Why is lifting items “with your back” dangerous? Why can’t back muscles be strengthened?
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There’s nothing wrong with lifting with your back *per se*, and in fact it can be good for you… If done properly. The problem is that most people don’t know proper technique. Broadly speaking, if you lift properly you can distribute the load evenly across your back. If you lift improperly the load will be focused on individual discs, and can also place the load on various discs as you go through spinal flexion (which you shouldn’t with a load). Lifting poorly is a recipe for causing back injury, since you are essentially sliding a load across your spine, basically like scanning for the weak point and causing damage there. Imagine your spine as a stack of jenga bricks and you go through hitting all of them in sequence. That’s what you do when you lift poorly. When you lift properly it’s more like putting a weight on the top of the tower.
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