your limbs. If you watch a video of today's generation doing it you are not going to see that being done, but when we came up this was taught in any serious karate, or TKD school. The only difference being we didn't hold our breath while executing the movements we exhaled violently. They actually don't need hundreds of kata to learn this. You really would only need one that is called Sanchin. It looks completely ridiculous from a combat perspective (and it is useless for combat), but if you know what you are looking at it's a way to activate, and work the body's stabilizing muscles. It's performed with every muscle tensed, and working against eachother, you step by bringing your leg in to your other leg, and then bringing it forward, and out without moving the rest of your body. That wakes up the adductors, and abductors. The blocks are the external rotators working against the internal rotators, because everything is tensed. We have better ways of achieving all of that, but this was meant for you to be able to do it anywhere, and by any one. It's pretty cool for what it is.
I understand when we are moving heavy weights we want rigid core, but what if we are fast/slow running, jumping, throwing (whether keg toss overhead, or rotating body like baseball)? In these ones I mentioned above...it feels only more natural to let the lower back round and overextend...
Going on month 5 of serious back pain from a deadlifting injury, I can’t even put on socks properly and struggle getting up from the sitting down position. Straight up terrible, take of yourselves
