When rehabilitating bad backs, there is often a clinical emphasis on increasing back muscle strength. Interestingly, several studies have shown that muscle strength cannot predict who will have future back troubles (Biering-Sorenson, 1984). On the other hand, Luoto and colleagues (1995) have shown that muscular endurance (as opposed to strength) protective. Further, many is studies that have attempted to trial strengthening approaches have chosen exercises designed to injure the back - for example, including sit-ups to strengthen the abdominal muscles. No wonder they reported that a positive health effect was not achieved or worse - more bad backs were created! Of course back and abdominal strength are important for performance but different rules apply for the back than for other body parts. Power (force times velocity) should come from the hips. The risk rises when power is developed in the spine. The implication that when high spine is torques are developed, the velocity of spine motion must be low. Conversely, high spine velocity is safe only when the torques are low. Weightlifters develop enormous hip power but virtually no spine power (high force and low velocity) because the spine is locked into a static position while the high velocity angular motion is provided by the hips. What is so interesting is that when the technique of workers or athletes is examined, generally those who have bad backs are the ones who load their backs to higher levels performing the same task. Evidence on rowers has documented those with the "hard catch" tend to be the ones with symptomatic backs. Workers with back troubles tend to lift using their back extensors and hamstring muscles. They tend not to use their hip extensors. A study of national class powerlifters has shown that those with lower back moments, but higher hip moments, lifted closer to the world record. Similar findings have been made in Olympic weightlifters. A healthy back, and a high performance back, depends on highly functional hips, and other parts of the body - these are also addressed in this book. There is no question that strength is important for performance. But if muscle strength cannot be directed through the skeletal linkage so that weaker joints are not forced to absorb some energy, so that the force projections ultimately have the maximal effect elsewhere in the body, it is of little value. The training approaches justified in this book develop multiarticular strength to optimize performance. They are not designed to hypertrophy muscle. Further, there are several prerequisites that form a foundation of back function prior to efforts to seriously strengthen the back, another major theme of this book.
This post was created by Zach Cooper, a movement and manual therapist in the health industry.
This post was created by Zach Cooper, a movement and manual therapist in the health industry.