I’m not an expert, but some friend has been warning me against RDL/DL and to proof me he sent me this “expert” also warning against.
There is these two videos (the guy speaks in Spanish, but he took these two videos from other accounts in English so captions are in english):
Suddenly in the comments, there is a horde of people warning against DL/RDL and how terrible these are.
AFAIK, RDL/DL are hamstring/glutes exercises, not back exercises. When I do RDL I push my waist back as far as I can, almost as if I were going to sit in a chair, Valsava hold with a core bracing per rep breathing in the top position, and continually try to do free weighting in full vertical motion. It’s true that sometimes I feel the back but not big time I only feel the back slightly. I feel way more tension in my knees and my elbows when I do squats and french triceps/overhead push-ups.
But according to Wikipedia, DL is considered a lower back exercise
Also, I’ve read in some studies that DL/RDL with low weights is plain useless. 100% of the studies suggest that DL/RDL is one of those exercises that benefits from eccentric overload. So trying to be careful with RDL by lowering the weights is a terrible idea, better plainly not doing it.
What do you think it’s going on wrong with these two injuries?
Why is there so bad press against RDL/DL?
You are experiencing a phenomenon known as the vocal minority/silent majority. Only people who have experienced injury are reporting experiencing injury, as people who are doing just fine have no reason to report.
RDL has been one of the most common accessories for WL/PL for decades. DL is a freaking competition lift in PL and strongman.
So hundreds of thousands of people have done them regularly without breaking their backs for years and years. Quite a strong argument about them being relatively safe if done properly (and what’s properly can be debated to death).
I suppose I predate RDL’s. I did Good Mornings with most of the weight on my heels and pushing my hips back until the stretch felt nicely in my hamstrings.
I don’t have a particular thought. For me is one exercise more in my list. I always preferred RDL over DL because you need less weight hence my total load/ 1RM is always going to be lower, and I need to buy less equipment for my home gym (specially DL that can go particularly high in weights pretty fast)
I was thinking that, how in the world could they capture the exact moment. Then I remembered that super old tv show where people were captured in very old cams having low key disgraces like falling in a million ways and then I thought that maybe some people just record every single bit of their lives.
I’m from Spain, and I’m familiar with that guy. I follow his content and, being a native speaker of the same language, I can fully grasp his points. Going into detail about who he is, his background, his arguments against DLs and all the nuances of why his life experience lead him to oppose so strongly against DLs would take far too long here.
He has series of videos, about 2-3 hour of content in total, where he provides a technical analysis of DLs and the degeneration process it can cause in the intervertebral discs. I’m not saying he’s right, but I do think his arguments are very well-structured and not so easy to refute, at least for me. Ultimately, even if his view on DLs is biased, he has a solid background and is capable of making very compelling points.
You put more pressure and degrade more your vertebrae by bending than by doing DL… which evidence does this person have that are not a sequence of bendings than a sequence of DLs?
There have been a couple studies regarding the pressure that the spine takes depending on the exercise specially in core exercises and I’ve never seen DL in any problematic back list.
What I don’t like about these guys is that they don’t provide any evidence, they only talk on their personal experience which is skewed at best.
My original question was not really doubting if DL is good or not, but to check those videos and analyze if the guys doing the DL were actually doing it right or wrong, and try to analyze potential causes.
What it’s 100% true is that on DL I’ve seen the worst barbarities. Ego lifting in DL is by far the most popular among with bench press, which blows your shoulders when taking the bar from the rack because of the backwards position. I understand that powerlifters want to see some gains at all costs and the train to a overoptimal levels that cause massive harm (but this happens pretty much in all sports, in football for example most people have their knees completely blown).
But for a non-competing person, just trying to workout for pure health, I’m attempting to discover the best benefits and the optimal point from each single exercise obviously minimizing injury (considering that at least personally I’m doing 100% this for health purposes).
PS:
Strength of Recommendation: Level B evidence exists that exercise programs that include deadlifts are a clinically effective option for the treatment of low back pain for both pain scores and functional outcome measures.
