Rounded back lifts

[TravisRussellDC]

Rip,

I'm curious as to what you think about some of the rounded back lifts. I know you mentioned them as an advanced exercise in SS along side a picture of stone lifting. Now, I've never performed rounded back good mornings. But I swear by stiff leg deadlifts standing on a box as the best way to train for lifting stones off the ground. Taking the barbell through a full ROM so the bar touches the tops of my shoes has helped my stone loading more than anything else. I've been able to work up to the mid 400's for sets of 5's without incident.

Now, my question comes because I had done these for years up until about a year ago. Perhaps due to my chiropractic training, I started to think that the rounding of the lumbars was a major no-no and I was just asking for an injury due to the shear force on the discs. However, the only time I ever injured my low back was coming a little too far forward with a high bar squat back in May, after not performing full ROM stiff legs for months.

I understand that rounded back lifts like these are an advanced exercise. But I was curious if you had any further opinions of them. I've always thought that if you build up the muscles around the joint to be as strong as steel cables, then the chance of injury is drastically decreased. I would never want an untrained individual to attempt to lift a heavy weight with a rounded back. But I've felt like they have kept me from having lower back issues in my many years of heavy training.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Really and truly, a spine cannot shear in the absence of a dynamic trauma, and the stress applied to a spine by a load is either compression, torque, or moment. I think that in light of the fact that most people lift heavy things "incorrectly" in terms of the proper extended lumbar and thoracic spinal position, that they always have and always will, and that most people are still fine having done it this way, some rounded back lifting is good practice for what will inevitably occur in the course of working with heavy objects. The back can get stronger more safely if most work is done in normal anatomical position -- thoracic and lumbar extension -- but some round-back work gets you strong in this position and lets you practice staying tight and controlled in spinal flexion. Since it's going to happen anyway, you might as well prepare for it.