Why You Should Deadlift

While this has changed as the science evolves, for decades, the medical establishment has pathologized back pain, believing the best way to prevent it is to take it easy and not lift heavy things from the ground. It has taught us to always see back pain as a serious problem, when that’s rarely the case. This advice has seriously fucked up a lot of lives. Your back isn’t made of glass. It’s made of bones and muscles that adapt to stress just like anything else. Generally, when people “pull their back” they have moved or lifted something in a way that they weren’t prepared to handle. That is what happens when you live a sedentary life, then decide you are going to rearrange heavy furniture over the weekend. Your body isn’t ready, and an acute musculoskeletal injury results. The best preventative is to deliberately expose yourself to movements that recruit your back muscles in a controlled fashion. The exercise that best does that is the deadlift.