Can Your Back Round While Lifting?
The instruction to maintain a “straight back” or “neutral spine” while lifting has been provided for as long as most people can remember.
Despite how common this advice is, the underlying arguments behind why it is made are not all that strong.
In recent years, Stronger lines of evidence have come out indicating that this advice is not very justifiable.
So, in this article, I aim to provide you with the details you need to know about back mechanics and lifting.
Why was a “rounded back” ever considered dangerous?
As a brief point of anatomy, your spine alternates between vertebrae (bony part) and discs.
The discs serve as a sort of shock absorber, and they contain a nucleus in their center.
In the case of a disc herniation, this nucleus translates out of the center. If this happens, it may come into contact with a nerve; which could lead to pain.
It has been thought that if the back rounds, more pressure will be put on one side of the disk and push the nucleus to the other side.
At least, this is what was shown when bending the spine in cadaver models (dead people) and seeing what happens. [1,2,3,4]
Here’s the problem with this justification: you aren’t dead.
How things play out in a deceased body can be very different than how things play out in living organisms.
The most obvious difference is that a dead body has no ability to adapt. Everything that happens to it is pure breakdown, decay, and wear-and-tear. This is not the case for your body.
A better line of evidence would be research examining living people, since you happen to be one of them.
So, let’s look at the available evidence of this sort.
Back movements and back pain
A 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis from Saraceni et al.[5] compiled all the available human data looking at lumbar joint angles (how bent your low back is) during lifting in relation to low back pain.
Interestingly, subjects with low back pain lifted with an average of 6 degrees less lumbar flexion than those without back pain.
In other words, the subjects with pain had a more neutral spine than those without pain.
The authors note that this is likely a result of being told to maintain a neutral spine after experiencing pain, but it is still an interesting finding nonetheless.
Overall, no association was found between lumbar joint angles and low back pain. Said differently, the “roundness” of a person’s back had no associated with whether or not the person had pain.
The authors of this systematic review conducted a cross-sectional study in 2022 [6] and found similar results.
However, everyone knows that low back pain CAN come from lifting.
So, if it’s not a rounded back, what is it?
Well, there’s two other variables that seem to be at play here.
Most commonly this refers to bending at the hips with your torso moving forward; without your hips moving backward.
The result of this is extra torque experienced at the lumber spine due to the distance between the center of mass and the fulcrum (your hips) being longer.
Please note that this is different then leaning over with your hips moving backward.
If your hips translate backward as you bend at the hips, then the muscles of your legs have much more leverage to help.
You should also note that this is different than the concept of rounding your back.
This refers to joint movement at the hip.
Rounding your back refers to joint movement in the spine.
A caveat to note is that this position isn’t inherently dangerous, it just makes any weight feel heavier to the lower back.
If you are holding a weight in this position that your body can handle, then there’s no real threat.
The problem comes from picking up a weight in this position that your body cannot handle. Again, because this position makes any weight feel heavier to your lower back.
The second, and arguably more important, is load and volume management. [7,8]
In other words, being mindful to how much weight your back is lifting and how many times it has to lift that weight.
At any point in time, there is some dose of exercise/movement that will:
Not be sufficient to produce any adaptation
Be sufficient and produce fitness adaptations
Be too much and increase risk of injury
The idea behind load/volume management is to aim to be in that middle category.
This may seem simple and obvious, but it’s where most people go wrong when it comes to movement safety. They do too much, too soon, or too often.
There’s a great deal of nuance that goes into figuring out what dose of exercise puts you in that position, but explaining this is not the aim of this article.
Another thing to point out is that the first point made in this section, the idea of forward leaning without your hips moving backward, is an aspect of load management.
By performing a lift with your hips moving backward, the muscles of your legs are more able to contribute. Therefore, you are more carefully controlling the load your back is responsible for.
Bottom line
Based on how things stand in the research, rounding your back while lifting a load does not seem to be an independent risk factor for low back pain.
That said, this doesn’t mean there is no merit to aiming for a neutral spine while lifting.
Most people, in my experience, tend to be stronger and more efficient movers in this position. At the end of the day, this is really what exercise technique is more about.
Another reason to aim for a neutral spine is if it helped you target a muscle more effectively. It isn’t always the more advantageous position, but it is in many cases.
However, to say that a neutral spine is safer is not an evidence based statement.