People who wrecked their backs likely did so because of ignorance/lack of knowledge. The lower back is more involved when you do conventional style vs sumo. This is where people get injured when they round their back awfully if they are ignorant of proper technique. You don't lift the bar with you back. It is just there to maintain support isometrically. The glutes, hamstrings, hips are dong most of the work. You nver pull bar with hands. Imagine your arms are just hooks. People who pull will end up doing it weirdly and use too much lower back.

The key to prevent injury is to keep everything tight. Especially the core (which are your abs, lowerback, obliques, etc) forming some sort of a belt around your midsection. Breathe in a big gulp of air before you lift. This will protect you during the lift. Breathe out only after the most diffuclyt phase (after lifting it). Use a belt to further increase the pressure. More pressure (tightness) = more safety and more weights lifted.

Maintaining overall body tightness is very critical and is analogous to an erect penis. Imaging a big woman is fallin on top of you so you go to keep your little brother as stiff/hard as possible for max protection/penetracion and not break it. This applies to all exercises - Imagine a squat/ overhead press where you have big weights overhead, bench presses, deadlifts (maitaining weight isometrically). You got to maintain tightness esp the core to support these loads of weights safely and generate max power. If you go soft and limp, you increase the chance of injury a lot and you lose lots of power at the same time. To achieve max body tightness, grip the bar as tight as you can, "claw" the floor with your toes, flex all your muscles - lats, glutes, hams, hips, abs, arms, chest, etc especially when you attempt heavy deadlifts, squats, bench. The body works as a unit so tensing one part of the body has effects on the other parts.

Reset each deadlift rep. DO NOT lower the bar slowly. Deadift is an exception where you have to drop the bar during the eccentric phase. Push your ass back and drop the bar (together with your body) down once the bar reaches ard the knees. You MUST drop the bar and not lower it slowly otherwise you will overtax your low back too much.

If you're really concerned, you can do it sumo style. And do your own research/self-experimentaion for max understaning.

This post has been edited by funfree: Oct 5 2014, 12:12 PM

I actually prefer to do the SLDL variation of deadlift.

The conventional deadlift works the same muscles as the squat but with a different focus. However the conventional deadlift still does not address the posterior chain properly.

SLDL works the hamstrings and low back better, and the movement is also more simple.

... thanks for the detail explanation ... now I know why the big bang all the time watching those power lifter workout at the gym ...