Your back hurts? Quit fucking whining and fix it, Part 3

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5

Some of the most amusing moments of my life happen in a gym.  Maybe I am sadistic.  For instance, I saw a guy I know attempting to deadlift.  The problem with his deadlift was that he didn't hinge at his hips at all, and thus his lower body was stationary.  This caused his back to round.  This caused him to lift far less than he is capable of.

The good thing about the blogger site is that I see that people come across these posts due to their search words--lately, some of these have been, "my back fucking hurts when I deadlift," and "when I deadlift my back hurts."  This is not a good thing.  Hopefully you can remedy this soon.  




Observe this completely "unorthodox" deadlift.  This guy might be awesome enough to actually be a reincarnated Byzantine emperor.

I say it was unorthodox because Konstantinov's feet were narrow, and his back was pretty fucking round.  The lift was also pretty heavy.

If the majority of you readers, or even I tried to mimic this type of technique, we'd probably get seriously fucked up in the process.  Why? Because we are not Konstantinov.


Similarly, if we try to mimic exactly what Kara does, it might not be the best that we can do at the time.

The point of the videos is to show you that you will do different things with your body type.  A while back,  I focused a lot on what other people had to say about the deadlift.  A lot of it was helpful.  Some of it made my back hurt.  Some of it worked.  But to get to where I am now, it took experimenting, and doing what felt best, though it might not necessarily be orthodox.

It has been said, that the wider your hands are, the more work it is to lift the weight.  In other words, a farther distance for your body to travel from floor to lockout.  The straighter the arms, less distance for the rest of you to travel.  One way I differ from a lot of opinions and even a lot of lifters is that when I stagger my grip, my arms have to go pretty wide, other wise I get a lot of discomfort in my wrist. 

A picture we have all seen a bunch of times. 

If my hands were like Franco's are in a staggered grip, it would put me in a lot of pain for the lift.  My solution was to work on my pronated deadlift--I PRed in this the other day with 345, from a deficit--and use the staggered grip for heavy efforts.  I was advised to try a hooked grip as well, something which I will attempt my next session.

The above gentleman's problem was that he wasn't terribly flexible in his hamstrings and he has no glute strength.  Thus, a bad hip hinge is executed.  Box squatting can help reinforce an unfamiliar motor pattern, if indeed the person cannot consciously do the movement.  They will more than likely be able to reach their ass back to sit down on the box and not fall over. 

I don't know how much she can deadlift, but this ass certainly lifts my spirits. 

One way to fix the problem.  Another way that you can get jumping into your deadlifting without killing yourself is to use a rack deadlift.  Just do it like a normal deadlift.  Start close to your lockout, and push your feet into the earth.  Good thing about a rack pull close to your lock out is that it will strengthen your glutes and your hamstrings and get them used to moving this way.  Often times, a weak lockout is a lack of glute strength/hamstring strength.  If your shit is fucked up, this might be a good way to fix it.  The explosion in the glutes is also why I favor the kettlebell swing, and why my sticking point is around the floor and not at lockout--I neglected a lot of quad work over the years.  Bridging and bodyweight squatting might help these things too.  Experiment with it.

I think she has Lordosis.

The take home point is this: if your back hurts, try to fix it.  Going and doing the same style of deadlifting will yield the same results.  You'll get hurt.  Test out what people tell you, and question everything, even me.  If someone says to something in a lift, test it with a reasonable load, and see if you like it.  See if it's comfortable.  See if it's safe.  Konstantinov no doubt got to where he was by figuring out what was best for him.  Andy Bolton as well.  And anyone else who has an "unorthodox" technique.  If you're still hurting send me videos and I will try to help.  But again, figure out if what I tell you is worth trying or not, and figure it out for yourself.