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There isn't absolute consensus on the nuances. E.g. it's common advice to lift loads with your back straight and bending your knees but as said a deadlift isn't performed that way and you can lift very heavy weights with your back bent. You'll have one sport scientist say you should have your elbows at a certain angle when you do a bench barbell press and another say it's fine to have them at another angle.
Often form is modified to fit individuals.
You should learn the outline of how a given exercise is performed and some points are important but some advice on "proper" form can be dated/wrong/adjusted from person to person. You also need to start with a small enough weight/resistance to get a feel for what works for you (and see if it agrees with your body). I think a lot of injuries are related to trying to do too much too soon, not necessarily purely to bad form.
This is largely what I was trying to communicate.
I agree with what you've said, especially the variance person to person. I was trying to caution towards the passerby who might read this without much lifting experience to actually appreciate that nuance or have the strength and stability built up already and then they just go and hurt themselves.
All of this focus on “perfect” form makes the gym incredibly intimidating.
I’m not accusing you of saying this, but often we give people the impression that if they try to deadlift and their back rounds a bit or they squat and their knees cave in that their discs are going to go shooting out of their spine and their knees will be forever ruined. Then people don’t lift…
Injury rates for lifting are incredibly low. Much lower than any other sport. And the long term health effects are huge!
[1] http://www.temple-of-iron.com/powerlifting-injury-rate-compa...
The conversation around form is especially frustrating since it’s never data driven and really just scares people away from the gym. And by telling people that they must use “perfect” form (whatever that is…) or they’ll get seriously injured, we’re actually priming them to overly fixate on any little tweak they might feel while lifting and actually _increasing_ their risk of feeling pain.
Anecdotally, if form actually mattered so much for injury risk then there’s no way lifting would have such a low injury rate. Go into any gym and you’ll see all kinds of “incorrect” form, yet there aren’t discs shooting out of backs and knees exploding all over the place.
What really matters for injury risk is load and fatigue management, and we have great evidence for that. [1]
No, there's a huge amount of difference between individuals. Anatomical differences, differences in experience, differences is response to training stimulus, differences in pain perception, etc.
> but bending your back to lift weight weight vs using your legs is improper
Strongly disagree. See any strongman lifting atlas stones [1]. See stiff leg deadlifts.
Also, why is it improper? Who decided that?
Also watch strongmen lift atlas stones. It’s all in the back, and a rounded back at that.
How do you think strongmen lift atlas stones? If a rounded back led to injury then their discs would be shooting out of their backs…
A flexed-back posture is associated with increased strength and efficiency of the back muscles compared to a lordotic posture. These findings further question the manual handling advice to lift with a lordotic lumbar spine.
I'm happy to entertain evidence to the contrary.
I will say from my experience deadlifting above 300lbs you would not be doing yourself any favors only lifting from the back.
I just watched an atlas stone video and you can clearly see involvement of the whole core, they are not simply levering the stone up.
But in general, there isn’t a lot of evidence that “bad” form (again, very hard to define that) is correlated to injury risk.
There is great evidence that overall load and fatigue management is correlated with injury risk (ex. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27677917).
> How else would you deadlift? Your back is a lever. Also watch strongmen lift atlas stones. It’s all in the back, and a rounded back at that.
Can you see how I got to the thought that you might be advocating for not properly engaging the entire posterior chain and in effect attempting to muscle up the weight relying mostly on the back like a stiff leg deadlift? It seemed like a potentially dangerous position to be suggesting and would put a lot more stress on the lower spine for dubious gain imo. I gather from your response though, that you had something more sensible in mind when posting that.
To your second point, corelated injury from overall load and fatigue does make sense to me and I think for experienced lifters they are able to make the call on form and what works for their body, I was primarily concerned with the non experienced passerby. I still think you're likely putting more stress on certain parts of your body than you need with certain technique, but that's a personal call.
I’m not advocating for it, but I also don’t think stiff leg deadlifts are dangerous at all! Again, it’s about fatigue management. If you’ve never done stiff leg deadlifts, then yeah trying to do a maximal effort stiff leg deadlift is probably not smart. But if you’ve never bench pressed then trying to do a maximal effort bench press isn’t smart either, if you’ve never run before then don’t sprint a 5k, etc…
> I was primarily concerned with the non experienced passerby.
I get where you’re coming from, but the most important thing for someone one doesn’t currently strength train is that they start strength training. Full stop. The benefits massively outweigh the costs.
Again, I’m not trying to put words in your mouth because I don’t think you mean this, but if we aren’t careful and give people the impression that they “should go to the gym but must be careful to use perfect form or they’ll get seriously injured” (not supported by the evidence) then most people frankly won’t lift. And not strength training is way more risky.
False dichotomy. Yes, every person's form will be a little different. Even every individual lift.l will be different because we exist in analog meatspace.
But, while there isn't just one right way, that doesn't mean there isn't a wrong way. Do it the wrong way, and you do hurt yourself.
Can you define “wrong”?
Injury risk is mostly a function of load and fatigue management, not form.