Doing squat with S-Curve Scoliosis

[lmessmer]

I am a 70 year old male with a compensating S-curve. My curve is 35 degrees on the top right and 70 degrees on the bottom left of my back. I have read the blue book on Starting Strength and am currently reading the barbell prescription. Recently I was advised against doing the back squat by a trainer at the City owned gym I attend, saying it would compress my spine. Further, he said I had a high risk of injury due to the condition of my back. I also was advised against power cleans and told to do upright rows instead.

So, I would like to know if it is safe for me to do the squat as defined in the Starting Strength book. Are there any inherent risks I should be aware of and thus compensating for with modifications to programming, the lifts themselves or adding accessory movements?

[Mark Rippetoe]

We see this frequently. What do you suppose happens when you start with a light weight on the squat, press, and deadlift and then go up 5 pounds per workout?

[Jason Donaldson]

...Further, he said I had a high risk of injury due to the condition of my back. I also was advised against power cleans and told to do upright rows instead.
...

In addition to the fact that Rip's post entails, namely that this trainer fundamentally fails to understand the stress/recovery/adaptation cycle, there's also the fact that he's telling you not to do exercises with finite risk (the squat, the power clean), and instead telling you to do one with a close to certain risk. If I wanted to trick an enemy into ruining his own shoulders, that's what I'd teach him to do... (It's so bad, it's even gotten its own satire video from Rip and Chase.)

Of course, at 70, you're already well into a demographic that doesn't need the power clean, as you'll find out from Dr. Sullivan's book - it just shows all kinds of misunderstandings on the trainer's part that he's recommending swapping them in for the PC.

Are you familiar with Lamar Gant?

si.com

"Says [Robert E. Kappler, chairman of the department of osteopathic medicine at the Chicago Osteopathic Medical Center], "Lamar's is a classic case of idiopathic scoliosis, meaning we don't know the origin of the condition. But I must say I've seen nothing in the literature at all like this, in which a person with such an advanced degree of curvature—so advanced that he'd be four to six inches taller without it—is nevertheless a world-class athlete. Most scoliotics are weaker than an average person of the same age. My guess—and it's only a guess—is that Lamar's heavy lifting and extraordinary musculature have helped him to be more stable then he otherwise would be. By that I don't mean to say," Kappler is careful to add, "that I would recommend heavy deadlifts as a treatment for teenagers with scoliosis, just that my hunch is that Lamar's instinct to keep training was a sound one." (emphasis added)


Oh, doc...you were ALMOST on the right track, there...

[Maybach]

The physician's aversion to deadlifting is often expressed more mildly than the caricature of "heavy lifting is bad for you!" as a more conservative CYA, but this really raises the question of how these physicians are exposed to the rare cases in which heavy deadlifts DO cause an injury, because anyone deadlifting enough that they actually CAN hurt their back knows enough about deadlifting to be able to take responsibility for it. Are these doctors watching powerlifters?

A linear progression on the squat and deadlift may at some point be *limited* by the anatomical deficiencies of an abnormal spine, but if you get to the point where you are actually able to exceed these limits, you would have had to have gotten well acquainted with them on your own. If you've never progressed your deadlift, your back musculature is incapable of putting stress on your spine that it's anatomy can't handle, provided it's not wholly dysfunctional as an element of the neuromuscular system. You're walking around, so it isn't.

[Mark Rippetoe]

As I have often said, would you rather have scoliosis with a strong back, or a weak back?