Why is lifting items “with your back” dangerous? Why can’t back muscles be strengthened?
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It’s a bit of a misnomer. Even well trained weightlifters will massive activation of back muscles during movements like a dead lift or a squat. The use of back muscles is one of the major reason those lifts are done in the first place.
The bigger issue is that poor lifting technique puts unnecessary stress on joints. It’s not impossible but it’s hard to damage your muscles in a particularly bad way. It’s pretty easy to tear tendons, ligaments and cartilage and those tissues heal extremely slowly, and badly. So when you’re lifting things you want to position your body so that forces are primarily directed down bones and muscles and minimally on tendons and ligaments or across bones.
The human torso has evolved to let you stiffen it. When you do that can put it in a position where any weight near the top applies force directly down your spine. If you let your torso bend the forces don’t go down your spine evenly.
There are a few common mistakes people make when lifting heavy things. One is to leave the legs mostly straight and bend at the hips and lower back. This is often referred to as “lifting with your back”. When you do this the forces don’t go straight down through the bones of your spine, they go across your spine. The spine is much weaker in that direction.
The other mistake people make is to have their hips too far forward. That puts too much stress on the knees. Scooch your butt back like your really trying to send a fart flying across the room.
You absolutely can strengthen your back muscles and lifting heavy things is a great way to do it. If you lift with poor form you tear soft tissues instead of exercising your muscles.
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